A multi-fruit grader was designed on the principle of weight basis and developed for grading spherical fruits like apples, pears, peaches, orange, mousmi, and pomegranates. The main components of the grader are: frame, roller conveyor, fruit carrier,weighing unit, power transmission unit and chain sprocket drive. The performance of the grader was evaluated at 5 (0.029 m/s), 10 (0.058 m/s), 15 (0.086 m/s), 20 (0.115 m/s), 25 (0.144 m/s) and 30 (0.173 m/s) rpm of fruit carrier on four fruits, namely;apples, oranges, mousmi and pomegranates. The performance was satisfactory at the carrier speed between 12 and 15 rpm. The capacity ranged from 150 to 200 kg/h depending upon the fruit type and variety. The overall grading efficiency was close to 96 percent.
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Department of Post Harvest Process and Food Engineering, College of Technology, G.B. Pant University of Agric. and Tech., Pantnagar - 263 145 U.P. INDIA;
