Development of Mango Destoner Cum Cube Cutting Machine For Pickle Production

Abstract

Mango is one of the commercially important fruit crop in India. Raw mango available during the peak seasons can be used for the preparation of pickles, mango in brine solution etc. Pickle is one of the major item in Indian cuisines. Mango can be made available throughout the year by reducing losses and proper storage practices. The main unit operation during the pickling process is destoning and cube cutting. In small scale processing industries, slicing is carried out manually with sharp knives. The manual slicing is labour intensive, time consuming and involves drudgery of work. To overcome this limitation, a hand operated Mango Destoner cum Cube Cutting Machine was developed. The developed mango destoner and cube cutting machine consists of a destoner unit and a mango slicing unit. The pushing guide press the raw mango placed over a blade assembly. Raw mangoes are pushed vertically through the stationary blades. As the pusher moves down they are sliced. The sliced mango cubes fall by gravity into the tray kept at the bottom. The nylon guide on the pusher helps in pushing all the slices out of the blade assembly. The average throughput capacity of the destoner unit with Model-1 blade was found to be 68.66 kg/hr and that with Model-2 was 72.68 kg/hr. The average efficiency and percent loss during the destoning operation with Model-1 was found to be 82% and 17.25% and that with Model-2 was 75% and 24.21% respectively. The developed slicer could produce mango slices at capacities two to three times higher than manual slicing. The cost of the equipment is about Rs.2000.