Design and Development of Manually and Motor operated Graders for on-Farm Grading of Walnuts

Low-cost manually and motor operated walnut graders were designed, developed and tested for on-farm grading of walnuts. Walnut has varied shapes such as trapezoidal, spherical, elliptical, oval, round etc. The average capacity of manually operated grader was 3.35 q/h and for motor operated grader it was 6.5 q/h. The overall efficiency of manually operated grader was 69% and for motor operated grader it was 72%. The breakages due to grading. were negligible in both the machines. The comparative cost analysis done on the basis of working on the farmers' fields revealed 72.7% and 176.6% saving in cost, respectively, and 31.03% and 165.3% saving in time for manually operated and power operated graders, over that of the traditional methods of grading.