Abstract
A disk plough combined with a set of rotary blades (comboplough) for land preparation has been designed, fabricated and tested. The concave disk cut and inverted layers of soil to bury surface material. The soil in contact with the surface of disk would be cut and pulverized by the rotary blades. Normal multiple tillage operations were reduced to a single pass and thus reduced the number of field trips as compared to conventional tillage practices resulting in a potential reduction of soil compaction, labor, fuel cost and time. The comboplough was tested in the Serdang sandy clay loam soil texture at Universiti Putra Malaysia Research Park. The treatments consisted of three types of blade (straight type or S blade, C-shaped and L-shaped) and three rotary speeds (130, 147 and 165 rpm). Mean Weight Diameter Dry basis (MWDd), mean weight diameter wet basis (MWDw), stability index (SI), instability index (II), 2 to 8 mm aggregate size distribution (ASDd8) and 0 to 100 mm aggregate size distribution (ASDd100) were determined and analyzed. The results indicated that no significant differences were noted between types of blade. However, the rotational speeds had significant effects on selected parameters. Key words: Tillage, combined implement, disk plough, rotary blade.
Highlights
The plough is as old as agriculture which originated from 10 to 13 million years ago in the fertile crescent of the Near East, mostly along the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile, Indus and Yangtze River valleys, and were introduced into Greece and Southeastern Europe 8000 years ago (Lal et al, 2007)
Statistical analysis presented indicates that there were no significant differences between types of blades on Mean Weight Diameter Dry basis (MWDd)
The effects of different blades were not significant on mean weight diameter wet basis (MWDw); it was noted that the C-shaped blade had minimum MWDw and the straight blade, S, had maximum MWDw (Table 3)
Summary
The plough is as old as agriculture which originated from 10 to 13 million years ago in the fertile crescent of the Near East, mostly along the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile, Indus and Yangtze River valleys, and were introduced into Greece and Southeastern Europe 8000 years ago (Lal et al, 2007). Lobb et al (2007) reported that tillage has been and will always be an integral part of crop production. They further stated that tillage can result in the degradation of soil, water and air quality. Tillage is the most important primary activity for crop production. It is one of the highest power-required processes of the agricultural production and the high cost of energy has encouraged farmers to find alternative economic tillage methods (Bayhan et al, 2006). Tillage operation is defined as a procedure for breaking up soil; the soil failure depends largely upon the soil (a)
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