DESIGN ANALYSIS AND INVESTIGATION OF FABRICATED WEEDER FOR TAPIOCA FARM

In the present-day agriculture, weed regulator in the farm lands is a tedious process that needs more money and human effort. There are a number of methods such as manually removing the unwanted plants by using traditional hand tools or by spraying chemical weedicides which will kill the weeds or using some mechanical equipment's. Of the above-mentioned methods, the mechanical weeding is mostly preferred due to its low operating cost and human effort. Moreover, the efficiency of the mechanical weeding process is high when compared with the other methods. In dry land tapioca farms, it is difficult to remove the unwanted weed plants by using the existing weeding equipment's. In the tapioca farms, the tubers of tapioca are located only few millimeters below the soil surface. The present -day weeding equipment's remove the weed plants by digging the soil surface and it is not favoured because the process will cause damage to the tubers. The use of chemical weedicides is not preferred due to the hazardous nature of the chemicals. The manual weeding process is also not preferred because of the high labour cost. So, in this project A mechanical equipment for carrying out the weeding process in the tapioca farms is designed and fabricated in a way such that it will not cause any damage to the crops. The weeder will only remove the unwanted weed crops in the farm. Apart from the weeding operation, the weeder can make the soil surface loose which will increase the porosity of the soil. Hence the water percolation will be more and the moisture content of the soil can also be maintained. Thus, the weeder will reduce the costs involved in the maintenance of the tapioca farm lands. It will also reduce the human effort involved in the weeding process.