Description:India is the largest producer, consumer and exporter of turmeric around the world. The global production of turmeric is about 11 lakhs tones per annum. According to India, Tamil Nadu holds 2nd in the production of turmeric of about 5.52 ton/ha. Where Andra Pradesh holds 1st in the production of turmeric of about 7.41 ton/ha. The tractor mounted turmeric harvester was first invented by Murugesan and Jajuddin in (1995), where they developed the turmeric digger with 2 digger blade and further it have been developed by Tapare in (2005). Where the tractor mounted turmeric harvester cost’s around Rs.90,000. Japan come up with power tiller in 1920. The power tiller costs around 60,000 to 1.98 lakhs. India has popularized it in 1963. In Japan it is employed by large scale farmers .The other day TNAU have developed a turmeric harvester in power tiller in 2000. Manuwa et al who invented power weeder in 2009. It costs around Rs.25,000 to 98,000, where it is utilized by both large and small scale farmers. By using traditional harvesting method, it consumes more time and Countless amount of manual labours is required from the planting to harvesting stage of turmeric and they are repaid a lot .The unavailability of farm mechanization technologies that made them difficult in harvesting. So to ruin the trouble faced by the farmers and to support them we have designed an attachment for turmeric harvester in power weeder. It is comparatively inexpensive when compared to tractor mounted turmeric harvester. Affordable to all small and marginal farmers. It is a simple attachment in power weeder that have made the harvesting of turmeric quite smooth and the damage of turmeric rhizome is scaled down.
We have designed the attachment that gets the power source from the PTO. The PTO, which is in the power weeder, is attached to the gear box [502] with the help of a universal joint. The frame [501] is made up of mild steel. Which is then cut and fabricated into a rectangular shape. The conveyor [506], which is made up of chain and sprocket [508], the gear box is mounted to the frame. There are two pulleys [509]: one that is attached to the gear box with the help of a shaft [511], and another that is connected to the conveyor. With the help of a shaft that is mounted in the frame, the movement of the conveyor is made by this pulley. These two pulleys are connected by a V-belt [503]. The blade, which digs the turmeric, passes it to the conveyor. While the conveyor moves, the camshaft [505] that moves up and down is where the conveyor gets its vibration. By the vibration where the blade [504] that digs the soil and turmeric get separated and the turmeric that falls back in the field. And it is collected manually.
The developed harvester is attached to the rotary power weeder (4.4hp–7hp) by one-point linkage. The machine is operated on the forward or pulling force which principles to disturb the soil mass effectively. The frame is made of mild steel. The soil-cutting blade of trapezoidal section is inclined 25 degrees with a horizontal surface of ground, which penetrates into the soil up to a depth of 18–20 cm with an effective working width of 600mm. The soil mass and rhizomes uprooted by the blade pass over the web, which has an inclination of 10, an upper surface of the soil cutting blade, and a length of 500mm. The loosening soil mass and the turmeric rhizomes, after travelling at 270mm height at the end of the web, fall on the ground surface. The uprooted turmeric rhizomes are easy to collect from the field. And also collect the turmeric manually. , Claims: 1. The Fabrication of turmeric harvester attached to the power weeder with help of universal joint.
2. Were the harvesting of turmeric was first done by us in power weeder and with the attachment have been fabricated.
3. The blade that we have designed which is attached to the frame.
4. When we dig the soil the blade that moves down to that tales the soil in and it makes the turmeric to roll inside the conveyor and were the soil falls down the conveyor and the turmeric falls back on the field.
5 .The blade that works with the help of the camshaft which moves up and down when the blade starts its digging