International Journal of Agriculture Extension and Social Development

The energy use in field preparation is of great concern for scientists and farmers. Among all field operations, conventional tillage requires highest amount of energy input. It requires several passes of various soil-turning and soil-pulverizing equipments requiring more time, fuel and labor. Moreover, several passes of tractor with tillage implement increase soil compaction. The combination tillage implement comprises combination of either active and passive or passive and passive tillage implements. In case of passive implements, power losses are more at tire-soil interface and also a considerable weight is required on drive wheels of tractor to provide necessary traction that results into detrimental soil compaction. Active tillage implements require considerable power per unit width as they till a greater volume of soil than is required in most field crop systems. Investigations are presently being carried out on combined tillage equipment to the complete the tillage and sowing operation in one pass.

The present study was conducted on the development of active-passive and passive-passive combination of tillage implements suitable for mini tractor. The combination tillage implement such as cultivator- single acting disc harrow(C-DH), cultivator with clod crusher (C-CC) and rotavator with tines (R-T) were developed. The developed tillage implements were evaluated under actual field condition at different depths and operating speeds. The tillage performance parameters such as draft force, fuel consumption wheel slip, soil inversion and fuel efficiency were measured. The drawbar power requirement of the combination tillage implement was calculated. During field evaluation it was observed that the draft force of the cultivator with disc harrow (C-DH) found to vary from 190 to 220 kgf, and that of cultivator with clod crusher(C-CC) found to vary from 86 to 101 kgf and rotavator with tines (R-T) found to vary from 166 to 137 kgf.

The fuel consumption of the (C-DH) found to vary from 2.897 to 3.79 L h^-1, (C-CC) found to vary from 2.846 to 3.822 Lh^-1 and (R-T) found to vary from 2.195 to 3.225 L h^-1. The wheel slip of the driving wheels of the tractor with developed implements found to vary from. 5.6 to 7.8 per cent. The field efficiencies of developed tillage implement found to vary from 81.5 per cent to 90.7 per cent as well as the soil inversion of the combination tillage implement vary from 46.1 to 92.35 per cent.