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DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF SELF PROPELLED REAPER FOR HARVESTING

MULTI CROPS

Conference Paper · July 2015

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 An ASABE Meeting Presentation
DOI:10.13031/aim.20152189141
Paper Number: 152189141

DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF SELF PROPELLED REAPER

FOR HARVESTING MULTI CROPS
Muhammad Nadeema, Muhammad Iqbalb, Aitazaz Farooquec, Anjum Munirb,
Manzoor Ahmadb, Qamar Zamand

a
Department of Industrial Engineering, Sexton Campus, 208-5269, Dalhousie University, Morris
Street, PO Box 15000, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 4R2, Canada.
b Department of Farm Machinery and Power , Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, University of
agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
c
Department of Mechanical Engineering, 1360 Barrington St, Dalhousie University,
Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 4R2, Canada.
d
Department of Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Dalhousie University, 39 Cox Road, Truro, Nova
Scotia, B2N 5E3, Canada.

Written for presentation at the

2015 ASABE Annual International Meeting
Sponsored by ASABE
New Orleans, Louisiana
July 26 – 29, 2015
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Abstract. Harvesting of cereal crops is one of the major operations in agriculture production, which requires
great attention. The objective of this work was to design of self-propelled reaper, and to evaluate its performance
for harvesting of rice, brassica and wheat crops. Fields of rice, wheat and brassica were selected University of
Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan. Factorial experiments (3 x 3) were conducted at each site with three levels of
moisture content i.e.27%, 22% and 19 % for rice, 16.7%, 14.5% and 13% for wheat, and 18.32%, 16.05% and
15.7% for brassica were selected. The levels of machine’s ground speed were1.94, 2.54 and 3.18kmh-1. Twenty
seven plots (1.524 x 3m) were selected randomly in each field to collect data for average percentage (%)
slippage, shatter losses and field efficiency. The machine was operated at selected levels of ground speeds and
moisture contents for each crop.
Factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that the selected levels of ground speed and moisture contents
have significant (p=0.05) effect on % slippage and field efficiency and non-significant on shatter losses for rice
and wheat crops, whereas significant effect in brassica. Results indicated that in early harvesting at high moisture
content, the shatter losses were significantly lower with the higher % slippage. Results reported that the shatter
losses, field efficiency and % slippage were influenced by selected levels of ground speed and moisture contents. A
suitable combination of ground speed and moisture content can minimize the grain losses and increase the
yield and profitability of the farmer’s community.
Keywords. Cereal crops, field efficiency, mechanical harvesting, self-propelled reaper, shatter losses and
percentage slippage.

Introduction
Pakistan is one of the developing countries in south Asia with the cropped area of 22 million hectares. Agriculture
industry is a major contributor to the economy of Pakistan. The agricultural gross domestic production (GDP) is
24% by employing 48% labor force. Approximately 67% of the Pakistan’s population is living in rural areas, which
are directly or indirectly associated with agriculture sector for their survival (FAO, 2004). Agriculture sector in
Pakistan not only meets the national demands of food and fiber but also contributes 75% to foreign exchange
earnings (Raza et al., 2012). Mechanization is one of the most important inputs for crop production. Agricultural
mechanization is the process of utilizing agricultural machinery to increase the yield dynamically (Roohi, 2007).
Most of the rice and wheat crop in Pakistan is manually harvested with the help of sickle. Harvesting with sickle
is laborious and time consuming. Most of the labor class of Pakistan is moving from villages to the cites and
overseas to get good jobs in industries, this situation creates labor shortage during harvesting season (Gill,
1989).
During the peak season of harvesting, labor shortage remains a biggest problem for farmers and they have to
pay large amounts for harvesting. The labor intensive activities, however, must be so designed as to minimize
the impact of labor displacement, while engaging machines (Chaudhary, 1978). Normally, wheat and rice are
harvested with a front mounted tractor driven reaper and brassica is harvested manually in few areas of Pakistan.
Harvesting machinery (combines, reapers and threshers) is developed not only to overcome the shortage of
labor and timely operations but also to facilitate the multi cropping sequence in Pakistan. Small land holders (5
to 10 hectares) in Pakistan are a major constraint for the adoption of modern harvesting machinery and mowers
(Tahir, 2003).
Many researches have evaluated manual and mechanical harvesting equipment in different cropping systems
(Morad et al., 2007; Devani and Panday, 1985; Devani and Nag, 1970). Chaudhary (1978) suggested that the
sickle harvesting requires 50% more labor than the mechanical reaping. He also reported that the harvesting
losses with reaper were 50% lower when compared with the sickle harvesting. Manzoor (1996) developed and
evaluated a computer package (CHSDAM) revealing that the reaper and mechanical threshing was the best
solution for harvesting of cereal crops in Pakistan. Dange and Thakare (2008) developed and evaluated a tractor
mounted reaper in the field, suggesting that the cutting efficiency and the field capacity of the reaper were 83.30%
and 0.146 ha h-1, respectively. The fuel consumption and crop damage were also observed to be higher with the
increase in machine operation. Sing et al. (2008) developed a self-propelled reaper GRH-1.2, which was based
on Japanese reaper model AR 120 of KUBOTA. This reaper consisted of three units i.e. reaping unit and
conveying unit, and power unit.
Parida (2008) evaluated three different self-propelled reapers and one tractor mounted reaper suggesting the
field capacity of 0.34 ha h-1 and 0.19 ha h-1 for tractor mounted and self-propelled reapers, respectively. It was
also reported that the grain losses were less than 5% with the manpower requirement of 59-61 h ha-1. Alizadeh
et al. (2007) compared the performance of power tiller-mounted rice reaper with manual harvesting indicating
that the field capacities of 0.170 ha h-1 and 0.008 ha h-1 for reaper and manual harvesting. The labor requirements
for manual harvesting (128 men-h ha-1) were significantly higher than the mechanical reaper harvesting (5.88
men-h ha-1).
2015 ASABE Annual International Meeting Paper Page 1
Keeping in view the aforesaid discussion, the present study was designed to develop a multi crop self-propelled
reaper for effective harvesting with small adjustments/modifications in the machine dynamics. The high initial
cost of the machines and their repair/maintenance are important issues on the way to the wide spread of the
agricultural machinery. In different areas, multiple dealers are selling small machines on small scale without
proper arrangements of machine maintenance. The state functionaries also restrict the import of farm machinery
by levying heavy taxes on imports in Pakistan, which results in lower adoption of the mechanical reapers. These
issues emphasize the need to develop a reaper for small farmers of Pakistan to harvest cereal crops at affordable
price and to evaluate the performance efficiency of the developed machine. This reaper has a potential to reduce
the labor requirements for harvesting and will increase the farm profitability of the small land holders. The
increase in population and division of land among people will definitely increase the demand of such small
machinery in Pakistan.

