Effect of soil type on power and energy requirements of some selected agricultural field machinery in south-east Nigeria

Abstract

The effect of soil type on power and energy requirements of some selected agricultural field machinery (plough, harrow, ridger, rotovator and planter) in south – east Nigeria were studied to enable farmers and users of the equipment select and match appropriately the size of implements and speed of operation to machine (tractor) size to improve the field capacitive performance of the machines based on soil types (clay – loam, loamy – sandy, and sandy – clay soil) in the study area. Results showed that plough recorded the highest fuel (energy) consumption rate of 21.60 l/ha to24.67 l/ha, followed by harrow with fuel consumption rate of 17.21 to 21.66 l/ha, rotovator (15.22 to 19.72 l/ha) and least was planter with fuel consumption rate range from 14.42 to 15.62 l/ha. The highest fuel consumption was recorded on clay-loam soil, followed by sandyclay and least was on loamy-sandy soil. The plough also had the highest draft force (10.8 kN/m), followed by the harrow and ridger with equal draft force of 10.5 kN/m, planter (8.4 kN/m) and the least was the rotovator with draft force of 5.1 kN/m. Furthermore, the plough gave the highest wheel slippage (15.7 %) followed by harrow (13.3 %), rotovator and planter with equal value of wheel slippage (12.8 %) and least was ridger with wheel slippage of 12.4 %. Sandy-clay soil recorded the highest tyre slippage for all the implements, followed by loamy-sandy and the least tyre slippage was recorded on clayloam soil. However, all the implements in different soils corded average wheel slippage below the top limit of wheel slippage (20 %), showing that the soils were trafficability.