Development and Performance Evaluation of Tractor Front Mounted Pigeon Pea Stem Cutter

Pigeon pea or tur (Cajanus cajan L. Mills.) is one of the important pulse crops of India and ranks second to chickpea in area and production. Traditionally the harvesting of pigeon pea is done manually by sickle, which demands considerable amount of labour, drudgery, time and cost to harvest, which reflects on total production cost of the crop. In view of this a tractor operated front mounted pigeon pea stem cutter was developed and being front mounted implement it facilitated better visibility and control to operator. The power was transmitted from pto to gear box. Arrangement of hydraulic cylinder and hydraulic motor was provided on the equipment to facilitate the height of cut and to rotate the conveyer belt. During comparative performance evaluation of developed equipment, the average cutting efficiency and field capacity was found 96.30 % and 0.176 ha/hr respectively. There was increase in fuel consumption and plant damage with increase in speed of operation. The average operation cost of newly developed tractor operated front mounted pigeon pea stem cutter was 64.71% less as compared with manual harvesting of pigeon pea crop. The time saved was almost 1/3rd to that of manual harvesting.