EVALUATION OF MANUALLY OPERATED WEEDER WITH REFERENCE TO FIELD PERFORMANCE

For increase the productivity per unit area of small land holdings and considering the economic condition of Indian farmers, it is quite necessary to have suitable agricultural implements which farmers can use and also allow them to use for custom hiring. Weeding is an important agricultural unit operation. Present investigation was indertaken with an objective to evaluate different field performance of developed weeder. Present investigation was undertaken in Nagpur , Maharashtra state during the year 2010-2011. For this investigation farmers and farm workers are selected randomly from Nagpur district. The field performance of the developed weeder was evaluated in the field of cotton, soyabean and groundnut crops. The test conditions such as soil moisture content, soil type, bulk density of soil, root zone depth of weed, density of weed, etc. were taken into consideration. Speed of travel in km/h was calculated by using a stop watch. Present investigation conclude that the mean value of effective field capacity is higher in cotton crop than groundnut and soybean crops. Weeding by developed manually operated weeder increase the weeding index, effective field capacity, theoretical field capacity and field efficiency respectively while decrease the plant damage.