Development of tractor operated bund former-cum-packer for increasing resource productivity

Abstract

In mechanized farm, bund is prepared by a bund former either operated by tractor or animals for irrigation purposes and also to demarcate the fields. Tractor operated bund formers are normally either disc -or mould board or forming board type. If bund is formed with the help of traditional bund former, however, shaping and packing of bunds is done manually using spade and feet. This activity is time consuming and labour intensive. To overcome the drudgery involve in these operations, a tractor operated bund former-cum-packer was designed and developed. An attempt is made for enabling the combined operations of bund forming and packing in single pass that can save fuel, time and other resources further. The bund former-cum-packer consisted of commercially available disc type bund former, rectangular tool bar frame, and packing unit (concentric cylindrical roller, drive shaft, conical discs, compressive shanks etc). The bund formed by bund former-cum-packer was field tested and found neither water seepage nor breakage of bund during flood irrigation. The field capacity with the equipment was 1.4 ha/h at tractor speed of 2.93 km/h in 2nd low gear. The bund former-cum-packer can reduce about 96% dependency on labour requirement for packing the bund. Overall use of the equipment is having potential to increase the resource productivity by 38 %.