Raspberry primocanes bundling and tying mechanism

Abstract. In red raspberry production, cane pruning, bundling and tying cost farmers more than $600 per acre per years, majority of which is in bundling and tying. Two-year-old canes (called floricanes) are pruned and new one-year-old canes (called primocanes) are bundled and tied together to provide a firm canopy structure for next year‘s production. These processes are manual, labor intensive and costly. Although, some automated techniques are available for multipurpose tying of different plant materials, research on the development of mechanized systems for bundling and tying is limited. In this work, the authors designed and fabricated tape tying mechanism for raspberry canes tying. The mechanism is than assembled on the top of the hydraulically controlled cane bundling mechanism. The prototype tying mechanism can use any kind of adhesive tape with height up to 20 mm and width of 30mm, for tying purpose. The tying mechanism consists of cutting mechanism, holding mechanism and wrapper wheel, whose motions are synchronized to complete the tying process. The rotation of the wrapper wheel unwinds and wraps the tape around the primocanes. After, predefined number of rotations, the cutting mechanism cuts the tape and the mechanism separates from the bundled plant. The field test of tying mechanism shows accuracy of 82.67 %. Out of the 92-tying attempt, 76 were successfully completed. The accuracy of the tying mechanism along with the bundling mechanism was found to be 76.09%. The results show the first step towards mechanization of automated raspberry tying for raspberry production.