IJFANS International Journal of Food and Nutritional Sciences

ISSN PRINT 2319 1775 Online 2320-7876

“DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF MANUALLY OPERATED DISC WEEDER FOR GARLIC CROP”

Main Article Content

Er.Ankit Singh, Dr. Prashant Mario D’souza, Er.Vijay Singh, Er. Manish Kushwaha

Abstract

Weeding is an important operation for increasing the productivity of farm. For small land holdings and considering economic condition of Indian farmer, manual operated weeder is most suitable. The major Garlic producing states of India are Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan which produce 80% of the country’s garlic. In garlic weeding operation is done manually by khurpi and wheel hoe. Manual weeding is precise but requires about 900-1200 man-hours/hectare. Due to acute shortage of labour in peak seasons, weeding operation is difficult to carry out within short stipulated. With regard to this, a manually operated weeder was developed and tested. The weeding disc was made from iron plate and circular with a diameter of 30mm outer diameter. The desired height of the handle from ground surface is obtained with the adjusting and fixed with nuts & bolt at 0.961m height. The developed garlic disc weeder was tested under different moisture % present in soil <5%, 5-10%, 10-15%, 15-20% respectively. Avg. speed at different moisture % is 1.9 Km/hr, 1.7 Km/hr, 1.5K/hr, 1.4Km/hr. The developed weeder can work higher up to 2.5cm depth. The higher avg. field capacity of developed weeder was obtained to be 0.0183 ha/hr and field efficiency 91.41% at <5% of moisture content. Higher avg. weeding efficiency was obtained (i.e. up to 90.17%) at 5- 10% moisture content. The overall performance of the disc weeder found satisfactory.

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