EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH ON HARVESTING SPECIES OF MEDICINAL PLANTS GROWN ON SMALL AREAS

The operation of harvesting medicinal plants is one of the important factors, which influences the quality of plant material and thus its value. In order to optimize the cultivation technologies and to adapt them to the local conditions, INMA Bucharest has developed and tested a multifunctional equipment for the mechanized harvesting of medicinal plants (annual and perennial), cultivated on small and medium areas. This equipment, of small capacity, equipped with interchangeable working parts, performs the harvesting operation by cutting, at a certain height from the ground. The paper presents the results obtained when testing the experimental model of Multifunctional equipment for harvesting medicinal and aromatic plants in the crops of three species of medicinal plants, grown on small areas. Determining for each crop some qualitative working indices (average working height, cutting degree, collecting degree, losses, etc.) as well as some energy indices (working speed, hourly fuel consumption, working capacity, etc.) allows the evaluation of the technical and working performances of the Multifunctional equipment for harvesting medicinal and aromatic plants.