2025, Vol. 8, Issue 1, Part E

author(s)
Dnyanesh Vhatkar, AA Deogirikar, KG Dhande, AG Mohod and PS Gudadhe

abstract
Dioscorea esculenta, commonly known as lesser yam. It is cultivated in Kerala, Goa, Konkan region of Maharashtra in India. Usually, the matured rhizomes are dug manually using hand tools or Pickaxe. Manual harvesting of lesser yam very laborious that needs approximately 300 - 350 man-h/ha including minimum rest period. But power tillers are used by the farmers for the puddling or land preparation. Considering this, it was felt necessary to develop a power tiller operated lesser yam digger suitable for small land holdings. Hence, the study entitled “Development and performance evaluation of power tiller operated lesser yam digger” was undertaken. Based on design considerations it was decided to develop ridger type equipment. Filler trials of the ridger type blade were found satisfactory but required to have some modifications to make it suitable for the current cultivation practices. operating parameters decided were the rake angle of the blade (10,15,20,25 and 30) and the forward speed of the implement 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25, 1.5 km/h as per previous studies and depth of operation was considered 400 mm. However, during experimentation, it was observed that the digger was working properly till 260 m depth only. The results of performance of lesser yam digger showed that, at forward speed 1 km/h and rake angle 20º, the dug tubers capacity (%), damaged tubers percentage (%), undug tubers capacity (%), damaged undug tubers percentage (kg/ha), digging efficiency (%) and field efficiency (%) were 8520 kg/ha, 22%, 2400 kg/ha, 38%, 78%, 85% respectively. The total development cost for digger was ₹ 4040/- and operating cost was found to be ₹ 7270 /ha respectively. The cost of manually digging was observed to ₹ 12000/ha. Therefore, it was found that the lesser yam harvesting cost with developed root crop digger was 39.41% less than that of manual harvesting method. The net saving in turmeric harvesting with root crop digger was ₹ 4730/ha.