Materials and methods

Study Area
Three fields of rice, brassica and wheat were selected in the experimental area of the University of Agriculture,
Faisalabad (UAF), Pakistan. This study was carried out to test the performance efficiency of the existing self-
propelled reaper for wheat and rice crops, and modified reaper for brassica harvesting at selected
UAF(31°26'07.7"N 73°04'21.0"E 2.54 ha) sites.
General specifications of self-propelled reaper
This machine is suitable for harvesting wheat and rice with overall width, length and height (1.65 x 2.33x 1.05 m)
of the crop. The swath width of the cutter bar is 1.54 m. There are two conveyer chains along with four sprockets
and five star wheels. Star wheels and conveyer chains are used to convey the cut crop in right direction. The
power source of this machine is a diesel engine of 5.74 kW. The self-propelled multi crop reaper had two rubber
tyres, each having 0.40 m diameter, on either side of the unit. Rubber tyres were employed to meet the following
conditions i.e. i) carrying load and transfer implement forces (pull and breaking) ii) lowering soil compaction and
surface damage iii) provide elasticity and damping (to reduce vehicle vibrations) iv) lower the wear and tear, and
elongate the life of the machine. After harvesting the rice crop with the existing reaper, following tyre problems
were observed i.e. increased power consumption, lower height of the cutter blades, and difficulty in turning at
high soil moisture conditions. The design of tyre was changed to rectify the above problems. The new tyre design
(125/ 72R13) was used for further testing and evaluations of the reaper.
The existing self-propelled reaper is designed only for wheat and rice crops in Pakistan. It was not being used
for tall crop like brassica. Many efforts were made to use this reaper for tall crops, but were not successful due
to the design weakness. In order to make it suitable for tall crops a set of v-belts along with pulleys and a
supporting mechanism was adjusted and incorporated to the existing reaper for harvesting brassica. The
supporting mechanism consists of rectangular plate (1.45 x 0.60 m). The additional conveying mechanism
consisted of two pulleys and two v-belts was installed. This mechanism provided additional support to the tall
crop (Fig.3). This was an adjustable/portable arrangement for not compromising its efficiency in wheat and rice
crops. By adding these components, this reaper was able to perform efficiently and reliably in harvesting tall
crops. The improved design of the self-propelled reaper for multi crops harvesting is shown in Fig.1.
Experiment design
Factorial experiment (3x3) were constructed at each site with three levels of moisture content and ground speeds.
Twenty seven plots (1.524 x 3m; same as the width of the reaper) were selected randomly in each field to collect
data for average %slippage, shatter losses and field efficiency. The data regarding grain losses during crop
harvesting was collected, arranged and statistically analyzed using PROC GLM (General Linear Model)
procedures of the SAS institute (SAS, 2009). The means of the statistically different treatments were compared
using least squares (LS) method at 5% probability level, (Montgomery, 2009).

