Estimating Field Loss of a Developed Rice Stripper Harvester in Nigeria

摘要

Every attempt to reduce post harvest losses must inevitably start with minimizing losses during harvesting. Grain stripping harvester is a technology which is being developed and so far is becoming effective for rice and wheat harvesting. Grain losses in stripping harvester occur at the gathering/stripping operation which are shattering, stubble and lodging losses. The harvest loss estimation of rice harvesting with a self propelled grain stripper developed in Nigeria was carried out. The best machine settings of critical operating parameters were determined to obtain total minimum harvest loss estimation which was 13.5% of the total yield while the manual harvesting loss was 20.3% under the same condition. The machine setting at this combination was 270.0mm rotor height, 670.0rpm peripheral rotor speed and 3.0km/h forward speed which gave shattering loss as 5.5%, stubble loss was 4.9% and lodging loss was 3.1% of the total yield. Planting pure seed variety will reduce stripper header losses at harvest because it will result in uniform crop height at maturity.