PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF TRACTOR OPERATED YARROW BUND MAKER FOR PADDY CULTIVATION

Abstract

Mechanization of bund or ridge forming is an important land preparation process in paddy cultivation. The land will be thoroughly pulverized and the field buds will be well plastered before the transplanting. At present, bund making, plasters or adjusting is done by manually and which is time & energy consuming operation. The traditional bund/ ridge forming work is a low efficient, less strength, and high cost operation. It makes the paddy cultivation more expensive. The scarcity of skilled labour during bund formation causes great difficulty to the soil near the bunds and corners of the field are prepared manually which is consuming more energy and time. The traditional manual bund/ ridge forming work is characterized by low efficiency, low strength, high cost and directly affects the profitability of rice farming. More over manually made bunds are not properly aligned and compacted thus it does not last for long. The scarcity of skilled labour during peak period of bund formation causes great difficulty to the farmers. This urges the need of mechanisation in bund forming and plastering. A tractor operated bund former developed by Yarrow farms was evaluated for its performance in wet sandy loam soil. The machine was operated with 55 hp tractor. The blades on the periphery of the disc pulverizes the soil, the leveller levels the soil, and the rotating disc trims the bund and plasters it with pulverized soil. The roller attached to the rotating disc compresses the soil. During the field study, it was observed that, the soil moisture of formed bund is 10.42%. Field efficiency of the machine was 82.2% with an average speed of 1.48 kmh-1. Overall dimensions of bund was 35.5 cm height and 31.1 cm width respectively. The rate of bund making was observed as 23.86 mmin-1. The fuel consumption of the machine was 3.9 lh-1. The soil moisture of formed bund was 10.42%. A noise level of 89.6 dB was obtained at operator’s seat level during the operation of bund former. During vibration test velocity of 40.4 ms-1 and acceleration of 19.4 ms-2 was obtained at the bund former.