from the farms and is brought to the collection centre.
Farmers provide the detail to the collection centre about the number of trees and current produce.
Centre managers then give advice about the number of crates required by farmers and supply them.
To start with, the collection centre sends a vehicle to collect the apple produce from farmers in the village.
This prevents the need for the farmer to travel anywhere to hand over his produce as well as ensures safe transportation conditions
and at no cost involvement on the farmer’s part. When the produce is collected, each farmer is giving a formal acknowledgement bill
clearly mentioning the amount of produce, classified as per grades, and the value of the produce. Every collection centre is
equipped with one grading/sorting equipment and one pre-cooling container with a refrigerated truck.
Transportation of Graded, Sorted, Pre-Cooled and Packages Apple to Cold Storage
The long term storage facility, or the cold storage, is fitted with van Amerongen Controlled Atmosphere (CA) technology and has been established at kotiyal gaon (Nagoan) Uttarakhand. It has a capacity of holding 1,000 MT. The Apple is preserved in the cold storage chambers and can be held for nearly 8 months.
Once the Apples are removed from the cold storage to prepare them for market,
they are washed and cleaned for further processing.
Equipment to grade and sort the apples has also been installed at the cold storage.
The Apple are placed on the conveyor belt where they are passed through
a camera which sorts the apples on the on the basis of their size and quality and segregates them.
The apples are then manually picked from this conveyor belt and packed in boxes for sale in the market and transported.