Effect of electrostatic spraying on droplet density, area coverage, spray deposition, uniformity coefficient, droplet size and bio-efficacy were observed and comparison was made between different types of sprayer i.e. electrostatic sprayer, lever operated knapsack sprayer, power operated knapsack sprayer and tractor operated gun type sprayer. It was found that on an average droplet density by electrostatic sprayer was significantly (p=0.0000017) 47.19, 68.07 and 78.26% higher than that of TOG, POK and LOK sprayers respectively. It was found that maximum number of droplets, for electrostatic sprayer was 42 at 48.61 μ, for POK sprayer 10 at 98.68 μ, for LOK sprayer 11 at 98.68 μ and TOG sprayer 12 at 125.00 μ. Percentage area covered by droplets on average over the plant (top, middle and bottom leaves of plant) was significantly (p=0.012) 34.69, 24.42 and 69.25% higher than of POK sprayer, LOK sprayer and TOG sprayer respectively. The volume of spray deposition on leaves was significantly (p=0.022) 50.20, 44.42 and 62.63% lesser than TOG, POK and LOK respectively. On an average bio-efficacy of electrostatic sprayer was more (47.75, 59.47 and 26.57%) than other three sprayers viz. POK, LOK and TOG sprayers respectively.

Cotton is an important commercial crop of India, having 12.81 M ha cultivated area which is largest in the World. In India 100% of the cotton is harvested manually (Anonymous 2016). The yield per ha which was stagnant at about 300 kg/ha for so many years, jumped to 472 kg in the year 2005-06 and now it has reached to the level of 504 to 566 kg per ha. Though this per ha yield is still lower

A study was conducted at PAU Regional Research Station, Gurdaspur (Punjab) to investigate the design and operational parameters of threshing mechanism of conventional combine harvester for basmati crop. This study was aimed to investigate the suitable changes required in the self-propelled conventional combine harvester for harvesting the basmati crop with minimum grain losses. Field evaluation of experiment was carried out to assess the influence of independent design variable i.e., arrangement of spikes (AS) and independent operational parameters such as concave clearance (CC) and cylinder speed (CS). The study was aimed to enumerate various combining losses viz., extent of visible and invisible grain damage and threshing efficiency at different AS, CC and CS levels. The first year data recorded during 2017 were processed for the optimization during 2018. The results of the present study revealed that during 2017, maximum visible and invisible losses was 5.49% ± 0.33% and 28.07% ± 3.21%, respectively whereas after modification, these losses remained only 4.00% ± 0.80% and 24.07% ± 2.86%, respectively. The threshing efficiency remained above 99.31% ± 0.47%, for both years. Thus, optimization of combine harvester was able to save the visible grain damage by 60% to 83% and invisible grain damage by 6% to 16%, respectively during 2018 than the year 2017.

No abstract

No abstract