DEVELOPMENT OF MANUALLY DRAWN ENGINE POWERED FODDER CROP HARVESTER

Fodder maize is one of the important fodder crops of India. India is one of the top 10 maize producers in the world; it contributes around 2 - 3 % of the total maize produced globally with the area of 9.47 Mha and production of 28.72 MT. about 13 % of total maize production is used as livestock feed. Gujrat is one of the medium maize productivity states. In India total production of sorghum was 4.95 MT in which production of sorghum crop in Gujarat was about 90,000 tonnes (1.82 % of total production). Traditionally, the harvesting of fodder crop is done manually by sickle which demands considerable amount of labor, drudgery, time and cost to harvest. So, it reflects on total production cost of the fodder. A manually drawn engine powered fodder crop harvester was developed and test results were analyzed in terms of cutting efficiency, plant damage, effective field capacity, speed of operation and field efficiency. Three different level of forward speed and saw circular disc at rpm of 350 - 400 was used for the test performance. Maize was used for testing of developed harvester. A manually drawn 1.5 hp 2 stroke petrol engine was used in the machine to cut single row at a time.