3 in 1 disc ridger: development of an improved implement for sweet potato plant-bed making, fertilizing and mechanical weeding
2021
Anuar Abdullah | Nurul Afza Karim | Md. Akhir Hamid | Shahmihaizan Mat Jusoh | Mohd Fazly Mail | Khairul Idzwan Ayub | Norahshekin Abdul Rahman | Zawayi Mat
Mechanization has been the solution to counter issue such as labour shortage and low production rate on field in the agricultural sector. Adaptation of mechanization system could lower the cost of production, improve quality of the product and also reduce the tedious work of labour. Current manual practice contributes to high labour cost since the job are labour intensive. Therefore, Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) has developed a complete machinery package for sweet potato production from land preparation until harvesting. One of the important activities that require an implementation of machinery aspect is ridge forming. This activity is essential due to the height of the ridge influencing the yield. As proven in the previous study, the higher the ridge the more aeration contributed to the higher yield of crops. In this manuscript, the authors report on the development and evaluation of the disc ridger. This implement is capable to be used as a bed forming during land preparation. In addition, this implement is also equipped with granular-based fertilizer applicator, in which two tasks can be performed together, which are weeding and fertilizing. The recorded field capacity of this machine was 0.29ha/hr for bed forming and 0.28ha/hr for inter-row weeding and fertilizing. In terms of fertilizer application performance, the average amount of fertilizer withdrawn for each plant was 7.65g, which are complied to the agronomist recommendation.
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