Development and Evaluation of Direct Paddy Seeder for Assessing the Suitability to Rural Women

摘要

Transplanting operation is performed by women in upright bending posture. A women has to dip her hand 6,000 to 7,000 times for transplanting paddy in standing water. This posture, when continued for years together results in Low Back Pain (LBP) and spinal disorders. This arduous operation can be made more comfortable by the use of direct paddy seeders. But a woman operated direct paddy seeder is non-existent. Hence three types of paddy seeders namely two row, three row and four row paddy seeders to reduce the drudgery of women and three types of material namely plastic galvanized iron (GI) and fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) for reducing the weight of the unit were selected for ergonomical evaluation. Ten female subjects were selected for the investigation based on the age. The parameters used for the ergonomical evaluation of the direct paddy seeders include heart rate and oxygen consumption rate, energy cost of operation, acceptable work load, work pulse, overall discomfortrnrating, body part discomfort score and force required for the operation of direct paddy seeder. A swinging type handle was developed for pulling the seeder to avoid the awkward posture of farm women.rnThe mean values of heart rate of the ten subjects for four row, three row and two row paddy seeders with plastic, GI and FRP materials varied between 124.43 and 152.50 beats min~(-1) and the corresponding oxygen consumption values varied between 0.535 and 0.698 1 min~(-1). The field capacity for the four row, three row and two row paddy seeders with plastic, GI and FRP materials varied from 0.025 to 0.0625 ha hr~1. Based on the ergonomical evaluation and field capacity, the four row paddy seeders of three materials were chosen for performance evaluation and the four-row paddy seeder with plastic material was adjudged as the best seeder for rural women folk.