Development of a Riding-type Tea Plucking Machine

本研究利用過去暨有之農機發展基礎來開發一台乘坐式採茶機，以滿足茶農機械化採茶之需求，降低生產成本及提升本地加工茶葉外銷之競爭力。民國101 年已試製完成一台乘坐式採茶雛型機，並於目前台灣最大的機械採收茶區(南投縣名間鄉松柏嶺)進行測試。測試結果發現，該機一公頃作業時間需要5.6 小時，約為雙人機械採收作業之1.9 倍。而松柏嶺之茶園多屬於階梯式地形，茶園間常有高度落差且未留頭地，操作之難度較高。未來如果要進一步改良應用，一次作業寬度需要再提升以提高其作業能力，而本機之實用化研究也仍有努力之空間。 In this research, the past foundations of research and development of agricultural machineries has been used to develop a riding-type tea plucking machine to meet the tea farmers and mechanization’s needs, thus reducing production costs and enhancing export competitiveness of local tea products. In 2012, a prototype of riding-type tea plucking machine has been developed and tested in the Songboling tea district where the biggest tea machine harvested area in Taiwan. The result shows that its working capacity one hectare spent 5.6 hours was about 1.9 times from that of double-carried tea picking machine. The large portion of the tea gardens of Songboling tea district is belong to stepped terrain, the height gap between two nearby tea gardens and the lack of head land led the machine hard to operate. If any tea farmer wants to have further applications of the machine in the future, the operating width should being improved and become wider, and the studies on practicability of the machine are still remaining the efforts space