Vol. 7, Issue 4 (2019)
Studies on development and performance evaluation of solar powered cool chamber for short-term storage of okra
Author(s): MK Ghosal and Jyoti Ranjan Rath
Abstract: Farmers in the rural areas often sell their products to the middleman or in the local market at low prices due to lack of transportation facility, shortage of electric supply and lack of investment on storage, lower price of vegetables during the harvesting season. They are not even able to get the return of the invested money in cultivating vegetables or fruits. Lack of on-farm storage facility, therefore, compels the growers to go for the distress sales of their produce, ultimately resulting into reduced net profit to them. There is therefore, the need of a low cost storage system which can be operated on a reliable and environment-friendly energy source for short-term storage of the perishable horticultural produces in a small scale at farmer’s own level. An attempt has thus been made in this study to develop and evaluate a solar photovoltaic powered cool chamber of about 100 kg capacity for short term storage of vegetables especially most perishable one i.e. okra (hybrid variety, SARTAJ) in order to avoid distress sale among the growers, majority of them is coming under small and marginal farmers’ category. The cool chamber was fabricated in the Dept. of Farm Machinery and Power, OUAT, Bhubaneswar, Odisha and its performance was evaluated for studying the storability of okra during peak summer period i.e. April-May 2018. It was found that the shelf-life of okra was enhanced to 12 days during summer season by maintaining temperatures in the range of 14-16 oC and humidity in the range of 83-94% in the cool chamber developed for the study.
Pages: 2802-2806 | 192 Views 57 Downloads
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How to cite this article:
MK Ghosal, Jyoti Ranjan Rath. Studies on development and performance evaluation of solar powered cool chamber for short-term storage of okra. Int J Chem Stud 2019;7(4):2802-2806.
