Vol. 12, Issue 5 (2023)

Author(s):
VK Pandey, RK Singh, VP Rai, D Oraon and Zunaid Alam

Abstract:
Rice is the main crop of Jharkhand as well as the Chatra district. It is labour intensive crop and requires about 700 to 800 labour hours for cultivation of one hectare of rice crop of different field operations i.e. seedling through seed drills, transplanting weeding through mechanical weeder and harvesting together consume labour force and if these managed timely and efficiently by the farmers could enhance production and productivity. An experiment was conducted at Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Chatra (Birsa Agricultural University, Kanke, Ranchi) at NICRA village, Mardanpur to assess the performance of machines used in cultivation of rice crop. Different M/C were evaluated for particular operation. For mechanical transplanting a paddy transplanter (eight row) and paddy, drum seeder (eight row) were used. For weeding manually operated cono weeder and self-propelled weeder and for paddy harvesting self-propelled reaper were also evaluated. An eight row self-propelled paddy transplantor was found very effective for timely transplanting in large area. Its average capacity was 0.20ha/hr. The use of paddy drum seeder (eight row) was most effective for line sowing of sprouted paddy in puddled field condition. it reduce 52 percent cost of cultivation compared to farmers practice. On the other hand weeding efficiency was found maximum 79.3 percent with cono weeder. It way observed that average cost of paddy transplanter (eight row) was found 72.2 percent. Cono weeder was 52.2 percentages and self-propelled vertical conveyar reaper was 63.75 percent less as compare to manual transplating weeding and harvesting operation respectively.