THE INFLUENCE OF MORPHOLOGICAL PARTICULARITIES OF HEMP PLANTS ON TECHNICAL EQUIPMENT DURING THE HARVESTING PROCESS

Hemp is not a crop prohibited or restricted by law, only that such a plantation must be authorized and monitored by the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Beyond the impediment to authorization and monitoring, hemp cultivation brings more than profitable gains to those who invest in it. It is grown for its relatively high natural fiber content and for its seeds rich in drying oil. Hemp fibers are longerthan flax, very durable and guite resistant. They are used to make a wide range of rot-resistant textiles, even in water. Short fibers (tows) are used in the manufacture of mattresses as well as as an insulating material. Lately, the market demand for green hemp inflorescence has increased. The paper will present the partial results obtained in a research project in which a piece of eguipment for harvesting green hemp stems was grounded and made in order to process these stems to obtain fibers. However, there are factors in the agro-industrial chain that limit the large-scale marketing of these crops and their products. From an agronomic point of view, some of the problems are associated with technological gaps in harvesting technologies, which prevent the full exploitation of some crops. For example, the production of high-guality textile fibers depends primarily on the guality of the raw material, which in turn is linked, inter alia, to the efficiency of the harvesting system adopted. In most cases, these systems have been developed locally, based on available solutions related to specific local agricultural practice. The purpose of this paper is to present a review of existing mechanical harvesting systems for hemp fiber crops with special reference to hemp. In addition, the paper will provide a description of the innovations that have been adopted in recent years to improve harvesting processes to increase the value of these crops and their products, made by INMA Bucharest.