Comparison of Locally Developed Date Palm Pollination Machine with Manual Pollination under Shambat Condition – Sudan

The main objective of the research study was to compare a locally developed date palm pollination machine to manual pollination during two successive seasons. Two pressures were used to operate the machine. The parameters measured were, rate of work, pollen application rate, crop yield and cost of pollination. The results indicated that the field capacity (rate of work) of the pollination machine was 18 tree/hr, while for the manual pollination it was 5 tree/hr. The machine pollen application rate was 0.5-1 gm/tree as compared to manual pollination which consumed higher amount of pollen 8 gm/tree. There was no significant difference between the effect of using the three methods of pollination on physical and chemical characteristics of date fruits. There was significant effect of treatments on quantity of date yield in the two seasons for the three methods of pollination at 5% level of significance. The pollination machine at high pressure produced higher yield than other treatments which were 605 kg, 1206 kg for the two seasons respectively, while the lowest yield was recorded by manual pollination as 233 kg and 818 kg for the two seasons in sequence. The pollination cost of the machine was 9.1 SDG /tree which was less than the manual pollination that costs 60 SDG /tree. The manual pollination needed two labors to pollinate 200 trees per season, while mechanical pollinator needed one operator to pollinate 760 trees per year. The pollination machine reached up to 10 meters in height. In addition, considerable reduction of time requirements, and pollination cost were observed.

It was concluded that the pollination machine is highly reliable and efficient in control over pollen application rate, thus reducing pollen loss to minimum, saving cost and time and overcoming defects associated with manual pollination.