Determination of Engineering Properties of Aonla (Phyllanthus emblica L or Emblica officinalis G) Fruits

The engineering properties of Aonla (Phyllanthus emblica L or Emblica officinalis G) fruits are pre requisites in designing the equipments for handling, storage and processing of the aonla fruits. It is essential to determine the relevant characteristics of such fruits but this kind of properties appeared to be lacking in the literature. Hence this study was undertaken to determine some physical and mechanical properties such as size, shape, roundness, sphericity, volume, density, surface area and penetration force for the design of pricking machine for aonla fruits. The fruits of four Aonla cultivars namely Chakaiya, Kanchan, Krishna and Francis were used for this study. The fruits were cleaned with water to remove all dirt adhering to the fruits and the experiments were conducted at room temperature. All physical and mechanical parameters were studied for 10 fruits from each cultivar. The Fresh fruits were randomly selected for determination of physical properties. The shape of the Aonla fruits were found to be ranging from round to prolate. The size of the fruits was characterized using length, breadth and thickness i.e. major, intermediate & minor axis of Aonla fruits. The average volume of the fruits ranged from 31.565 to 42.809 cm³ and the average sphericity ranged from 0.954 to 0.995 whereas the range of the rolling resistance found to be 12.51 to 21.99⁰. The range of fruit size was observed to be 3.10 to 4.47 cm. It was also observed that the volume was higher for the variety Francis with 42.809 cm³ followed by Kanchan, Krishna and Chakaiya with 37.565, 31.565 and 27.513 cm³, respectively. The maximum value of volume was found in Francis (84.245 cm³) and minimum in Chakaiya (31.115 cm³). The rolling resistances of the Aonla fruits of Chakaiya, Kanchan, Krishna and Francis varieties were found to be 19.167°, 18.890°, 16.384° & 14.653°, respectively. The maximum value of the rolling resistance was found in Chakaiya variety (21.990°) and minimum in Francis variety (12.310°). The penetration force required to penetrate into the fruits of Kanchan, Chakaiya, Krishna and Francis varieties of Aonla was found to 37.62, 26.29, 21.98 and 19.35 N, respectively. The maximum penetration force was found in Kanchan variety because of more compactness of the fruit and minimum in Francis variety.