Other subject about saffron
Mohammad Hossein Abbaspour-Fard; Hossein Yousefzadeh; Amin Azhari; Mohammad Ali Ebrahimi-Nik; Moein Haddadi Moghaddam
Abstract
Agriculture is an occupation in which the workers are prone to health problems, particularly musculoskeletal disorders. This job is one of the most strenous and most dangerous work activities with approximately 40% of the engaged population living in the developing countries. Iran is the world's largest ...
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Agriculture is an occupation in which the workers are prone to health problems, particularly musculoskeletal disorders. This job is one of the most strenous and most dangerous work activities with approximately 40% of the engaged population living in the developing countries. Iran is the world's largest producer of saffron (about 94% of the world production). Labour has the highest impact on the production of this crop. In this research, a kind of trolley is introduced in order to reduce the mechanical damages on the body of labors during saffron harvesting, and then the results are compared with traditional harvesting methods. In the experiments, the force and strength percent capability of 20 workers as saffron harvesters is evaluated using the 3DSSPP software. Two methods of saffron harvesting namely the traditional method with two common postures (half sitting and bowing) and harvesting while sitting on the trolley are considered. The different postures for the traditional harvesting methods and harvesting with the trolley were simulated and imported to the software. It was found that the most harm on the farmers occurs in their knees with half sitting. Evaluation of harvesting saffron with trolley showed that it results in the exertion of the least damage to farmers. However, harvesting with trolley exserts the most pressure on the back. However, the pressure is very little compared to half sitting and bowing postures. Hence this simple device is recommended for harvesting saffron.
Processing, food industry and biochemistry
hamed bakhshi; Mohamad Abaspour; Mohammad Hossein Saeidirad; Mohammad Hossein Aghkhani; Roghayeh pourbagher
Abstract
Separation of stigma from petals is one of the required tasks in saffron production. The mechanical separation of saffron flowers may be performed through the following steps: I) singulation of the flowers ii) aligning the flowers iii) cutting the style (Konje) and iv) separating the stigma from the ...
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Separation of stigma from petals is one of the required tasks in saffron production. The mechanical separation of saffron flowers may be performed through the following steps: I) singulation of the flowers ii) aligning the flowers iii) cutting the style (Konje) and iv) separating the stigma from the petals. Because of the importance of saffron flower separation, a prototype device was constructed in this project for singulating and aligning of saffron flowers, prior to the cutting operation. This device can also be installed to work with other cutting and separating equipment and produce on an industrial scale. A pickup vacuum cylinder was used for singulating the flowers and an inclined V-shaped surface was employed for aligning of saffron flowers. The constructed apparatus was evaluated from the standpoint of singling efficiency and losses. For this purpose, three types of saffron flowers (buds, open short tail and long tail), three rotational speeds of pickup cylinder (6, 12 and 21.5 rpm), three levels of suction (30, 70 and 100 mm Hg), and four different inner diameters of finger’s nozzle (2, 3, 4 and 5 mm) were used with three replications. The results of analysis on the constructed device showed that the highest efficiency (75%) is observed for short tailopen saffron flowers with 5 mm inner diameter of sucking nozzles, suction of 100 mm Hg and the rotational speed of 6 rpm. To evaluate the performance of flower aligning, 100 saffron flowers with an average length of 5 cm were selected and tested with 5 replications. The average aligning with the correct direction obtained was equal to 84%.
