Peer review

A power weeder was designed and developed in FMP Engineering divisional workshop, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Gazipur in 2005-06. The weeder was improved and redesigned in 2009-2010 by AutoCAD 2004 software. Then the weeder was fabricated according to design with locally available materials and spare parts. An additional gearbox was incorporated to get the facility of forward and backward motion of the weeder. A hand clutch connected with a dog clutch was also added to get the turning facilities. The weeder was tested with its rotary blade attachment for weeding maize in 2009-l 0. The treatments were T1- Weedy (control), Ti-Hand weeding at 20-25 d,1ys after sowing (DAS) and T1-Weeding by power weeder at 20-25 DAS. Among the treatments, T2 and T3 produced statistically similar yields, but significantly higher than that of T 1• Mechanical weeding by the power weeder saved about 90% weeding cost, and associated labour requirement. T3 produced the highest benefit and the lowest weeding cost. The average field capacity of the weeder was 0.093 ha/h and weeding index was found 0.75.

Text in English

Matin, Md.A. : No CIMMYT Affiliation