Development and Performance Evaluation of a Solar Powered Cool Chamber for Short-Term Storage of Vegetables

Farmers in the rural areas often sell their products to the middleman or in the local market at low price due to lack of transportation facility, shortage of electric supply and lack of investment on storage. They are not even able to get the return of the invested money in cultivating vegetables or fruits. Lack of onfarm storage facility, therefore, compels the growers to go for the distress sales of their produce, ultimately resulting into reduced net profit to them. There is therefore, the need of a low cost storage system which can be operated on a reliable and environment-friendly energy source for short-term storage of the perishable horticultural produces in a small scale at farmer's own level. An attempt has thus been made in this study to develop and evaluate a solar photovoltaic powered cool chamber of about 100 kg capacity for short term storage of vegetables in order to avoid distress sale among the growers, majority of them is coming under small and marginal farmers category. The cool chamber was fabricated in the Dept. of Farm Machinery and Power, OUAT, Bhubaneswar, Odisha and its performance was evaluated for studying the storability of tomato during peak summer period i.e. April-May 2015. It was found that the shelf-life of tomato was enhanced to 12 days during summer season by maintaining temperatures in the range of 14–16°C and humidity in the range of 83–94% in the cool chamber developed for the study.