Research On Hop's Machine Pickability

Xinjiang covers 70~ of the hop output in China~, it is the main production area in China and the third largest hop production area in the world. The harvesting of hop is the major work of the whole hop production process which is mainly conducted manually in Xinjiang. It occupies more than 1 million work days every year. If the harvesting of hop is mechanized, the shortage of labor force in autumii in rural area will be greatly relief ed. It will also reduce the cost of hop production and further enhance the compitability of the hop of Xinjiang. Xinjia.ng started the research, import, modification of hop picking machine since early 1980抯 but the effect are not good. The fundamental reason is that the research of hop抯 machine pickability is neglected. This research put the hop and picking machine into a whole system and analyzed the process of hop production from the aspect of agronomy, the design of hop picking machine and the harvesting process; elaborated the theory of hop picking, analyzed the factors that influence the picking effect The following are the main parts of our research work (DA new method of separating hop with vibrating screen was introduced in this article. The basic principles of hop separation with vibrating screen was discussed and the kinematical property of material on the screen was analyzed. Based on experiments, the mathematical model was established and the model was proved well fitting with the practical situation. The research provided evidence for the design and further improvement of hop picking machine, also the hop varieties which are suitable for machine picking were selected. rThese results are meaningful for mechanization of hop picking. (~)A test-bed was made to test the picking effect of picking machines with this kind of picking device. The main factors that influence the picking effect were found through experiments and theoretical analysis were given.瓵 test-bed were made to test the anti-strike ability of hop.