Year: 2020 | Month: December | Volume 13 | Issue 4
Puddling Effects on Energy Parameters under Animal Farming for Mechanized Cultivation of Rice
DOI:10.30954/0974-1712.04.2020.9
Abstract:
Among various agricultural operations, irrigation is one of the highest energy consuming operations followed by tillage operation for seedbed preparation (sowing or transplanting). Studies suggested that for optimal crop yield realization tillage energy use would have to increase. As draught animal (bullocks/he-buffaloes) uses had been highest (114.8 to 207.3 h/ha) in animal farming and subsequently animal energy use for tillage operations may be decreased by adoption of improved energy efficient implements suiting to local size of draught animals. In the same way manual transplanting of rice consumes higher energy and remains same unless mechanized transplanting of rice is introduced using self-propelled rice transplanters. With this background a study on energy requirement for cultivation of mechanized rice was carried out during 2008 and 2009 with different level of tillage (puddling) under animal farming system. Five different animal drawn puddling equipments (lugged wheel puddler, zigzag puddler, rotary blade puddler, disc harrow cum puddler and indigenous plough) with two level of puddling intensity (two and three passes) were used for development of puddle bed and subsequently rice transplanting was done by using three methods of transplanting viz. transplanting by self-propelled rice transplanter, manually operated rice transplanter and random hand transplanting. Results revealed that input energy for puddling operation depends on the actual field capacity and weight of the puddling equipments. The energy required for puddling operation for each of the equipment increased with varying level of puddling from two passes to three passes. The energy input for puddling operation was highest (19302 MJ/ha) in indigenous plough with three passes and lowest (18270 MJ/ha) in zigzag puddler with two passes. Higher values of energy output-input ratio (7.88) and lower value of specific energy (3.80 MJ/kg) was obtained in rotary blade puddler (three passes). In case of transplanting methods, self-propelled rice transplanter gave significantly highest (7.48) energy output-input ratio and lowest specific energy (4.15 MJ/kg). The puddle bed developed by rotary blade puddler three passes and rice transplanting by self-propelled rice transplanter resulted in higher yield (53.18 q/ha) associated with higher energy output-input ratio (8.63) and lower specific energy (3.45 MJ/kg) compared to rest of the treatments.
Highlights
- Energy input and economics of different puddling and transplanting methods was worked out to find out the energy efficient and cost effective puddling equipment for development of puddle bed suited to the requirements of mechanical transplanters.
- Five different types of animal drawn puddling equipments and two types of mechanical transplanters are used in this study.
- Study indicated that rotary tools are energy efficient for puddling operations compared to linear tools.
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