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Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa

In the imperial Gazetteer of India 1878, Pusa was recorded as a government estate of about 1350 acres in Darbhanba. It was acquired by East India Company for running a stud farm to supply better breed of horses mainly for the army. Frequent incidence of glanders disease (swelling of glands), mostly affecting the valuable imported bloodstock made the civil veterinary department to shift the entire stock out of Pusa. A British tobacco concern Beg Sutherland & co. got the estate on lease but it also left in 1897 abandoning the government estate of Pusa. Lord Mayo, The Viceroy and Governor General, had been repeatedly trying to get through his proposal for setting up a directorate general of Agriculture that would take care of the soil and its productivity, formulate newer techniques of cultivation, improve the quality of seeds and livestock and also arrange for imparting agricultural education. The government of India had invited a British expert. Dr. J. A. Voelcker who had submitted as report on the development of Indian agriculture. As a follow-up action, three experts in different fields were appointed for the first time during 1885 to 1895 namely, agricultural chemist (Dr. J. W. Leafer), cryptogamic botanist (Dr. R. A. Butler) and entomologist (Dr. H. Maxwell Lefroy) with headquarters at Dehradun (U.P.) in the forest Research Institute complex. Surprisingly, until now Pusa, which was destined to become the centre of agricultural revolution in the country, was lying as before an abandoned government estate. In 1898. Lord Curzon took over as the viceroy. A widely traveled person and an administrator, he salvaged out the earlier proposal and got London’s approval for the appointment of the inspector General of Agriculture to which the first incumbent Mr. J. Mollison (Dy. Director of Agriculture, Bombay) joined in 1901 with headquarters at Nagpur The then government of Bengal had mooted in 1902 a proposal to the centre for setting up a model cattle farm for improving the dilapidated condition of the livestock at Pusa estate where plenty of land, water and feed would be available, and with Mr. Mollison’s support this was accepted in principle. Around Pusa, there were many British planters and also an indigo research centre Dalsing Sarai (near Pusa). Mr. Mollison’s visits to this mini British kingdom and his strong recommendations. In favour of Pusa as the most ideal place for the Bengal government project obviously caught the attention for the viceroy.

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2020 - 20213
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Subject: Farm, Machinery and Power × Start date: 1982 × Thesis Type: M.Sc ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM BASED REMOTE MONITORING OF FARM MACHINE'S OPERATION THROUGH ANDROID APPLICATION
    (DRPCAU, PUSA, 2021) SHARMA, APOORVA; Pranav, P. K.
    Farm mechanization has a significant role in enhancing the farmer’s income as well as in reducing the human drudgery. The large and medium farmers can afford a tractor and other big machines but the small and marginal farmers are not capable to own it. Seeing these facts, some government and private agencies are continuously promoting the custom hiring centres at various levels. But they have not been as successful because of the poor monitoring of machines. Therefore, a project was undertaken to develop a farm machine’s monitoring system through GPS on smartphone. In first step, an Application named ‘Area Finder’ was developed to make a polygon joining extreme geolocations and to calculate the area of the polygon by uploading a file (in GPX or CSV format) containing the geolocations of a field. The developed Application was evaluated by collecting the geolocations through smartphone GPS. The percentage error in area calculated by ‘Area Finder’ was found up to ± 10% when uploaded the geolocations recorded by smartphone. Further, an Application named ‘GeoLocation’ was also developed to record the geolocations through smartphone GPS as well as to carry out the job of Area Finder at one platform. The error in area calculation was observed up to 20%; however, the error in time calculation was within ±2%. A Garmin GPS was also used in this project which was found to have better accuracy in recording the geolocations. Therefore, it was concluded that, the developed system may give more accurate result if better GPS recording device will be used.
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Development of Battery Operated Mini- Harvester for Wheat and Paddy
    (DRPCAU, Pusa, 2020) Kumar, Brijesh; Pranav, P.K.
    A battery operated, manual push type, mini harvester of 53 cm cutterbar has been developed for paddy and wheat crop. It consists of main frame, two wheels, an 85 A-h battery, two DC motor, pushing handle, cutterbar and vertical conveying unit. The forward movement is to be given by human push from back. One motor is used for operating the cutterbar with cranking mechanism to convert rotary motion into translatory motion, however, another motor is used to meet the power requirement of the crop conveying belt and crop guiding stars. The battery placed in the chassis in such a way that the CG of the harvester lies in the line of wheel axle. V-belts and different pulleys were used to get the desired speed at cutterbar as well as crop conveying unit. The developed harvester was evaluated in the laboratory condition compared the cutterbar speed, conveying speed, stroke length etc. with that of commercially available reapers. It was found that the cutterbar speed, conveying belt speed and stroke length was close to the commercially available self-propel reaper corresponding to forward speed of 2 km/h. The power requirement of the harvester was about 160 W out of which cutterbar and conveying unit take about 80 and 20%, respectively. It was also calculated that a fully charged battery will be able to run 5.6 h and within this duration 0.45 ha land can be harvested. Further, Push force requirement was also found in the confortable range of male and female for transport and wheat crop harvesting, however, female has to apply 815 of maximum push strength for paddy harvesting. The developed harvester could not be tested in wheat field due to national lockdown due to Covid-19 during April 2020. The is well predicted that the developed machine will be efficient for wheat and paddy harvesting and it will be economically viable for small and marginal farmers in comparison with tradition harvesting by sickle.
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Sensor based in-situ measurement of depth of operation for mounted implement
    (DRPCAU, Pusa, 2020) Kumar, Anmol; Pranav, P. K.
    The precision agriculture is the prime need of India for overall improvement in agricultural productivity. The precise application reduces the input cost as well as enhances the crop yield. Depth of operation is one of the important parameters of precision agriculture. Placing the seed at the correct depth is critical for maximizing crop’s yield. The tillage and weeding depth are also recommended according to crop and season. In absence of any depth indicating mechanism in tractor, operators are unable to fix the proper depth of operation. Therefore, a project was undertaken to develop a digital display of depth of operation on tractor’s dashboard. A rotary potentiometer was used to detect the rotation of rockarm of tractor’s hydraulic because of change in depth of operation. A calibration equation was developed between rotation of rockarm and depth of operation using three point linkage geometry parameters. A real time digital display was provided on tractor’s dashboard by analyzing calibration equation with depth detection signal in a microcontroller. An electrical switch was also provided to nullify the display of rockarm angle when implement just touches the ground. It was evaluated that the error in depth measurement was found maximum of ± 1 cm in laboratory condition and up to ± 13 per cent with respect to manual depth measurement. Hence, the developed system will be very useful, handy and cost effective in providing the information of depth of operation to the operator.