Modern drug industry uses ethereal oils, which are made from fresh or dry flowers of camomile (Flores chamomillae). Wild sorts of camomile were picked by hand long years ago. Now cultivated garden camomile is picking by machines with technology based on stripping flowers.
In this paper object of our research is tractor drawn universal picking machine for medicinal plants named UMLB-2K. Working quality and exploitation parameters were observed in dependence of machine's regime and crop conditions. Crop conditions included plant density, measuring average height and force needed to tear off a flowers and average number of flowers on each plant. Plant density was 2020/m2 and average high was 0.95 m. Average force for tearing off every one of 12 flowers per a plant was 4.3 N. Working quality was expressed by percentages of fractions in picked material. In a sample there were: flowers torn off with stems shorter than 4 cm in about 43.8%, with stems longer than 4 cm in14.3%, stems with a few flowers in 13.3%, damaged flowers for about 28.2% and minor percentage of a weeds 0.4%. Estimated working speed was between 1.35-1.44 m/s.
Key words: picking, camomile, flower, universal stripping harvester, quality, losses.