• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.215-220
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• 2017

This study was conducted to improve the insufficiency of fruit vegetable grafting system developed by National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Rural Development Administration. When the rotary blade cut the stem of scions and rootstocks, the grafting failure at curved cutting surfaces happened. The cutting depth of a tomato seedling by a rotated cutter was calculated 0.11 mm even when the cutting arm length and the maximum stem diameter were 50 mm and 5 mm, respectively. Mathematical analysis and high-speed photography showed that there was no problem by cutting in straight the stem of scions and rootstocks. The compression test of seedling stems to design the optimal shape of gripper showed that stems were not completely restored when they were compressed above 0.8 mm and 0.6 mm in case of rootstocks and scion, respectively. This study found that the bending angle of stem of tomato seedlings at the grafting period was 10 degree on average. The optimal gripper finger was the edge finger type which could be precisely set center point by adjusting the distance between fingers. In addition, it was found that most of seedling could be grasped without damage when the finger-to-finger distances is set to 2.5 mm for scion and 3.0 mm for rootstocks and finger are coated by 1 mm-thick flexible material.