Development of a power weeder for line transplanted and line sown paddy

Now a days Govt. is giving more emphasize on line sowing. Govt. of Odisha provide 75% subsidy on seed drills and rice transplanters to increase production and productivity. But weeding is a major problem in line sown paddy crop. There are many types of mechanical weeders available for vegetable crops with wide working width. These are not suitable for line sown paddy field. Hence it is highly essential to develop a suitable power weeder for DSR condition. Though SRI power weeders are available for line transplanted paddy, these are not suitable for upland line sown crop. There is no such power weeder available which can work in both wet land and dry land condition. To eradicate these problems one power weeder was developed. The petrol engine of 1.33 kW with speed reduction of 34:1 was taken for fabrication of the weeder. Hatched type of blade was developed to see the performance. These set of blade was fitted with the weeder and evaluated in line sown paddy in dry land as well as in transplanted paddy in wet land by attaching a suitable float and compared with the conventional weeding method. The highest weeding efficiency of hatched type blade was found to be 84.30% in wet land and 82.280 % in dry land respectively. The performance index of hatched shape blade was observed to be 186.49 wet land and 190.81 in dry land at 14.5% moisture content. At the same moisture content i.e.14.5%, plant damage of 4.0% was observed with hatchet type blade. The increase in heart rate (∆HR) of 18.667 bpm was achieved in hatchet type blade at the same speed. It is concluded that the developed weeder with hatched type blade is suitable for weeding in both wetland as well as dry land line sown paddy field. The cost of operation of the developed weeder was found to be Rs 177.10/h and Rs 4997/ha.