Development of Onion Grading Machine for Indian Food Agro Industries

In the economic development of India, agriculture sector plays a key role. For the proper price of any agriculture product, grading according to size is necessary. And it is also value adding technique to the product. To makes the product more attractive and improve its processing qualities uniformity in size is important. Grading according to the sizes is an important value adding technique for most agricultural products. At present, size grading of most agricultural products including lemon, garlic, onion, tomato, Orange, mandarin, apple are carried out manually by farmers, agents, whole sellers, retail sellers and customers also. Most of farmers market their products without any grading. Persons engaging in postharvest crop handling such as collectors, whole sellers, retail sellers, and farmers cannot use high technical and costly grading technique. And also by the local market survey it is found that retail market price of the fruits is significantly varied according to its size. Fruit grading by human is inefficient, labor intensive and error prone. The automated grading system not only time saving but also minimizes error. Improvement of quality and value addition of agricultural produces has gained higher concern in recent times. There is a great demand for fruits in both local and foreign markets. The study is carried out for the design of a machine which can be used to grade multiple fruits by making adjustments. Machine should be simple to use so it can be operated by any illiterate person also so that farmers can also use it.