Feasibility Assessment of Pant-ICAR Animal Drawn Six-in-One Tillage Outfit in Kumaon Hills of Uttarakhand

Abstract

In hill agriculture, bullocks are mainly used for ploughing with traditional wooden hal and puddling with Mai for not more than 30–40 days in a year. These age-old tools and implements to not only consume more time and labour but also incur higher cost of operation. The local hill plough called ‘hal’ used by most of the farmers is made of Banjh/Utish wood which needs frequent replacement of different parts with life span of 4 to 5 years. To overcome these problems, a bullock operated ‘Six-in-one tillage outfit’ made of steel was designed, developed and patented under the ICAR National Professor Scheme at Pantnagar. The feasibility trials of this outfit when working as a Jet plough, Fertilizer applicator, Seed drill, Ridger and Potato digger were conducted at ICAR-VPKAS, Almora experimental farm as well as at farmers’ field during 2012–13. The field capacity of Jet plough, Seed drill, Ridger and Potato digger was found to be 0.02, 0.035, 0.05 and 0.042 ha/h, respectively. In case of ploughing with Jet plough an average draft of 0.55 kN was observed with soil inversion of 26.4% as most of the residues were retained at the surface. The highest yield of wheat (6.14 t/ha) was obtained when fertilizer was placed at 5–10 cm depth with fertilizer applicator of outfit before sowing. The ridger and potato digger were found feasible to be used manually in small plots. The ‘Pant-ICAR animal drawn six-in-one tillage outfit’ was recommended to hill farmers for enhanced annual utilization of bullocks in different agricultural operations.