Artificial pollination can increase a farmer\'s (fruit or grain) crop yield subs

Question

Artificial pollination can increase a farmer's (fruit or grain) crop yield substantially. Suppose you are approached by a farmer to do an initial design for a small hand- held electrostatic pollen collector. During the interview, it was established that pollen is carried on the tips of the 'pollen stem' which has a diameter of between 1 mm and 2 mm. Your parallel-plate based device should easily slide into a flower and over this pollen bud with 1mm tolerance on either side of the bud. The weight of a pollen granule can vary between 1 g and 7 g depending on the type of crop. Assume that a literature search pointed to typical charges of between 0.1 pC and 4 pC per pollen granule. Now do a worst-case design based on a small parallel- plate capacitor setup:

1.  Suppose that approximately 50 g of pollen grains are extracted per hour. Their charge would reduce the dc power supply voltage, which thus has to replenish this charge to keep up the voltage. Do a worst-case calculation for current and power requirements of the high-voltage dc supply

2. Do you think 2 g's is enough for your device to work efficiently, given the shape of the pollen bud? Discuss and make recommendations.

Explanation / Answer

1. given

charge on each pollen, q = 4 pC [ worst case scenario ]

mass of each pollen, m = 1 micro Gram ( for worst case, the most charged pollen with more numbers and lesser mass have to be considered)

so, in 50 g pollen, n umber of pollens, n = 50/0.000001 = 50,000,000

hence chanrge on n pollens, Q = nq = 2*10^-4 C

current required, i = Q/t = 2*10^(-4)/60*60 = 5.555*10^-8 A

for a 1000 V DC device ( HIgh voltage device )

power, P = Vi = 5.555*10^-5 W

2. for 2 gram pollens,

when the device is brought in contact with other flowers as to collect more and more pollens, the female part of the flower also gets brushed with the device

and some pollens get trtansferred. now since 2 g of pollens means 2*10^7 pollens, some pollen would fall off when bought near new flowers causing artificial pollination

hence about 2 grams of pollens would be enbough fot the artificial poillination to take place

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