Development of Manually Operated Crust Breaker for Cotton Crop

Cotton seed is very sensitive to germination and cannot bear any extra pressure than optimum. A manually operated crust breaker for cotton is designed in the Department of Farm Power and Machinery. The crust breaker is a manually operated wheel hand hoe type implement and breaks crust on one row of cotton in one pass. This implement has to move above the furrow opened during planting. Its track width is 265 mm, which is sufficient for movement of the ring wheels above the furrow. The two types of soil working tools were developed namely inclined bar and vertical double bar type shovel. The cotton crop was planted with tractor operated multicrop planter. The four treatments namely control i.e. no crust formation; second crust formation but no crust breaking; third crust breaking with inclined bar; and fourth crusting breaking with vertical double bar type shovel. The crust was formed by applying irrigation after sowing of cotton. The plant germination count per meter row length was about 24 % of the control in case of crust formed soil. It is about 84 % of control in case of crust broken by the implement using inclined bar shovel and about 76 %of control in case using vertical double bar type sho1,1el after 7 days of sowing.. The field capacity of the crust breaker is about 0.12 ha/h. Its cost for fabrication is about Rs. 500. The crust breaker solves the problem of crust formation.