Rapeseed and Canola are grown on an area of 0.248 and 0.117 million hectares with a total production of 0.215 and 0.173 million tonnes, respectively. Its harvesting is done manually with sickle and threshing with stick beating or tractor treading. Traditional threshing is labour intensive, time consuming and gives poor quality seed output, which is one of the main constraints in increasing area under canola crop for enhancing domestic edible oil production.
Introduction
Rapeseed and Canola are grown on an area of 0.248 and 0.117 million hectares with a total production of 0.215 and 0.173 million tonnes, respectively. Its harvesting is done manually with sickle and threshing with stick beating or tractor treading. Traditional threshing is labour intensive, time consuming and gives poor quality seed output, which is one of the main constraints in increasing area under canola crop for enhancing domestic edible oil production.
Technology Development, Demonstration and Commercialization
A project for development of a multi-crop thresher was initiated for threshing rapeseed/mustard and canola crop. A conventional wheat thresher was modified at FMI Prototype Workshop. Prototype machine was evaluated at farmer’s field near Bhara Kahu during rapeseed harvesting season 2003. Machine was tested at three different threshing drums peripheral speeds; 500, 550 and 600 rpm for three crop moisture levels; 22%, 18% and 14%. Thresher performed best with speed of 550 rpm and crop mc 22%; at which threshing capacity was 372 kg per hour with threshing efficiency of 99.6% and fuel consumption of 4.6 litres per hour; while the total machine loss and seed damage was o.3% and 0.2%, respectively.
A commercial unit of modified machine was manufactured by a manufacturer
located in Faisalabad with technical assistance from FMI and handed over to FMI for performance evaluation and extensive field demonstrations. Machine output capacity was found to be 460 kilograms per hour. Labour requirement was found to be 11 man-hours per tonne of seed output as compared to 56 and 42 man-hours for traditional threshing with tractor treading followed by winnowing in addition to 3.5 tractor working hours be required, respectively. Total operation cost was found to be Rs. 1,250 as compared to Rs. 2,800 per tonne of seed output for traditional threshing. The machine was extensively demonstrated to farmers and four machinery manufacturers in Punjab and NWFP Provinces.
The Technology
The Wheat-cum-Canola Thresher is a tractor PTO operated, a multi-purpose machine equally good for threshing wheat as well as rapeseed/mustard/canola and other small seeded crops. All drives are optioned with variable speed as per requirement of different crops. Crop feeding is very easy due to feeder with platform. Easily replaceable sieve system has been designed and installed for threshing different crops.
Key References
Shahid, LA; AW Zafar and N Amjad. (2006). Modification and Field Performance Evaluation of Conventional Wheat Thresher for Rapeseed. Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 25:95-103.
