Development and field performance assessment of roller rake weeder

Abstract

Hand weeding is labor-intensive and time-consuming. Although mechanical weed extraction has the potential to save time and money on labor, several obstacles prevent its broad adoption, especially in rural and hilly areas. Small-scale farmers find power weeders to be expensive and impractical, and the haphazard planting of crops further restricts the machine's usefulness. Labor-saving, regionally tailored weed control methods are urgently needed, particularly in isolated highland areas. Owing to the numerous drawbacks of the current weeder, a new weeder called ‘roller rake weeder’ consisting of a fixed rake and a roller with spikes as soil-engaging components was developed as an alternative to solve the issues. The developed machine was tested in the field for about a month. It was observed that the speed of operation was found to be optimal ranging from 1.9 to 2.1 km h⁻¹ with an effective cutting width of 140 mm. The actual field capacity ranged from 0.038 ha h⁻¹ to 0.04 ha h⁻¹, while the weeding efficiency reached 88%–95% surpassing the existing tools. The labor requirement was found to be 28.6–34.5 man-hours ha⁻¹, while the average force required for forward and backward strokes during operation was observed to be 68.4 N and 23.2 N, respectively.