Banana (Musa sp.) is the second most important fruit crop in India next to mango. Its year round availability, affordability, varietal range, taste, and nutritive medicinal value makes it the favorite fruit among all classes of people. Suckers are the unwanted plants that grow around the mother plant and greatly affect the mother plant growth, taking essential nutrients from them. It also affects the banana bunch growth hence affecting the physical properties and their characteristics which ultimately affects the quality. Therefore these suckers are required to be removed in order to have a healthy growth of the banana plant including banana bunches and combs. De-suckering is the practice of removing unwanted suckers that grows around the mother banana plant. As the plant grows, a number of suckers grow from the rhizome of the mother plant. The average number of suckers that grows around is usually 3-6. These suckers compete with the main plant for its food and nutrients. Thus, controlling these suckers is a must to maintain normal bunch weight and quality. De-suckering is done manually with the help of sickle which is inefficient, time consuming, inflict substantial loss to stem of banana, as well as cause musculoskeletal stress on farm workers. Therefore it is necessary to develop an ergonomically designed banana de-suckering tool which can reduce the physical discomfort during cutting operation without affecting the speed of operation, also it should take less time and energy for the same. The performance evaluation of sucker cutting tool was done by using the two methods i.e. developed method and traditional method based on parameters such as sucker diameter, sucker height, number of sucker/plant, moisture content. In traditional method, sucker was removed using sickle. The maximum working capacity ranges obtained from traditional method was 16 plant/min while 29 plant/min was observed with the help of developed tool. Operations with Developed tool resulted in less fatigue and did not cause any unnecessary scratches and damage to the main plant. Also frequent sharpening was not required for the blade of developed tool as in case of sickle which resulted in less time loss during the working period, increasing the productivity of the operation. The advantages of this “Developed tool” are that it is easy to use and does not require highly skilled labor. Finally, “Developed tool” could serve as tool to the banana farmers. This tool is designed to operate properly, easy to use and easy to maintain.

Download this article as