Development and Field Evaluation of Khus Root Digger

Vetiver (Khus) is a premier aromatic crop yielding valuable essential oil from its long roots, which has multiple industrial uses like medicinal, soap, cosmetics and perfumery industry. Khus root digging is one of the important unit operations in cultivation. Conventionally Khus roots are harvested manually using traditional tools like spade (phawara), narrow spade (Kudali), etc which causes significant damage and root losses (approx. 30–40%). Besides, this method requires huge involvement of drudgery full manual labour (345–350 man days/ha). These factors necessitated development of efficient implement for harvesting of Vetiver roots. To solve the above problems, a low cost, single tine tractor operated vetiver root harvester was developed at the Central Institute of medicinal and aromatic plants (CSIR- CIMAP), Lucknow for making the Khus root digging process efficient and economical. The performance of developed equipment was evaluated at the farmers field and the field capacity and root recovery of Khus digger were found to be 0.05 ha/h and 85–90%, respectively. The Khus digger was found to be highly efficient and useful and it could be effectively operated by medium power range tractors (25–35 hp) and 5–6 times more efficient as compared to conventional method of Khus root digging. Besides it reduces 98% of labour input involved in vetiver root digging process and minimizing the root losses.