Abstract:
Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the staple food and major crop in Sri Lanka. Improving rice cropping practices and production systems are required to enable sustainability. Presently bund cleaning, plastering, and kiwul-ela construction are done manually and there is no proper mechanical solution. Thus, this study was aimed to design and develop an appropriate bund plastering and kiwul-ela making equipment as a rear attachment to a walking type two-wheel tractor. The main components of the equipment are bund cleaner, bund plaster, kiwul-ela maker, depth controller, and main frame. The field condition of the test land was measured, and the bulk density and moisture content were 1.14 gcm-3 and 14.81% respectively. The prototype showed significantly higher comparative performances; 93.93% of time saving and 64.4% of cost reduction over the manual method (p<0.05). Further, it showed highly satisfactory field performances; such as 2.045 kmh-1 operational speed (second gear), 0.032 ± 0.002 m plastering thickness, and 0.21 ± 0.02 m height, 52.054 x 10-3 hah-1 theoretical field capacity and 63.6% field efficiency. Due to the higher performance of this bund cleaning, plastering and kiwul-ela making equipment, the equipment could be suggested over manual method for small scale paddy farmers. The efficiency of the bund plastering could be further increased by increasing plastering height of the moldboard.
