Question

How is a stripper harvester different from a mechanical cotton picker?

Answer 1

Hint:
- Cotton harvester is a machine that is used to harvest cotton balls.
- Harvesting is not only one of the last but also one of the most crucial processes in the development of cotton crops.

Complete answer:
Cotton harvesting - Cotton seeds are sown in the spring and grow into green, bushy shrubs that reach a height of one meter. The plants produce pink and cream blooms that fade after pollination and are replaced with cotton bolls, which are a type of fruit. Then, either a picker or a stripper is used to harvest the crop. Spindles on cotton-picking machines pick (twist) seed cotton from burrs attached to plant stems.

Strippers and pickers are the two most common mechanical cotton harvesters:
i) Stripper harvesters remove both open and unopened bolls, as well as many leaves and stems, from the entire plant. The undesirable material is subsequently removed at the gin using specific machines. After the green vegetative growth has been killed by frost, strippers work best.
ii) Picker harvesters, also known as spindle harvesters, take cotton from open bolls while leaving the bur on the plant. The spindles are coupled to a drum that rotates at the same time as the spindles, causing the spindles to enter the plant. Cotton fibre is wrapped around moistened spindles and then removed by a unique mechanism known as a doffer, from which it is transferred to a huge basket carried above the machine.
iii) So, because the machine stops less and the stalks are more of average size, a cotton picker can produce a faster harvest than a stripper. Because a stripper takes more than just the cotton ball, there will be more detritus around the selected boils than there would be with a cotton picker.

In the late 1930s, John Daniel Rust invented the first effective spindle cotton picker. The Rust cotton picker threatened to obliterate the old plantation system, displacing millions of workers and igniting a social upheaval.

Note: Cotton is still picked by hand in the remaining counties that grow it. China, like India, still selects its cotton harvest entirely by hand. Pakistan, Turkey, and Brazil are among the major cotton-producing countries that still employ a significant manual labour force to pick cotton, as was done in America in the 1800s.