PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF WHEAT STRAW CHOPPER BLOWER

The combine harvesters compete only with the crops, leaving large stubbles and machine-thrown straw on the ground. Removing wheat residues from the field can be very costly and laborious, farmers generally burn this left-over straw for cultivation operation of subsequent crop. Wheat straw chopper is an agricultural resource conservation environment friendly technology to collect stubbles from combine-harvested wheat fields. Currently, this technology is being used but, not evaluated in fields intensively. Therefore, the main the purpose of this study was to assess the wheat straw chopper output at Rana Agric after combine-harvested wheat, Jatoi estate, Punjab and the economies of this machine. Four different wheat varieties Sehar-2006, Lasani, Faisalabad-2008 and Punjab-2011 were in the test fields. Wheat straw chopper was operated with 75 hp tractor at two selected forward speeds 1.5 and 3.5km h-1. Results showed that the average effective field range of the chopper was 0.3 to 0.7 ha h-1 and 65 percent field efficiency. For the chaff the approximate volume recovered was 2234 kg ha-1. The running cost for the Chopper setup was $41.24 ha-1. The total value of the chaff and grain recovered was $216 ha-1 (@$0.1 kg-1) and $17.13 ha-1 (@$0.25 kg-1) respectively. The net savings for the wheat straw chopper were 192$ha-1. Wheat straw chopper has proven to be an effective technology which is gaining popularity in combined harvested wheat fields to save chaff and increase farmers ‘ income.