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Tillage and Land Clearing
Implements
Light ridger plough
Tillage with the help of country plough was found to
be very tedious with low inversion percentage. This
was improved by placing two inversion plates fitted
on a broad share. This “Light Ridger plough”
increases the inversion percentage to 80 % rather
than 37.2% by the country plough and resulted in
cost saving of 46%.
Hand grass slasher
The most commonly used tool by farmers to clear and
bushes is “dao”. Using a dao for cutting grasses and
bushes, forces the worker to stand in bend posture
resulting in low hours of continous working. A hand
grass slasher was developed which allowed the worker
to work in standing posture thus minimizing
discomfort. Since both sides of blades were
sharpened. It gives both strokes as positive,
resulting in field capacity of 0.02 ha/hr compared
to 0.0061 ha/hr by dao.
Sowing Implements
Metallic dibbler:
This small hand tool is designed for the sloppy
cultivation and is an improvement over the existing
design locally used. Locally wooden made tip
dibblers are used to sow seed at regular interval in
sloppy land. The wooden tip leads to frequent
breakage and uneven sowing depth. The same has been
avoided by placing a metallic cone of 10 cm height
and 3.6 cm diameter with a circular plate fixed at 6
cm to maintain depth of sowing. This gives better
germination of seed and regular interval of sowing.
Bardoli seed drill:
This bullock drawn seed drill was developed for
valley and terrace cultivation to place bold seeds
in rows. This is an alternative to the broadcasting
method used by farmers.
Wheel hoe drill: It
is a single row sowing device which can be used for
sowing mustard/linseed, paddy, groundnut, maize, etc
with change in metering mechanism. The device
weighing around 16 kg can be carried easily on hilly
slopes. The field capacity of the implement is
0.0167 to 0.033 ha/hr based on row to row distance.
Adjustable row marker:
The device has been designed to mark the rows at
equal distance to promote row farming especially in
terraced and valley land cultivation while working
with single row devices. It can make three rows at a
time with row to row distance varying from 10 to 60
cm with a field capacity of 0.167 ha/hr.
Hand
Tools and Weeding Devices
Hand fork: The
device consists of comb like structure which is used
to collect cut grasses, weeds and cut crops lying in
the field. This reduces labour consumption by 74% as
compared to manual collection.
Weeder with circular blade:
This is a multipurpose weeding device which can be
used for weeding in between the rows. These
facilities to operate in standing postures thus
reducing the drudgery of operation
Wheel hoe with its attachments:
The wheel hoe with triangular sweep blade can be
used to perform weeding operation between two rows
of crops, with a field capacity of 0.1 ha/day.
Different types of blades as V-blade, earthening
blade, etc can be used as per soil conditions.
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Engine operated bush/grass cutter:
In order to clean the grass and bushes on
sloppy land, an engine operated device has
been developed. The device can cut grasses and
bushes up to 2 cm diameter with height up to
1.5 meter and with field capacity of 0.58
ha/day. The cost of operation is Rs 278/ha as
compared to manual cost of operation Rs.
1400/ha. It saves 91.6% of the time as
compared to manual cutting. Suitable design
amendments are still in progress to make it
perfect while working in undulated and sloppy
fields. |
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Harvesting and Post Harvesting Tools
Tubular maize sheller:
The hand held device is used to remove maize grains
from cobs. With the help of the device, one person
can shell out 24.6 kg grains/hr compared to 10.1
kg/hr by manual method of rubbing, thus achieving a
net saving of more than 100% in labour cost.
Fruit harvester:
Various types of manual fruit harvesters have been
designed for harvesting fruit crop like orange. The
new devices based on Push & Twist, Hold & Twist.
Blade Cutting actions help in reducing impact damage
to fruits due to free fall in traditional methods of
fruit harvesting viz., snatching or pulling of
fruits, hitting with a stick, shaking tree/branches
etc. About 300 fruits/man-hour can be harvested by
using these devices. |