1Ph. D scholar, Jawaharlal Nehru Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya, Jabalpur, Madhay Pradesh. E-mail: narender4ever@gmail.com
2Associate Professor, Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, College of Agricultural Engineering &Technology
3Assistant Professor, Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, College of Agricultural Engineering &Technology
4Assistant Agricultural Engineer, Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, College of Agricultural Engineering &Technology
5Research Associate, Department of Horticulture, College of Agriculture, Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, (Haryana)
Online published on 23 September, 2016.
A tractor mounted root-crop digger designed by Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana was evaluated at farmer's field for potato, carrot and onion crops. Four performance parameters (exposed percentage, cut percentage, bruised percentage and digging efficiency) of the digger were studied at three different forward speeds and blade angles. The root-crop digger was operated at speed of 2.3, 2.2 and 3.2 km.h−1 and blade angle of 23°, 23° and 17° for potato, carrot and onion, respectively; giving digging efficiency of 98%, 100% and 100%; cut percentage of 1.71, 46 and 0.00%; bruised percentage of 2.45, 2.28 and 3.39% and exposed percentage of 91, 92 and 97% for potato, carrot and onion crop, respectively. Though the digging efficiency for carrot was 100%, but with cut percentage of 46%, the machine needs to be redesigned for carrot digging. The cost of operation of the machine was 2241, 2641 and 1885 per ha for potato, carrot and onion digging, respectively. With mechanical digger, the decrease in cost of digging was 54%, 46% and 51% as compared to manual harvesting of potato, carrot and onion crop, respectively. The break-even point of the root-crop digger was 35.14 hour per year with payback period of 0.24 year.
Digger, bruised, cut, exposed, digging efficiency
