Design and development of a tractor operated carrot digger
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Date
2019-07
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G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand)
Abstract
India is the second largest producer of vegetables in the world which accounts for about 13.3 per cent of the world vegetable production. Carrot is one of the most important vegetable crop grown in different part of our country. Harvesting of carrot is labour intensive and tedious operation which require 250-300 man-hours/ha and beside more time and energy consuming during harvesting of carrot. Hence, carrot digging needs to be mechanized for time, cost, energy and human drudgery reduction. Therefore the present study was carried out at GBPUA&T, Pantnagar for the design and development of a tractor operated carrot digger. The experiment was carried out at three level of forward speeds (2.5, 3.5 and 4.5 km/h) and three level of digging blades (Sweep, Nose and Shovel type). The digging efficiency, damage percentage, actual field capacity, field efficiency and draft requirement of machine were evaluated during experiment. The maximum digging efficiency (97.20 per cent) was observed at 2.5 km/h with sweep type digging blade and minimum digging efficiency (77.14 per cent) at 4.48 km/h with shovel type. The damage percentage was minimum (3.26 per cent) at 2.51 km/h with shovel type digging blade and maximum at 4.42 km/h with Nose type. The maximum draft (4.9 kN) was observed with sweep type at 4.5 km/h and minimum (17.2 per cent) at 2.7 km/h with shovel type digging
blade at 2.5 km/h. The maximum actual field capacity (0.669 ha/h) and field efficiency (79.95 per cent) were obtained at 4.47 km/h and 2.5 km/h, respectively with sweep type digging blades. The cost of digging with developed machine was Rs. 1637.5 and saving in cost of operation with respect to manual digging was Rs. 8675 per hectare. The break-even point for the carrot digger was 66.40 h/year which was 26.56 percent of annual utility. The payback period of tractor operated carrot digger was 1.51 years.
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