Development and Performance Evaluation of Animal Drawn Maize Ridger

Maize is the third world’s most important cereal after Rice and Wheat which plays a major role in Indian economy. Ridging of maize crop 30 DAS is a very important operation and maize ridging is conventionally done by manually which involves extensive labors compared to other operations, this result in higher cost of cultivation and required higher drudgery. The crop, machine and operational parameters were identified and selected and the animal drawn maize ridger was developed and evaluated for its performance in actual field conditions. The ridge dimensions were optimized top width, bottom width and ridge height (9.14cm, 16.72cm, 43.5cm) with total volume of soil cover 425.37cm considering plant height and row to row spacing. The average draft of the ridger 69.81 kg-f was observed during ridging operation. The field capacity of the maize ridger was 0.06ha/h with field efficiency of 74.46 per cent. The cost of operation of maize ridger for ridging maize was found to be 1737.79 Rs/ha. Key word: Maize, ridger, ridging technology.


INTRODUCTION:
Maize is the third world's most important cereal after rice and wheat. Among the cereal crops in India, Maize with annual production of around 22.5 million tonnes from 8.67 million hectares ranks third in production and contributes to 2.4% of world production with almost 5% share in world harvested area in 2013-14.
Major sources of farm power include both animate (humans and draught animals) as well as inanimate sources such as diesel engines, tractors and electric motors. Bullock is one of the cheapest and oldest sources of draught power for all types of agricultural operation. Bullocks are mainly used for tillage and sowing operations. Though the population of draught animal is declining but still more than 50 percent net sown area is cultivated by animal power source. Chhattisgarh state of India, which has a large cultivable area, good natural resources, also has very large cattle population. These animals are small to medium size (250 to 450 kg) with a draughtability of 10 to 12 percent of their body weight (AICRP on UAE Report 2008). Most of the marginal and small farmers in this region depend on animal power for farm operations like tillage, sowing and threshing operations. Sowing on ridge may provide better condition for aeration and also require less irrigation water. Labor scarcity delays these agricultural operations which has adverse effects on crop production. Therefore, there is a need to, mechanize the ridging operation of maize and other crops which will result in saving of time, money and labor. Thomas and Kaspar (1997) reported that improved understanding of maize (Zea mays L.) nodal root response to soil ridging is needed to allow farmers to maximize the benefits of ridge tillage systems. Birkas et al. (1998) were carried out study in order to determine the effect of traditional and ridge tillage systems on soil status, yield and weed cover for three years. Ahmad et al. (2000) were conducted a field study pertaining to different inter-tillage practices on maize. Ridging of maize crop is an essential operation 30 DAS. This prevents the plant from lodging with better stand ability. Moreover, it also provides anchorage of the lower whorls of adventitious roots above the soil level which then function as absorbing roots. Ridging improves yield but is labor intensive and it is done by hand with a hoe, spade etc. by farmers.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:
The maize ridger were designed and developed in AUTO-CAD and fabricated in the workshop of NAE, FMPE, IGKV, Raipur. The maize ridger was designed to accommodate adjustable spacing between two furrow openers varying from 31.5 to 5cm for the maize crop. Designs requiring machining processes were generally avoided so as to make the technology accessible to rural artisans and manufacturers, who normally do not have expensive machinery such as lathes and milling machines. No alloy steels were used, but mild steel, which is locally available were used for fabrication of the various parts of implement. Unnecessary weight, which leads to added strain for the draught animals as well as for the user controlling the implement, was avoided. Enough clearance provided to allow proper ridging, and weeding with already established crops up to knee height. Adjustments were limited to the practical ones so as to keep the design as simple as possible and easy to use. Designs and technologies associated with high tooling costs, in particular machining, were avoided in order to keep the cost of production. In addition, the bolt sizes chosen were generally the same as those used on the animal drawn mould-board plough so as to avoid the acquisition of extra spanners. The landside Fig.3.4 was made of MS plate iron of 5 mm thickness. The landside acts as one side of the wedge, which is formed with the share. It is a long flat metal piece welded to the edge of the frog. It helps to absorb side force caused when furrow slice is turned. The plant height and row spacing were affected the performance of ridging operation which were considered for the design of the maize ridger. The unit was designed to ridging single rows of maize crop with adjustable spacing between two furrow openers (31.5 to 51cm). The machine offers the apparent advantage of timely ridging, weeding, saving of time, and labor costs and therefore, helps reducing the cost of production besides reducing the drudgery of the task. Considering the factors discussed above, an animal drawn maize ridger was developed with a set of functional components including Main frame, share, mould-board and landside-frog assembly. Ridges and furrows can be effectively formed by using animal drawn ridgers. The soil thrown by the wings of the ridgers covers the root and stem zone of the plants. Two opposite mould board bottoms were selected for the formation of ridger. The CAD view of the machine is shown in Figure 1 for ease of understanding. The field performance tests were carried out to obtain actual data on overall implement performance and work capacity in the field. The field trials of animal drawn implements were conducted in the field of I.G.K.V., Raipur, which is situated at the southeastern part of Chhattisgarh and lies between 21 0 16'N latitude and 81 0 36' E longitudes with an altitude of 298m above the mean sea level. The soil of the experimental field was clay loam in texture. The average initial bulk density and moisture content were observed as 1.85 t/m 3 and 14.98% (db), respectively, for the depth of 0-150 mm.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION:
The designed and fabricated maize ridger was tested in the laboratory as well as in the actual field condition for maize crop, to examine the performance of maize ridger. During the field trial proper spacing between two furrows openers to obtain proper ridge dimensions with minimum plant damage through the implement were optimized. During field trail it was observed that higher ridge dimension having width (16.88cm) and height (43.50cm) was obtained with T3 (inclined mould-board with 44.50 cm spacing between two furrow openers). The dimension of the ridge at various spacing and with different treatments were measured during field trial and presented in Table 1.
The field test of developed ridger was carried out at an average plant height of 35.54 cm. The average moisture content at 2.5 to 20 cm depth was 16.69 % at dry basis, 14.30 % at wet basis and the bulk density during trail was found to be 1.85t/m 3 . The height of plant of maize crop, moisture content, and bulk density of soil during ridging operation is presented in Table 2. The maximum theoretical field capacity was observed with S4-51cm (0.09 ha/h) followed by S3-44.5 cm (0.08 ha/h), S2-38 cm (0.07 ha/h) and S1-31.5 (0.05 ha/h) cm respectively. It was also observed that variation in effective field capacity of the developed ridger during field test with respect to different spacing. The maximum effective field capacity was observed with S4-51cm (0.06 ha/h) followed by S3-44.5 cm (0.060 ha/h), S2-38 cm (0.051 ha/h) and S1-31.5 (0.042 ha/h) cm respectively. The detailed data were shown in Table 3.