Abstract

                                Finger millet crop is important minor millet, which can serve as both food and fodder. Manual harvesting of finger millet involves harvesting earhead and stalk separately which is labor intensive. Hence, the study aimed to design and develop a harvester for finger millet to remove drudgery in harvesting and to achieve a low cost of harvesting. The important crop and machine parameters influencing the harvesting of finger millets were identified for the most prominent variety of CO (Ra) 14 in finger millet. A prototype finger millet harvester was developed and the effect of a machine and operational parameters were evaluated in terms of header loss at different levels of a rotational speed of reel 30, 35 and 40 revolutions per minute (rpm), 35, 40 and 45 cm mounting height of reel and forward speed 1.6, 2.68, and 3.48 km/h. The performance of the harvest was found satisfactory. Comparing the best combinations of machine and operational parameters, the minimum header loss of 1.25 per cent was achieved at the combination of 30 rpm rotational speed of reel, 40 cm mounting height of reel and 2.68 km/h forward speed.

Key words : Cutter Bar; Reel; Header Loss; Forward Speed; Reel Mounting Height