Development of “Wheel Hoe” Appropriate Tool for Supporting Organic Farming

Abstract

Development of “Wheel Hoe” is aimed to produce the multifunction tools according to the agriculture field condition in West Sumatra. Wheel Hoe has three implements which used to trim weeds (blade assembly), to cultivate a soil (tine cultivator), to make the drainage (furrower) on the dried soils. This research did at The Laboratory of Production and Agricultural Machinery Management, Agricultural Engineering Program, Agricultural Technology Faculty, Andalas University. The research method is designing a prototype wheel hoe and testing in West Sumatra through observations involved: the speed, wheel slip, work capacity, spacious efficient, and time lost of wheel hoe. Wheel hoe used an engine 5 HP by Dymos. In this research have been produced a wheel hoe that has a dimension length: 180cm, width: 60cm and height: 100cm and weight: 145.35 kg. Wheel hoe test result used tine cultivator implement with an average speed of 0,01 m/s. The width of the plowed land with tine cultivator implement is 50cm. the spacious efficient of wheel hoe using the implement of tine cultivator is high on a red-yellow podsolic soil as much as 97,67% and tine cultivator on andosol soil and litosol soil as much as 96,12 % and 96,17%. Base on the spacious efficient has been got, so we got a conclusion that wheel hoe using tine cultivator implement can be used on all of the type soil in West Sumatra.