Performance Evaluation of Reaper-Binder for Wheat

In Ethiopia harvesting of cereal crops is one of the major attentive agricultural operations in agriculture production, which demands considerable amount of labours. The availability and cost of labour during wheat crop harvesting season are serious problems. It is therefore, essential to adopt the mechanical methods so that the timeliness in harvesting operation could be ensured and field losses are minimized to increase production on the farm. The objective of this study was to evaluate the field performance of self-propelled reaper-binder at farmer’s field. The effective field capacity of the reaper binder was found as 0.108 ha h-1 with a field efficiency of 84.65 per cent at operating speed of 2.55 km h-1. The fuel consumption was observed as 10.66 l ha-1. The total grain losses in reaper binder harvesting were 2.02% as compared to 3.30% with manual harvesting. The cost of harvesting with reaper binder and manual harvesting were 1,391.18 birr/ha and 2850birr per hectare. The harvesting cost of reaper binder was reduced by 48.82% compared to manual harvesting method with sickle.