To speed up the olive harvesting process, a tractor-driven olive harvesting machine was designed and manufactured at the Institute of Agricultural Engineering (AEI), Islamabad. This newly developed equipment was tested on the Bari Zaitoon-I cultivar for its performance evaluation. This innovative technology has proven valuable in efficiently replacing expensive manual harvesting operations with timely and economic alternative. It was experimentally evaluated at different PTO speeds, stroke lengths (SL), and vertical clamp positions (CP) on the tree to find the harvested and leftover fruit (%) and field capacity (trees/h) of the machine. Data collected was statistically analyzed by using “Statistix 8.1” software at a 5 % le vel of probability. The best results were recorded as 92.4 % harvested fruit, 7.6 % leftover fruit and 23.6 trees/h field capacity at the PTO speed of 300 rpm along with the stroke length of 10 cm and clamp position of 1 m on the tree trunk from the ground. The use of the developed equipment will make it possible to harvest olives in a shorter time than with manual harves ting without reducing the quality and weight of the obtained products.

Psyllium (Ispaghol) is an important therapeutic plant usually cultivated in several areas of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Iran. Due to the medicinal qualities of Ispaghol seed husk, there are numerous uses of husk and its products for medical and industrial uses. The actual need of the Ispaghol crop is to attain its husk, which is the outermost skin of the seed and can be removed by mechanical grinding. Farmers in Pakistan have no mechanized post-harvest processing facility available for the Ispaghol crop. Conventional methods for husk separation are time-consuming and labour-intensive and also reduce husk quality and quantity. Husk separation from de-husked seed is a big challenge, therefore a machine has been developed and tested for its performance evaluation. This machine boosts the processing capability of Ispaghol more than manual techniques, which can process 160 kg of de-husked seed in 1 hour. The machine compared to manual can save 60-70% time and 50% labour cost. The performance of the machine was evaluated at three blower air speeds (8, 9 and 10 m/s) and three drum speeds (80, 110 and 140 rpm). The machine performed better at the drum speed of 110 rpm and blower air speed of 9 m/s, the husk separation was quantified to be 98 % and also the obtained husk was free of core and other impurities and provided dust-free and healthy surroundings. Commercialization of such machinery is the need of the hour to enhance productivity and maintain quality, resulting in increasing exports and contributing to a better economy.

Mechanical seed coating has been globally adapted to protect them from fungus, soil-borne diseases, and other harmful substances. In crop production, attaining the potential yield is the main concern of farmers. Among the other problems of low yield, fungal attack is associated with germination stage. To avoid this problem, farmers are using fungicides with the help of bags or clothes. The traditional method is time-consuming, labor-intensive, costly as well as inefficient for uniform coating of seed. To address this challenge and to speed up seed coating process, a manually/motor-operated seed coating machine was designed at CAD/CAM Lab by using Auto CAD software and developed at Agricultural Engineering Workshop of Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi. The newly developed machine was tested at two levels, manually/motor-operated and compared with a traditional method. Its performance was evaluated using (metalaxyl + mancozeb) fungicide under three treatments levels: T1 (traditional coating method), T2 (manual coating method), and T3 (mechanical coating method). The data from the experiment on fully coated seed percentage, semi-coated seed percentage, and uncoated seed percentage were collected and statistically analyzed by using Statistix 8.1. Mechanical seed coating method T3 demonstrates superior results, achieving coating efficiencies of 79.2%, 85.4%, and 93.2% at 2-, 4-, and 6-minutes’ intervals, respectively. The machine offers a cost-effective and efficient solution for cotton-seed treatment, significantly enhancing seed coating uniformity and reducing seed breakage compared to conventional practices.