Refinement and evaluation of sugarcane trench planter to suit local conditions
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Date
2018
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Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana
Abstract
Trench planting of sugarcane is being popularized by PAU as it gives better net returns,
requires less water and management to avoid cane lodging is easy. At present, trench planting
is practiced by making trenches using tractor operated trencher and remaining operations are
done manually involving 200-250 man-h/ha. To reduce labour requirements, no such machine
is being utilized by farmers in Punjab for planting sugarcane in trenches. There is shortage of
labour Therefore, a sugarcane trench planter, which was commercially available in Uttar
Pradesh, was modified according to suit local condition of Punjab to bridge this
mechanization gap and thereby increasing the level of mechanization in Punjab. The
preliminary evaluation of sugarcane trench planter was carried out at three different cutting
rollers peripheral speeds (0.93 m/s, 0.81 m/s and 0.69m/s) and three forward speeds (2.26
km/h, 2.6 km/h and 3.0 km/h) on three varieties of cane (Co118, CoPb93 and CoJ-85).
Thereafter, the field evaluation of modified sugarcane trench planter was carried out by
selecting one cutting rollers peripheral speed 0.69 m/s and two forward speeds (2.26 km/h and
3 km/h) on same three varieties of cane (Co118, CoPb93 and CoJ-85). The selected dependent
variables were cane length, cane diameter, set length, bud damage, set damage, number of set
cut, overlap/ gap and germination count. The observed data was statistically analyzed by
using statistical software ´SPSS`. The average cane length observed during field evaluation in
Co118, CoPb93 and CoJ-85 was 212.33, 193.80 and 173.68 cm respectively. The average
cane diameter observed during field evaluation in Co118, CoPb93 and CoJ-85 was 2.65, 2.35
and 2.73 cm respectively. Set length increased with the decrease in diameter of cane and
cutting roller peripheral speed. Bud damage increased with the increase in cutting roller
peripheral speed. Bud damage in variety Co118 was higher due to relatively more toughness
of cane. Number of set cut increased with the increase in cane length and decrease in set
length. Average overlapping decreased with the increase in forward speed. Practically no set
damage was observed. Germination percentage on left side of trench observed in Co118,
CoPb93 and CoJ-85 was 50.71%, 43.00% and 48.50% respectively, whereas, on right side of
trench observed was 48.11%, 38.68% and 43.15% respectively. Germination of cane observed
by machine planting was more than the conventional planting. There was 20 to 30% reduction
in cost of planting and 55 to 60% reduction in labour cost as compared to conventional
method.
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