Abstract
Saving cost and time was a motivation to develop a mechanized harvesting system for chickpeas, which are manually uprooted on fallow fields in developing countries. A tractor-pulled harvester with a modified stripper header was designed and fabricated, in which passive fingers with V-shaped slots removes chickpea pods from anchored plant; batted reel sweeps the pods across the platform. Field experiments were conducted to determine the effect of slot width and reel speed on machine performance in terms of harvesting losses. Minimal losses were found when the design was configured with a slot width of 4 cm, reel speed of 50 rpm and reel kinematic index of 1.6. The prototype harvester with a 1 m working width produced the work rate of 0.18 ha h-1 and exhibited acceptable working quality. The main conclusion is that the modified stripper harvester can work in unevenness ground where other machines cannot operate.
Highlights
The mechanization of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)harvesting has been a long-term objective of farmers on fallow fields in developing countries
The analysis of variance (ANOVA) for determining the slot width demonstrated that the slot width significantly affected losses in the Lp and Hm (Table 3)
The results of the variance analysis from the header configurations experiment indicated that the slot width did not have a signif icant effect on the total losses (Table 5)
Summary
The mechanization of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)harvesting has been a long-term objective of farmers on fallow fields in developing countries. Additional key words: Cicer arietinum; losses; mechanized harvesting; performance; stripper header. Designed and developed a chickpea harvester with a Shelbourne Reynolds’ stripper header and reported that the losses were high.
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