Loose flower plucker: A women friendly innovative gadget for harvesting loose flowers

Abstract

In India loose flowers are used for making garlands for worship, religious function, and extraction of bioactive coloring pigments and essential oil. Generally, these flowers are harvested manually and it is a labor-intensive process. There is need for mechanization in harvesting of flowers to minimize the dependence on limited resources such as labor and time, and reducing the cost of production for better farmer income (particularly for women farmers). So, considering all these factors, we have designed, developed and evaluated an womenfriendly innovative gadget—the loose flower plucker for harvesting loose flowers. It consists of blade-holder assembly made of plastic material, cutting blade made of stainless steel, fixing belt and thumb protector. Also provided are the additional features of a metal gruf at the upper side of the plucker for tightening and loosening the cutting blade. This metal gruf will provide support to the cutting blade during harvesting of loose flowers. The blade holder assembly was designed according to the size and shape of the index finger of women. We tested the loose flower plucker on farmers’ flower fields for women. Factors such as total weight of plucked flowers (g), plucking rate (g/min), flower quality (score/5), pain experience (score/5) and plucking efforts (score/5) were considered during testing of loose flower plucker. We found that the loose flower plucker had a higher plucking rate than hand plucking, and minimum damage to flowers and plant during harvesting of flowers. This innovative gadget is ideal for women because of its women-friendly features: simple design, small size, light weight, easy carry and storage, low production and plucking cost, and higher plucking efficiency.