Background:
Presently manual harvesting of sorghum is adopted in India. It is labour and time consuming and one has to work in scorching heat and in bending posture. It is very tedious job. Moreover, timely harvesting of the crop plays vital in achieving better quality and higher yield. The shortage of labour during harvesting season and varied weather and increased cost of harvesting of the sorghum causes great loss to the farmer and therefore farmers should have a better option for harvesting at greater extent. Majority of the farmers in India adopts manual harvesting means due to unavailability better mechanical harvesters. Rise in cost of sorghum indicating the need of mechanization to increase area under cultivation which will result in high productions well as productivity. Mechanized harvesting operation will provide better manoeuvres to the farmers. Therefore, a suitable tractor operated harvester for grain sorghum was developed to provide solution to the problem.:
Technology Details:
ICAR-CIAE Tractor hydraulic operated front mounted three row harvester for sorghum was developed and evaluated in the field. Cutting and conveying efficiency of the stalk ranged from 92- 95% and 86-93%, respectively. Similarly, for earhead, the cutting and collection efficiency was found in the range of 83-86% and 77-81%, respectively at the forward speed of 1.5-2 km/h. Actual field capacity and field efficiency of the machine was observed in the range of 0.2 ha/h and 80-83%, respectively. Cost of the developed harvester is found to be Rs. 4,00,000/- and operating cost of the harvester was found to be Rs. 2205/ha. As there is no machine available in India for harvesting of the sorghum plant and earhead, developed innovation will provide solution to the existing systems and problems.