Development and evaluation of solar powered manually operated sprayer cum grasscutter

Spraying of pesticides and cutting the grass is an important task in the agricultural sector to protect the crops from insects for obtaining high yield. In this study, a solar-powered sprayer cum grasscutter was introduced. The total fabrication cost of the solar powered sprayer cum grasscutter was 12550 Tk.. The application rate of the sprayer was 281.25 lit/ha with spray coverage of 46.7%. The theoretical field capacity and the effective field capacity of sprayer cum grasscutter were 0.08ha/hr and 0.06ha/hr respectively. The field efficiency of solar-powered sprayer cum grasscutter was found 75%, for an average of 2.1 km/hr operating speed. This research observed that cutting efficiency was 79%. The operating cost of the machine was 903.17 Tk/ha. The solar-powered sprayer cum grasscutter is free from pollution because no fuel is needed. The price of the machine is low as compared to others, which are available in the market.