Manually Operated Dry Land Weeder: A Study

Weed management is one of the tedious operations in crop production. Due to labor costs, time and fully manual weeding is unfavorable. Hence effort is made to design an efficient farm equipment to perform weeding without electric power. The conception and key characteristics of simulation based design and the advantage of using it to design the driving mechanism of three row weeding equipment were discussed. Weeding and hoeing is generally done 15 to 20 days after sowing. The weed should be controlled and eliminated at their early stage. Depending upon the weed density, 20 to 30 percent loss in grain yield is quite usual which might increase up to 80 per cent if adequate crop management practice is not observed. Rice and groundnut are sensitive to weed. Competition in the early stage of growth and failure to control weeds in the first three weeks after seeding, reduce the yield by 50 per cent. Manual weeding requires huge labor force and accounts for about 25 per cent of the total labor requirement which is usually 900 to 1200 man h/ha. Functional efficiency the weeder is 87% and, Theoretical field capacity 0.0375ha/hr, Effective field capacity 0.03ha/hr, Field efficiency 81% Soil inversion 87% One man can weed 1 acre area in 42days. One man can weed one acre area in 25 days with manual weeder.