Vol. 12, Issue 5 (2023)

Author(s):
VV Agravat, R Swarnkar, N Kumar, PR Balas and CS Matholiya

Abstract:
Harvesting of crop is one of the important agricultural operations, which demands considerable amount of labour. The availability and cost of labour during harvesting season is the serious problem. Therefore, it is essential to adopt the mechanical methods so that the timeliness in harvesting operation could be ensured and field losses could be minimized and consequently productivity and production could be increased. Manual wheat harvesting is done by sickle, which demand considerable amount of labour drudgery, time and cost of harvest which reflect total production cost of the crop. Nowadays, self-propelled reapers are being used in many developing and least developed countries in small scale which is diesel fueled. Combine harvesters are also in use for this purpose but these machines consume diesel fuel. Price of fossil fuels is hiking day by day. Thus, to ensure efficient and timely harvesting operation riding type battery powered tool carrier with reaper attachment was developed, which is very simple in construction, low maintenance and easy to maintain. In present study, only reaeper is attached at front side but at rear side other animal drawn or mini tractor drawn implements can be attached. This machine can be use for different purpouses i.e. seed drilling, interculturing, transportation, etc. Due to its small size it can be boon for remote as well as hilly locations. Its battery pack can be use as power grid in remote areas where continuous electricity is a challange. The machine consists of two DC motors of 1000 W and 750 W, four batteries of 12 V 42 Ah, standard 33” differential, four wheels, crop dividers, cutter bar, conveyor belts, etc. It was able to cut four rows of wheat crop placed at 22.5 cm apart.