Vol. 11, Special Issue 7 (2022)

Author(s):
Mukesh M Soyam, MM Deshmukh, Amol S Ghadge, SH Thakare, SK Thakare and SS Karhale

Abstract:
India is one of the world’s largest producers of rice, accounting for 20% of the world rice production. The paddy cultivation system in India almost fully mechanized at different level except bund reconditioning. In this study the machine parameters evaluated were the effective depth, width of operating area of cut, wheel slip, fuel consumption, energy requirement and bund cutting efficiency at different speed of tractor i.e. 1.5, 2.5 and 3.4 km/h were used to determine the performance of machine. The optimal operating forward speed was found to be 3.5 km/h, the equipment achieved maximum bund cutting efficiency as 84% with the fuel consumption of 2.712 L/h was found to the operation. In low speed of operation i.e. 1.5 km/h the equipment achieved lowest bund cutting efficiency as 75.41%. The fuel consumption for this operation was noted as 3.974 L/h. The energy requirement for operation of bund cutting was maximum as 154.98 MJ/h at a speed of 1.5 km/h and minimum as 105.77 MJ/h at speed of 3.5 km/h, this is due to the high fuel consumption during operation. The average cost of operation was Rs 551.50 per hector which was less than manually i.e. Rs. 1661.38/ ha (wages of 5 labour). The results of the field tests showed that, the tractor speed had a significant effect on the performance on the machine.