ගෝවා අස්වනු නෙළීම දස ගුණයකින් ඉක්මන් කරන්න මැෂිමක්

China's first self-developed cabbage harvester starts operation

China's first self-developed cabbage harvester has started operation in central China's Henan Province, a major agricultural producer of the country.

As one of China's staple vegetables, cabbages are planted and consumed across the country. China claims half of the world's cabbage production. However, due to a lack of specialized machinery, cabbage farming in the country relied heavily on manual harvesting.

The newly-introduced machinery developed by an institute under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs proved to be very much needed for farmers.

"When the harvester is full, it automatically weighs the cabbage, and when instructed, it automatically goes into storage, which reduces manpower," said Sun Hongyou, an operator of remote-control cabbage harvesters in the field.

Capable of collecting, weighing and transporting, the machinery harvests an average of five to eight tons of cabbage per hour, more than ten times faster than manual labor.

Innovation have also been made to reduce possible harvests loss by machines.

"We use CR (chloroprene rubber) sponge with high density, which is capable of preventing damage to the harvests by wrapping the vegetable. We also have applied some soft processing techniques in the follow-up husking and storage parts of the machinery to further reduce possible damage," said Zhang Jianfei, a developer of the harvester.

The cabbage harvester with full independent intellectual property rights has been put into small batch production. It is priced at one-sixth of similar foreign imported models, and is being introduced in 11 of the 31 provincial-level regions in the Chinese mainland.

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