Mechanization of Vegetable Production and Post-Harvest Management

Contents: Foreword. Preface. 1. Status and scope of vegetable mechanization in India. 2. Agronomy of major vegetable crops. 3. Equipment for seedbed preparation. 4. Vegetable planters and transplanters. 5. Equipment for interculture and weeding. 6. Plant protection in vegetable crops. 7. Appropriate irrigation methods for vegetable crops. 8. Harvesting of vegetable crops. 9. Vegetable seed extractors and threshers. 10. Post-harvest management of vegetables in India. 11. Cleaning, sorting and grading techniques for vegetables. 12. Vegetable drying. 13. Evaporative cooling and its importance in low cost on-farm storage system. 14. Construction, operation and management of environment controlled cool chamber for bulk storage of vegetables. 15. Refrigerated, controlled and modified atmospheric storage of vegetables. 16. Appropriate packaging and storage of vegetables. 17. Vegetable seed processing. 18. Vegetable cultivation practices in greenhouse. 19. Indian standards on vegetable cultivation and processing machines. 20. References.

“This publication contains a detailed description of research efforts and technologies related to different agricultural practices in vegetable crop production like tillage, sowing, planting or transplanting available in India and abroad. Critical operations like planting and transplanting need serious attention of researchers, thus, a comprehensive review on such aspects has been included in the book besides brief description on agronomical practices of vegetable crops.

The equipment related to plant protection and irrigation methods appropriate to vegetable cultivation, state-of-art technologies related to harvesting and seed extraction of vegetable crops, post-harvest management of vegetables including on-farm processing for value addition, energy efficient low cost technologies like evaporative cool chamber, environment controlled cool chamber, protected cultivation for higher production and quality vegetable production, technologies related to vegetable seed processing, Indian standards on vegetable cultivation and processing machines has also been described.”