Development and Testing of Low Cost Drudgery Reducing Hand Wears for Soybean Harvesting

To prevail over the problems involved in Soybean harvesting, hand wears i. e. Mittens for protecting hands and arms were designed, developed and tested. Results indicated that average physiological cost of Soybean harvesting activity was reduced by 5 heart beats/min in improved method i. e. by using mittens over existing. On an average 7 & 4 b. min-1 reduction of heart rate was observed in case of improved method when mittens were used for performing collecting and bundling of soybean plants respectively. There was increase in pace of work by 4.4 to 16.8 percent in case of cutting soybean plants with sickle and 25 per cent in collecting and bundling of soybean plants (increase in area by 16-56 sq. mt/h) when it was performed by improved method. Similarly, Drudgery reduction was higher i. e.39 to 48 per cent for both the selected soybean harvesting activities when performed by using developed mittens