Division of Agricultural Engineering, ICAR Research Complex for NEH Region, Umiam (Barapani), Meghalaya-793 103, India.
India stands currently first in area, second in yarn production and third in raw cotton production in the world. In our country entire cotton is hand picked by human labour involving about 1565 man h/ha. The use of picking machine will be useful in minimizing drudgery involved in hand picking as well as enhancing production of cleaner grade of seed cotton. The knapsack cotton picker was developed and the cost economics was arrived as per the ‘RNAM test code and procedure for harvesters’ to determine the feasibility and economical viability of the machine. The cost of machine was worked out Rs. 5000 and the cost of picking was Rs. 4.55 per kg of cotton. The saving in cost, time and energy compared to manual method of cotton picking was 9.00, 75.00 and 68.23 per cent respectively. The break even point was 394.46 kg/annum and the pay back period was 0.81 year.
