논문 : 노외기계시스템공학 ; 고추 기계수확 시스템 개발(1) -고추 재배, 수확실태 조사-

Consumption of pepper, a major spice vegetable used for seasoning Kimchi, continues to increase, but cultivation is in decline due to shortage of rural labor in Korea. The 39.2% of total labor requirement for conventional pepper cultivation was available for harvesting work. Therefore conventional manual harvesting should be turned to mechanical harvesting for labor-saving, cost-reducing and easy work. Surveys on conventional pepper cultivation patterns, labor requirements for various pepper cultivation works, and farmers` opinions on the mechanization of pepper harvesting were conducted to obtain basic informations. The labor requirement for pepper harvesting was 954 hours/ha out of a total labor requirement of 2,436 hours/ha for pepper cultivation. Harvesting was the hardest work, and hiring workmen for harvesting was also difficult. Farmers preferred to develop a small-scale pepper harvester using agricultural tractor or cultivar. Most farmer agreed to change cultivation pattern for mechanization of pepper harvesting, but hesitated to adopt new one-time-harvesting pepper varieties.