Department of Agricultural Engineering, HPKV, Palampur, 176062, H.P.
The comparative field performance studies on various power tiller operated potato diggers were carried out at their best forward speeds in hills of Himachal Pradesh. The effective field capacity of the diggers varied from 0.025 to 0.040 ha/h. while with manual digging (spade) the field capacity was 0.0015 ha/h. The labour requirements for picking of tubers were 158, 163, 157, 226 and 403 man-h/ha in case of power tiller operated HPKV digger, TNAU digger, vibratory blade digger, reversible plough and digging manually with spade, respectively. The cost of digging with diggers was 30 to 50% less as compared to cost with manual digging. The maximum tuber exposure was obtained with HPKV digger (90.0%) followed by vibratory blade digger (87.5%), TNAU digger (80.5%) and reversible plough (73.0%). The percentage of cut tubers ranged from 2.0 to 9.8 for different diggers.
