Development and Ergonomic Evaluation of Manually Operated Weeder for Dry Land Crops

Abstract

A manually operated weeder for dry land crops was developed and evaluated to find its performance. It was compared with other available weeders namely wheel finger weeder, wheel hoe and conventional weeding by using trench hoe for groundnut crop at four levels of soil moisture content of 13.52, 11.63, 9.52 and 8.04 per cent (db). It was found that the heart rate, oxygen consumption rate and energy consumption rate increases with decrease in soil moisture content for all the treatments. The highest performance index of 3689.74 was obtained with developed weeder at 11.63 per cent moisture content. Lowest plant damage (2.46 to 7.96%) and lower energy consumption rate (8.34 to 40.05 kJ/min) with highest performance index (678.66 to 3689.74) of developed weeder at different soil moisture content proved its superiority over other weeders. Soil moisture of 11.63 per cent was found to be optimum for weeding in groundnut crop and the cost of operation of developed weeder at this soil moisture content was found to be Rupees 244.00 as against Rupees 2450.00 per hectare in conventional method of weeding by using trench hoe.