Ergonomics assessment of drudgery in wheat production system

Agricultural activities in wheat production system are one of the strenuous work demanding physical energy, adequate posture but it is very tiring, time consuming and stress causing due to lack of access to improved agricultural technologies compel farm women to very harsh conditions of work and hazards. The research envisaged to assess and quantify the drudgery in wheat production system by rural women in which physiological and postural evaluation of agricultural activities was done for different activities by women farm workers with three replications of ten minutes work cycle without rest pause. Ergonomic parameters viz. Heart Rate, EER, TCCW, PCW, VO₂ Max were measured during the experiments. Observations were recorded on farm women worker with normal health, without any major illness, regularly involved in farm operations. Human Physical drudgery Index (HPDI) of wheat cultivation practices i.e. land preparation, intercultural operation, harvesting, threshing, load carrying and post harvest management were quantified with 50 farm women. For the ergonomics assessment of most drudgery prone activities, a sample of 15 physically fit rural women having permissible limit of physiological parameters, falling in the age group of 25–40 years were selected. As per HPDI the most drudgery prone activity observed was threshing (47.81) followed by load carrying (47.23), harvesting (46.48) and then post harvest operations (drying and storage 33.52). For ergonomics quantifications three most drudgery prone activities in wheat production system i.e. threshing, load carrying and harvesting was evaluated and it was found that drudgery is caused with different activities in wheat production system with reflects energy expenditure rate ranges from 7.2 to 9.1 (kJ/min), TCCW ~ 1000 and physiological cost of work ranges from 100–120 b/min.