Banana requires high-level mechanized picking, transportation, and de-handing technologies

In all operations of banana post-harvesting, picking and transportation are the operations with the highest labor intensity and the highest production costs. The operation of banana de-handing is still in the traditional stage by manual cutting, which seriously impedes the development of the banana industry towards mechanization, automation and intelligence. This review summarizes and analyzes the mechanized technology research status and equipment application of the banana picking, transportation and de-handing operations in banana orchards around the world and proposes basic ideas and constructive suggestions for quickening the mechanized development of banana post-harvesting. Conclusions of the review are that in order to develop towards automation and intelligence for banana post-harvesting operations,?high-level mechanized picking, transportation, and de-handing technologies and devices are necessary.Faced with the increasing shortage of human resources and the aging population, they are still?goals for agricultural engineering researchers to strengthen related technical research, explore new?methods of working and optimized ways of mechanical structures, design automatic, intelligent, and?accurate banana picking devices based on machine vision, build stable, reliable and remote-controllable,?lightweight and wear-resistant banana transport ropeways, develop banana profiling de-handing?devices with low energy consumption, safety and great self-adaptive performance, reduce mechanical?damages of banana hands during the whole post-harvesting procedure, reduce the labor intensity of?workers and quicken the commercial procedure of banana industry. In the future, the development?direction of precise picking, nondestructive transport and high-efficiency de-handing technologies in?banana post-harvesting operations is continuous innovation and promoting application of mechanizedand intelligent operations, which can not only improve the production efficiency of the banana industry?around the world, but also improve the product quality, enhance economic benefits and create favorable?conditions for competition and cooperation in the international banana market. The picture, nr. 8 of the original paper, available below, shows a vibrated de-handing device based on deployable mechanism: (a) 3D model of the deployable?mechanism; (b) prototype of the vibrated de-handing device; and (c) experiment of banana de-handing?based on the vibrated cutting-type principle. SourceMechanized Technology Research and Equipment Application of Banana Post-Harvesting: A ReviewJie Guo, Jieli Duan, Jun Li and Zhou YangAgronomy 2020, 10, 374doi:10.3390/agronomy10030374 www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy