Abstract
Two-wheel tractors (2WTs) are widely used by resource-poor farmers to prepare land in the Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains (EIGP). This paper demonstrates that improved tillage blade design can enhance maize crop establishment under strip tillage, which falls under the rubric of conservation agriculture (CA). In order to achieve this aim, it is necessary to identify appropriate blade design and rotational speed for power tiller operated seeders, or PTOS, which can be attached to 2WTs and that are increasingly popular in the EIGP. We conducted experiments over two years in two locations in the EIGP within Bangladesh with loam and clay loam soils, respectively. Four blades designed with varying tip angles and five levels of rotational speed were compared with commercially available C-shaped blades sold with 2WTs. Torque and power requirements for strip tillage decreased with decreasing blade tip angle and rotational speed. The best combination of blade design and rotational speed was found with a 15° blade tip angle at 320 RPM. This combination resulted in higher furrow cross sectional area, more soil backfill with appropriately sized soil aggregates, and better seeding depth than C-shaped and 45° tip angle blades. These characteristics also facilitated improved crop establishment on both soil types. Our results indicate that strip-till maize establishment can be improved in Bangladesh by substituting commercially-available C-shaped blades with a 15° blade tip angle at appropriate 320 RPM, though machinery operators will require educational efforts to learn how to fine-tune RPM to improve crop establishment and achieve more sustainable crop establishment systems.
Highlights
Power tillers, often referred to as two-wheeled tractors (2WTs), are popular for land preparation in smallholder farming systems in South and East Asia including in Bangladesh, eastern India, the Terrai of Nepal, as well as in parts of Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea and China (Chertkiattipol and Niyamapa, 2010; Siddique et al, 2012)
We examined the implications of modified strip tillage blade designs on furrow architecture, seed bed characteristics, and maize crop estab lishment over two cropping seasons at two locations with differing soil types in Bangladesh
Use of modified blades resulted in improved seedbeds with a higher volume of soil backfill than the widely available conventional C-shaped blades that come with Chinese manufactured commercially available power tiller operated seeders
Summary
Often referred to as two-wheeled tractors (2WTs), are popular for land preparation in smallholder farming systems in South and East Asia including in Bangladesh, eastern India, the Terrai of Nepal, as well as in parts of Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea and China (Chertkiattipol and Niyamapa, 2010; Siddique et al, 2012). Bangladesh is the most impoverished and densely populated country with an average of 1240 people km− 2 (World Bank 2018a). More than 66 million people in Bangladesh subsist and earn their in come from agriculture (World Bank 2018b), with an average farm size of less than half a hectare (Hossain et al 2007). More than 700,000 2WT attachable power tillers are used by smallholder farmers in Bangladesh for land preparation (Rahman et al, 2017). This usually involves multiple passes of a power tiller with slow rotational speed (200–250 RPM) for seedbed preparation, followed by manual broadcasting or hand planting of seeds in lines (Ladha et al, 2009; Hoque and Miah, 2015)
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