Support of the French Tobacco Sector in Utilization of a Recently Developed High Capacity Market Preparation System for Air-cured Burley Tobacco and Reducing Cost Associated with High-capacity Mechanical Harvesting by Reducing Cost of Curing Structures.

ARVALIS is the agency in France which promotes and assists growers in production of grain crops and other commodities, including tobacco. ARVALIS seeks the assistance of Dr. Larry Wells, Professor Emeritus, Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, in transferring labor-saving technology for harvesting and marketing burley tobacco. Dr. Wells agrees to perform the work as described below. 1. Advise and assist in formulating a procedure and specifying requisite equipment to facilitate loading and transporting burley tobacco plants cured on single-layer wire scaffolding in curing structures in France to a central location for processing by the Cured Plant Segmenting/Separation System (CP3S) developed by the University of Kentucky. 2. Advise and assist in developing a conceptual design of a mechanism to feed cured plants into the CP3S for processing. 3. Advise and assist in determining the appropriate number of persons required to operate the CP3S in France and development of work procedures to maximize output and efficiency of the CP3S. 4. Welcome and host a French delegation to the U.S. to observe operation of a CP3S prototype in operation during 2015. 5. Complete a preliminary design of curing racks with removable rails. 6. Propose procedures and equipment to extract filled rails from mechanically harvested curing frames or racks, transporting filled rails to a nearby curing structure, placement of filled rails into curing barns and refilling empty racks with empty rails for re-use in harvesting.