The roller and sieve machines most commonly used in Russia for the post-harvest processing of root and tuber crops and onions have a number of disadvantages, the main one being a decrease in the quality of sorting due to the contamination of working bodies, which increases the quantity of losses during sorting and storage. To obtain high-quality competitive production, it is necessary to combine a number of technological operations during the sorting process, such as dividing the material into classes and fractions by quality and size, as well as identifying and removing damaged products. In order to improve the quality of sorting of root tubers and onions by size, it is necessary to ensure the development of an automatic control system for operating and technological parameters, the use of which will eliminate manual sorting on bulkhead tables in post-harvest processing. To fulfill these conditions, the developed automatic control system must have the ability to identify the material on the sorting surface, taking into account external damage and ensuring the automatic removal of impurities. In this study, the highest sorting accuracy of tubers (of more than 91%) was achieved with a forward speed of 1.2 m/s for the conveyor of the sorting table, with damage to 2.2% of the tubers, which meets the agrotechnical requirements for post-harvest processing. This feature distinguishes the developed device from similar ones.

Introduction. Existing machines for harvesting root crops and onions do not have efficient indicators describing separation of root crops that leads to incompliance with agrotechnical requirements to harvesting root crops. New methods should be found to increase quality of root crop separation, including the qualitative indicators, and to cut losses. Materials and Methods. The article describes the design of a laboratory unit for determining qualitative indicators of the seed onion heap separation using a rod elevator with the asymmetric passive elliptical shaker and supporting roller. The authors describe the method and results of laboratory studies to determine qualitative indicators of seed onion heap separation at an experimental rod elevator. Results. The results of the laboratory study of the rod elevator are cited and qualitative indices of seed onion heap separation are defined. The maximum completeness of separation of the seed onion heap is 98 %, when the forward speed of the web of the rod elevator is V-el = 1.55-1.68 m/s, the supply of heap of onion-seeding Q(B) = 19.7-27.1 kg/s and the interaxial distance between the passive elliptical shaker and the supporting roller is within the range of S = 0.29-0.42 m. Discussion and Conclusion. The use of a rod elevator with the asymmetric elliptical shakers and supporting roller allows increasing the completeness of separation of seed onions by 20 % and to cut the bulb damage by 11 %, compared to symmetrical arrangement of the shakers.

One of the most important problems during the implementation of any technology is to reduce labor costs, energy, and resource conservation while increasing the yield of cultivated crops and, as a result, reducing the cost of production. Despite a significant amount of scientific research devoted to the problem of energy and resource conservation in the cultivation and harvesting of agricultural crops and the development of mechanization tools that ensure the high-quality performance of technological operations, there remain issues that have not been fully resolved to date. In addition, not all the results of known theoretical and experimental studies can be directly applied to intensify the process of harvesting root crops since the quality indicators of marketable products depend on the type and technological parameters of the separating working bodies. This article presents the design of a rod elevator with an adjustable angle of inclination of the web, which reduces damage to commercial products of root crops and bulbs with maximum completeness of separation. A laboratory facility has been developed to substantiate the design and technological parameters of a separating system with an adjustable web inclination angle. Based on the results of theoretical and experimental studies, a machine for harvesting onions with an adjustable blade inclination angle has been developed, which provides an increase in the quality indicators of onion harvesting at optimal values of the parameters: (1) translational speed of movement of the rod elevator with an adjustable web inclination angle of 1.7 m/s with a 98.4% completeness of separation and 1.7% damage to the bulbs; (2) translational speed of the movement of the machine for harvesting root crops and onions 1.0 m/s with a 98.5% separation completeness and 1.1% damage to the bulbs; (3) digging depth of the digging plowshare equal to 0.02 m, with an onion heap separation completeness of more than 98% and product damage of less than 1.4%. The results of theoretical and experimental studies of a rod elevator to substantiate the design and technological parameters during its interaction with a heap of onion are presented. Basic design and technological parameters of the studied rod elevator are substantiated, namely, the distance S1 of the movement of the rod of the actuators, the angle a1 of the longitudinal inclination of the surface of the rod elevator relative to the horizon, and differential equations of motion of the onion-sowing pile element on the surface of the rod elevator with an adjustable angle of inclination of the web.

This method is a variant of non-destructive multiparametric surface analysis and includes the implementation of hyperspectral and RGB image processing approaches from different angles. This work is based on a fundamental hyperspectral survey system for obtaining data on scanned biological objects in many spectral ranges and with several possible variants of assembling a system with different types of surface illumination with point light and diffuse illumination. The implementation of the technology through the use of a diffused light source provides the diffuse illumination of a biological object with pronounced symptoms of rarefaction on the surface of a biological object—in this case, potato tubers, due to the presence of signs of disease on the potato peel, as well as their deformation. Using broadband lamps, a short-pass filter is located between the source and the object (λ ≤ 400 nm, λ may vary depending on the excitation length), and a long-pass filter (λ ≥ 400 nm) between the root or onion and the chamber. The use of a vision system with a created database containing models of real defects in potato tubers showed a high sorting efficiency, providing an accuracy of sorting by size of 95.4%, and an accuracy by the presence of defects of 93.1%.

Показатели качества работы автоматизированной машины для ухода за растениями картофеля в селекции и семеноводстве