Background:
Manual sugarcane harvesting is a very labor-intensive and laborious activity. Harvest laborers can easily fatigue due to excessive stress on the joints and muscles (and are exposed to harmful pests from plantations, creating safety concerns. In manual harvesting to cut one acre of sugarcane 15-16 labours are required they take 3 days to cut one acre. In green cane, the trash is removed and the stalks are topped:
In burnt - the tops are removed, using knives and detrashing devices. The stalks are then made into small bundles ready for manual loading and transporting either to the mill or juice making. Stooping posture results in a lot of bio-mechanical stresses in the back and has higher energy consumption as compared to other working positions. Continuous use of bare hands for a knife to cut the sugarcane may cause bruises on the hands leading to infection. At present billet-type sugarcane harvesters are available in India for harvesting sugarcane. Most of the billet cane harvesters were owned by the sugar mills and operated by them only. The cost of operation of the harvester will be deducted from the payment for sugarcane. It is difficult to employ billet-type cane harvesters due to various reasons such as higher cost ( more than 75 lakhs), fragmented and small holdings with small and irregular fields. Also, the billet machines cannot be used for small farmers those who are all selling the cane for juice making industry:
To solve the above problems, the development of a tractor-operated whole cane harvester suitable for the juice industry has been attempted:
Technology Details:
Tractor-mounted whole cane harvester consists of a base cutter unit, crop gathering unit, cane walker, de-topper, and cane collection trolley. All these mechanisms are hydraulically operated and are to be mounted on a tractor three-point links. Base cutter and hydraulic system operated by tractor PTO power. This hitch system was suitable for tractor II and III categories. It was also provided for PTO shaft-driven assembly. Base cutter is powered by tractor PTO through the gearbox. A crop-gathering unit is provided in front of the de-topper and base cutter. It is provided to separate and bend the sugarcane for gathering in a row. The de-topper unit is attached to the harvester main frame, ahead of to the base cutter to cut the top of the sugarcane leaf before the base cutter cuts the stalk. The de-topping unit consists of a cane leaf gathering, rotary cutting unit, height adjustment unit, and hydraulic motor. The de-topper unit is attached to the front of the main frame’s left side on a vertical supporting post. The vertical supporting post is provided by a telescope arrangement for height adjustment with the help of a hydraulic cylinder for followed by sugarcane head height. Cane walker unit is mounted on the harvester main frame above the base cutter, which is supported by the pneumatic tyre. It is provided for conveying the cut cane and guiding into the collection trolley. It consists of conveyer support frame, conveyer chain, conveyer chain tightener, and hydraulic motor. Two chain conveyors rotate the clockwise and anti-clockwise to gather the cut cane from the base cutter to the collection trolley. Chain conveyor is adjusted by using a chain tightener. Cane collection trolley is attached to the main frame rear end with the help of hitch pin and the collection trolley is guided by two pneumatic wheels. Hydraulic system consists of three hydraulic motors for the de-topping unit and cane walker unit, three hydraulic cylinders are used for de-topping height adjustment, top link adjustment and collection trolley unload operation and the directional control values to operate the motor and cylinder. Hydraulic system is powered by a tractor PTO output shaft. The tractor-operated whole cane harvester was field-tested at the Research farm of M/s. Bannari Amman sugars and M/s.Sakthi Sugars Ltd, TN. The average field capacity of the unit is 0.12 ha/h and the field efficiency of the unit is 0.70%