Mechanization Enhancement in Maize Cultivation for Small Holder Farming Community

Abstract

Power tiller operated machines may play vital role in maize cultivation for small scale farming system as the average holding size is close to 1 ha and more than 86% of India’s farming community are small and marginal farmers. Present efforts were carried out for the development and testing of power tiller operated strip-till multi-crop planter for the mechanization of maize cultivation in small holder farming community. With increasing the level of mechanization by adopting appropriate matching implements for maize cultivation in small farming community, the production and productivity could be increased by reducing cost of cultivation and increasing input use efficiency. Efforts are being made to adopt conservation tillage practices with power tiller operated matching implements for small holder farming focusing on maize cultivation. The developed planter was tested under three different tillage practices as conventional tillage (CT), strip tillage (ST) and zero tillage (ZT). Three types of rotary blades viz. L-type, J-type and C-type were used in strip-tilling operation. The developed machine was evaluated in terms of field capacity, fuel consumption, draft, seed germination and crop yield. Average maize yield in ST was maximum (3.32 t ha-1) followed by ZT (3.26 t ha-1) and CT (3.23 t ha-1). The cost of cultivation was maximum for CT followed by ZT and ST.