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Subject: Farm, Machinery and Power × Author: Mohit Kumar × End date: 2023 × Start date: 2020 × Type: Thesis ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Development of an experimental plot corn harvester
    (CCSHAU, Hisar, 2023-08) Mohit Kumar; Vijaya Rani
    Maize is one of the most important cereal crop in the world next to rice and wheat. In India, the cultivated area of corn in 2020-2021 was 9.8 million hectare with an average productivity of 3199 kg ha-1 and in Haryana, it was six thousand hectares with an average productivity of 2.83 t ha-1. The scientist community viz. agronomist, soil scientist, breeders, are working on maize crop. The scientist laydown experiments on small plots which are to be harvested. In the experimental design, the plots are small and scientists demand for small corn harvester. However, for the scientific research, there is requirement of the machines for collection of data multiple times. Harvesting is one of the most crucial task in maize farming. Manual harvesting operations typically require 8 to 10 persons to pick cobs from one acre area between 8 and 10 h which is very costly, tedious and time consuming. Thus, this study was undertaken to develop an experimental plot corn harvester. The corn harvester was developed and constitutes of feeding cum snapping unit, corn cob collection bucket, power transmission unit and main frame. The power was transmitted from PTO of the power tiller to the chain-sprocket mechanism and the gear assembly which rotated the feeding cum snapping unit as per required rpm. The power tiller was operated as per speed required in experimental design. The corn stalk entered the feeding cum snapping unit smoothly and the cob was later snapped by the snapping roller after which the cob was collected in the collection bucket. It was evaluated under the operating parameters: three forward travel speed (0.47 km h-1-0.70 km h-1, 1.12 km h-1-1.60 km h-1 and 1.83 km h-1-2.27 km h-1 ), three level of inclination angle (00, 100 and 200) and three rotational speed of feeding cum snapping rollers ( 400 rpm, 500 rpm and 600 rpm ). The optimum parameters were obtained as forward travel speed 1.34 km h-1, rotational speed of feeding cum snapping rollers 500 rpm and inclination angle of feeding cum snapping unit zero degree. The Corn cob picking efficiency, cut corn cob percentage and corn cob damage percentage of corn harvester were 97 %, 1.27 % and 0.97 % respectively. Actual field capacity of the harvester was found 0.046 ha h-1 with field efficiency of 76.67 %. The cost of operation was Rs 7586.11 ha-1. Thus, it saved 77.78 % of labour requirement for harvesting in one hectare area in comparison to manual method of harvesting. The break-even point was found 90.93 h yr-1. The payback period was found 0.39 years and benefit cost ratio was 1.32.