DEVELOPMENT OF TRACTOR OPERATED CARROT DIGGER AND ITS PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

摘要

A study was conducted at Agricultural Mechanization Research Institute, Multan (DivisionFaisalabad) to design, develop and evaluate the performance of tractor operated carrot digger.In normal practice, at the time of carrot harvesting, its tops are removed manually and used asfodders for animals but manual digging of carrots is laborious and time consuming. In order toaddress lacking of accessibility of labour during peak load period, farmers needed an appropriatetractor driven carrot digger to facilitate timely digging of carrot for urgent supply to the market.So Agricultural Mechanization Research Institute (AMRI), Multan (Division Faisalabad) designedand developed a tractor rear mounted carrot digger in Agricultural Engineering Workshop,Faisalabad. Its field performance was evaluated at Chak No. 46, Jhok Hamdani, tehsil and districtChiniot in 2015 and 2016. The field efficiency of carrot digger was evaluated at three differenttractor speeds i.e 2, 3 and 4 km hr-1. Lower fuel consumption (4.5 l/acre) with higher percentageof wheel slippage (14%) and carrot’s damage (2.2%) was observed at higher speed (4 km hr-1).Low speed (2 km hr-1) offered higher fuel consumption (9 l/acre) with lower percentage of wheelslippage (9%) and carrot’s damage (1.25%). However, a moderate value of damage percentage(1.4%) was found at forward speed of 3 km hr-1 with fuel consumption of 6.75 l/acre that yieldedonly 0.15% higher damage giving 2.25 l/acre fuel saving as compared to 4 km speed. Hence,direct relationship exists among forward speed of tractor, wheel slippage and carrot’s damagewhile inverse relationship was found between speed and fuel consumption. Overall performanceof carrot digger was 0.7 acre hr-1 with net saving of Rs. 8430 ha-1 in terms of labour chargesincurred on digging the carrot.