P. Rajaiah, Ch. Sravan Kumar, B. Laxman, B. Vennela and A. Pramod Reddy
Abstract
The mechanization of Indian farms is imperative to enhance input use efficiency, reduce humandrudgery,cost of production and to address issues of labour scarcity and timeliness of farm operations. Digging oftrenches for laying pvc pipes in sprinkler and drip irrigation system has become drudgery by humanlabour, more expensive and time consuming. Commercially available machines are high capacity, morecost of operation and not affordable to the small and marginal farmers. To overcome this problems, a smalltractor operated trencher was designed and developed. The developed trencher was evaluated in the fieldat a 1.5,2,2.5 km/h forward speeds. During field trails it was observed increase in forwardspeed from 1.5to 2.5 km/h resulted in decrease in depth of trench, fuel consumption and capacity of auger. Increased inforward speed resulted in increase in length of trench.