Development and Evaluation of a Tray Type Protected Cultivation System for Fodder Crops

Abstract

A study was conducted to develop a tray type protected cultivation system for fodder crops (wheatgrass) and to compare the fodder growth in the developed protected tray type cultivation system to that from tray type cultivation system without protectivecovering. A cutting mechanism for the tray type protected cultivation system was also fabricated. Two identical sets of tray type cultivation systemstructuresfor fodder crops was fabricated with three trays each and one was clad with a protective covering of UV stabilised plastic sheet. These structures were installed with the lengthy dimension in the east -west direction. Germinated wheat (triticum aestivum) seeds were planted in the trays of these two structures and the climatic parameters like relative humidity, temperature, light intensity etc. and the plant biometric parameters like root length ratio, weight of the wheat grass cuttings collected etc. and soil characteristics were determined. The performance of the fodder crop under the protected as well as the control structure was compared with respect to the observed yields of the wheat grass cuttings. The biometric details such as plant height, plant weight, root length density and the yields of the wheat grass cuttingssignificantly varied between the two structures, for the two harvests.The analysis of these data suggested that adoption of developed protected tray type cultivation system is advantageous than tray type cultivation system without protective covering. The fabrication of the cutting mechanism for the tray type protected cultivation systemwas done using a slider crank mechanism.The performance of fabricated cutting system enhanced the easiness in cutting the fodder uniformly, therefore this system could be widely adopted in the small-scale tray type cultivation systems.