Despite the modern technology that has been incorporated into the harvester, harvesting soft plants such as tea leaves and medicinal plants using harvester still remains a challenge to the farmers. For herbs with leaves and stems that branch off from the main stem, the right technique has to be applied to ensure the new growth will take place. Misai Kucing has gained the interest of many researchers subjected to extensive phytochemical and few pharmacological studies. Misai Kucing has been widely manufactured due to its commercial potential in various industries. Due to the increasing demand for Misai Kucing, this plant has been planted not only in an open farm, but it has been grown under solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and called Agrivoltaic Crop. Currently, the harvesting process of the shoot is done manually using regular hand cutters. The objectives of the research are to design and fabricate new harvesting machine for Misai Kucing and to evaluate the performance of the harvesting machine. The performance capacity of the machine is 24.89kg/hr, which is 30 times better than the manual method. The machine gives 93.53% in overall efficiency, which is high and successfully meets the requirement of the design.

Ts Dr. Mohd Salahuddin Mohd Basri
Faculty of Engineering 

Tarikh Input: 30/03/2021 | Kemaskini: 31/03/2021 | asrizam