Majd Asaad* 1 and Shaza Asaad1
1 Department of Agricultural Mechanization, Faculty of Technical Engineering, Tartous University, Syria.
(*Corresponding author: Dr. Shaza Asaad. E.mail: Shazaasaad44@ gmail.com ).
Received: 16/ 06/ 2024 Accepted: 16/ 09/ 2024
Abstract:
This study was carried out on clay soil in a field at Yahmoor- in Tartous province, on potato (vr.”spunta”) during (2019-2020) to investigate the effect of weapons inclination angle and tubers damage index forward speed of the locally manufactured potato digger in the qthe percentage of the undamaged tubers (71.53 %) and the percentage of the lifting tubers (87.33 %), and decreased significantly the percentage of the quantitative and qualitative loss tubers (16.15, 12.31 %) respectively, and the uantitative and qualitative loss and tubers damage index. Two different angle of inclination weapons (m) were used as a main plot ) 30 degree (M1), and 35 degree (M2)., while three different speed of work were used as split plots included S1 1.6 km/h, S2 2.3 km/h, S3 3.32 km/h. Split-plot design under randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replicates was used in this study. A statistical analysis was made to test the differences between treatments and their interaction with LSD at 0.05 level of probability. The results showed that undamaged and lifted tubers increased, while the quantitative & qualitative loss , and tubers damage index decreased with an increased at inclination weapon angle and a decreased in the work speed of the potato digger. The angle inclination (35) increased significantly percentage of the undamaged tubers (71.53 %), and percentage of the lifting tubers (87.33 %) and decreased significantly the percentage of the quantitative and qualitative loss tuber (16.15 ,12.31 %) respectivety, and tubers damage index (78.28). The speed S1 1.6 km/h also achieved the highest percentage of undamaged tubers (75.76 %), and the lifted tubers (91.22 %), and the lowest qualitative & quantitative losses (15.46, 8.77%) respectively, and was significantly superior to that of the rest of the measured lifting speeds. The interaction treatment (M2xS1) gave the highest value of the percentage of undamaged tubers (77.69 %), the lifted tubers (91.76 %), and the lowest percentage of quantitative & qualitative loss (8.23 and 14.07 %) respectively, and tubers damage index (67.08) compared to the other treatments.
Keywords: potato harvester, weapons inclination angle, lifting speed, qualitative loss, quantitative loss, tuber damage index.
Full paper in Arabic: PDF