Abstract

Pickling is one of the oldest methods of food preservation. The major unit operations involved in pickle making are slicing and cutting, brining, salting and processing and pasteurization operations. In India, manual labour is used for slicing and cutting operations. The mangoes are available only for a short period. Hence hiring labour for short period is difficult due to labour scarcity and incurs higher cost. Also manual cutting is unhygienic. Hence, lab model mango slicer and cube cutter were developed for mechanizing the cutting operations in a Pickle industry. The capacity and efficiency of the mango slicer and cube cutter are 500 Kg/hr, 100 Kg/hr and 80 per cent, 86 per cent respectively. The cost of operation of cutting of mango into cubes has reduced from Rs. 352/tonne to Rs.192/tonne compared to manual cutting. The mechanical cutting is faster to handle larger quantities of mango in shorter period. It is also hygienic. Hence, these machines are very useful for pickle industries having processing capacity of 1 tonne/day.

Keywords: Mango slicing, Cube cutting, Efficiency, Cost of operation, Labour requirement, Hygienic condition.