Design and Development of Tractor-Operated Trash Mulcher-Cum-Stubble Shaver Device for Sugarcane Ratoon Crop

Adopting trash mulch in sugarcane farming encounters challenges attributed to the lack of suitable all-in-one trash management machinery with simultaneous stubble shaving. This limits soil health benefits and impeding advantages such as quick trash decomposition during ratoon crop initiation. Thus, in the present study, a tractor-operated trash mulcher-cum-stubble shaver device for sugarcane ratoon crop was designed and developed at ICAR-Indian Institute of Sugarcane Research (IISR), Lucknow, India. The design of this device includes three major units such as trash mulching, chemical spraying and stubble shaving unit to complete the trash management operations in one go in the manually harvested sugarcane crop field. Based on computer-aided design, the device was developed which is simple in construction and capable of eliminating the manual collection of trash or burning it. It operates with the provision of differential height cutting blades, the trash mulching unit effectively shreds and mulches the trash lying on the ridges as well as in the furrows of sugarcane rows. The liquid trash decomposer is sprayed over the shredded trash with the chemical spraying unit followed by stubble shaver that precisely shaves two rows of harvested stubbles without cane splitting or clogging. Performance evaluation of the developed device was carried out at IISR Research Farm to obtain the best speed ratio (SR) and trash shredding height (TSH). The trash mulcher-cum-stubble shaver device delivers uniform trash shredding (95.8 %) and uniformity of trash spreading (92.6 %) at SR 26 and TSH 25 mm. This device operates at a tractor speed of 2.5 km h⁻¹ consuming 4.5 l h⁻¹ diesel fuel with effective field capacity of 0.3 ha h⁻¹ at 80.0 % field efficiency. The developed technology initiates better ratooning, boosts trash mulching, reduces operational time, dependence on labor and environmental degradation by converting trash indirectly into cash.