Comfort Analysis of Labour during Different Tea-Leaf Harvesting Practices

Abstract

Labour shortage and drudgery involved in tea harvesting is imposing it’smechanization. However, evaluation of the human performance has great importance for the adaptations of new designs.In this research,two mechanically assisted tea-harvesting methods were evaluated against traditional manual tea plucking from ergonomic point of view. It was found that during all operationsheart rate of a labourincreased at faster rate in the beginning of the experiment, then stabilizedfor certain time of operation and finally reached to maximum value when labour felt tired. Labours indicated their fatigue after 30, 25 and 35 minutes of operation in manual, shear assisted and motorized shear assisted harvesting methods, respectively. Moreover, average heart rate values and oxygen consumption rate were observed lowest for motorized shear cutter assisted harvesting compared to those of shear assisted harvesting and hand plucking. In conclusion, motorized hand shear was found to be easing tea harvesting operation with increased comfort.