الفهرس 
Development of potato crop harvester suitable for small holdings
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Abstract
Potato crop (Solanum tuberosum) is one of the major vegetable crops in Egypt, cultivated area is 437386 feddan (183702 ha), and quantity of production is 4955445 tons. The farming structure in Egypt has totally changed during the past 50 years. It has gone from a small number of very large holdings to very large number of small holdings. The main objectives of this research were to develop, manufacture and evaluate self-propelled potato harvesting machine suitable for small holdings. A potato harvester self-propelled machine (single row) was developed; the potato harvester blade was designed, manufactured and evaluated. The developed self-propelled machine was evaluated at three levels of forward working speed (1.5, 2.0 and 2.5 km/h) and three levels of digging depth (16, 20 and 24 cm). Evaluation depended on the following parameters: machine field capacity, harvesting efficiency%, damaged potato tubers, consumed energy and cost of harvesting operation. The obtained results can be summarized as follows: percentage of damaged potato tubers increased by increase the forward speed from 1.5 to 2.5 km/h, but damaged percent decreased with increasing the digging depth, The highest value of field capacity was at operating speed of 2.5 Km/h with depth 16cm, The highest harvesting efficiency was at the digging depth of 24 cm and operating speed 1.5 Km/h