Agricultural Energy and Power Division, Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Nabi Bagh, Berasia Road, Bhopal - 462 038, India.
1Agricultural Engineering College and Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore - 641 003, India.
The cost of cotton production is excessively high, reducing the profit margin available to the farmer. Picking is one of the major labour intensive operations in cotton cultivation consuming the lion's share of the expenditure. Hence the only option available is the mechanical picking method. The development of cotton picker will be the first step into the mechanization of cotton cultivation. Cotton harvesters are of two basic types, viz, picker and stripper. The picker is selective where as stripper is non-selective. Modem strippers can be classified according to two general stripping principles. The finger principle and the roll principle, whereby the plants pass between two inclined rotating rollers or between a roller and a stripping bar, Strippers are most successful in the areas where plants are small and the fibres are rather short, hard bodies and easy to clean. By reviewing the mechanical picking methods, it may be concluded that by considering the cost of picking, break-even point, pay-back period, cost saving, time saving and energy saving, picking through cotton picker is promising.
