1Indian Institute of Sugarcane Research, Lucknow
In subtropical zone of India, farmers prefer to raise sugarcane after harvesting wheat crop. It delays planting. Subsequently tillering phase is reduced and the yield of ratoon suffers significantly. In order to normalize tillering phase, sugarcane is planted simultaneously with wheat crop in the month of December/January. While wheat crop matures as solo crop, sugarcane plants also get time to get established at the time of harvesting. Planting cane setts at the time of sowing wheat is a tedious job and requires gadgets to do it effectively. Equipment was thus developed at Indian Institute of Sugarcane Research Lucknow, to handle this operation in single operation. The machine was evaluated at farmers’ field and was observed that field capacity of the machine was 0.18 ha/h at 50% field efficiency. The germination of the sugarcane was 37% at par with control. Benefit-cost ratio of simultaneously planted wheat and sugarcane crop was 2.47 as compared to 1.76 in control. The machine is suitable for wheat base sugarcane cropping system
