Development and evaluation of tractor operated weeder for raised bed crops
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Date
2019
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CCSHAU
Abstract
Farm mechanization plays a vital role to achieve modernization in agriculture as it gives a substantial growth in agriculture by the means of modern technology and efficient use of inputs and ensures timeliness of operations in the field. In India, weeding is mostly done manually in the fields that is very time consuming and labour intensive, and can lead to heavy losses to farmers.. Therefore taking this into consideration, a study on development and its evaluation of tractor operated raised bed weeder was conducted. The developed raised bed weeder consisted of cutting blade, furrow opener, tyne and main frame, it can cover three furrows at a time and had an overall working width of 1.86 m. The main frame was fabricated from mild steel channel. Spring loaded tynes were used to absorb the shock loads and prevent breakage. The angle of cutting blade (sweep type) varied from 77.36 to 102.052 degrees and the vertical height of blade varied from 206 mm to 256 mm. The type of furrow opener was single point shovel type and the angle of furrow opener was 42.70 degrees. The experiment was conducted in three crops: Potato, Pea and Spinach, each at three forward speeds. The optimized forward speed was found to be 1.88 km h-1. The effective field capacity, field efficiency, fuel consumption and draft requirement at the optimized forward speed were (0.299 ha h-1, 86.40 %, 2.40 l h-1, 70.4 kgf ), (0.289 ha h-1, 83.63 %, 2.40 l h-1, 71.5 kgf ) and (0.292 ha h-1, 84.53 %, 2.40 l h-1, 71.3 kgf ) for potato, pea and spinach crop, respectively. The weeding efficiency and plant damage at the optimized forward speeds were (96.15 %, 1.04 %), (95.40 %, 1.88 %) and (93.19 %, 1.09 %) for the potato, pea and spinach crop, respectively. The performance index and field machine index at the optimized forward speeds were (5806.18, 76.92 %), (5436.39, 74.81 %) and (5448.34, 74.72 %) for the potato, pea and spinach crop, respectively. The labour requirement for developed weeder was 3.344, 3.460 and 3.425 h ha-1 and for the manual hoe (kasola) was 120, 130 and 135 ha h-1 for the potato, pea and spinach, respectively. The cost of the operation per hectare was Rs 1550.10, Rs 1603.74 and Rs 1587.26. The time saved and savings in cost over manual were (97.21 %, 74.16 %), (97.34 %, 75.33 %) and (97.46 %, 76.48 %) for the potato, pea and spinach crop, respectively. The breakeven point and pay back period was 246.73 h yr-1 and 0.409 yr for the potato, pea and spinach crop respectively.
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