2015 ASABE Annual International Meeting Paper Page 2

 Figure 1: Improved design of self-propelled reaper for tall crops.

Results and Discussion

The validity of the model assumptions (normal distribution, constant variance and independence of the error
terms) was tested and verified at 5% level of significance. The goal of this study was to evaluate the modified
self-propelled reaper for harvesting rice, wheat and brassica. The factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed
that the main effects of the ground speed and MC have significant (p=0.05) effect on % slippage and field
efficiency and non-significant impact on shatter losses in rice and wheat crops. However, the main effects were
significant in brassica indicating that the ground speed and MC can have an impact on the picking performance
of the self-propelled reaper (Table 1). The interaction of ground speed and MC has non-significant effect on the
% slippage and significant effect on shatter losses and field efficiency. Moreover, the interaction of ground speed
and MC has significant effect on shatter losses and non-significant impact on field efficiency and % slippage for
brassica crop (Table 1).
Table 1: Analysis of variance using factorial design for three crops.

Crops Rice Wheat Brassica

Source SP SL FE SP SL FE SP SL FE

Speed (s) * * * * * * * * *

Moisture contents(MC) * NS * * NS * * * *

SxM NS * * NS * * NS * NS

Significance indicated by * and NS = non-significant at p = 0.05. Where (SP) for Slippage, (SL) for shatter losses and (FE) for field efficiency

In factorial experiments if the higher order interaction is significant, their main effects can be ignored. In summary,
results reported that the % slippage, shatter losses and field efficiency were influenced by the ground speed and
MC either alone or in combination suggesting that a suitable combination could result in better field efficiency of
the self-propelled reaper. Results of multiple means comparison indicated that the mean slippage for rice crop
was observed to be lower (7.33%) at S1 (1.94 km h-1), when compared with other treatment combinations (Fig.
2) for multiple crops (Fig. 2). There were non-significant differences among the average slippage at second and
third levels of ground speed (Fig. 2). Treatment combination of S1 x MC1 was found to the best among other
combinations with minimum %slippage for rice crop. The lowest slippage at S1could be due to more grip of reaper
tires with soil than those at higher ground speeds.

2015 ASABE Annual International Meeting Paper Page 3

 12 10.48 10.3
9.6
10 9.15 9 9.11
8.57 8.36
7.33

Slippage (%)
8
MC1
6
MC2
4
MC3
2

0
1 2 3
Speed (km h-1)

Where MC1=27%, MC2=22% and MC3=19% soil moisture contents and 1= S1 (1.94 km/h) 2=S2 (2.54 km/h) 3=S3 (3.18 km/h) speed of machine
Figure 2: Effect of ground speed and moisture contents on slippage in rice field.

Results revealed that the mean shatter losses were observed to be lowest (0.18%) at S1 when compared with
the other ground speeds (Fig. 3). The mean shatter losses were higher at S2 and S3, which might be due to
excessive impact implied by the reaper on rice plants. The average shatter losses at S1, S2 and S3 were
significantly different from each other, suggesting that the selected levels of ground speed and MC can have an
impact on the shatter losses of the self-propelled reaper. Treatment combination of S1 x MC3 was found to the
best among other combinations with minimum shatter losses. The lowest shatter losses at S1could be due to
gentle impact of reaper with stalks of crop. These results reported that a suitable combination of ground speed
and MC can enhance the picking performance of the mechanical reaper by reducing the shatter losses.

0.8
0.66 0.65
0.7 0.61
0.6 0.54
Shatter losses %

0.52 0.46
0.5
0.4 MC1
0.29
0.3 0.23 MC2
0.18
0.2 MC3
0.1
0
1 2 3
Speed (km h-1)

Where MC1=27%, MC2=22% & MC3=19% soil moisture content and 1= S1 (1.94 km/h) 2=S2 (2.54 km/h) 3=S3 (3.18 km/h) speed of machine.
Figure 3: Effect of ground speed and moisture contents on shatter losses in rice field.

Results of LS means indicated that the field efficiency of the rice harvesting was found to be the highest (74.22%)
at S2 x MC1, when compared with other treatment combinations (Fig. 4). There was a fluctuating trend for the
field efficiency for different treatment combinations. Treatment combination of S1 x MC3 was found to be the
worst with minimum field efficiency, when compared with other treatment combinations. The lowest field
efficiency at S1 x MC3 could be due to more retention time in the crop causing more losses. Overall, these results
suggested that the field efficiency of the self-propelled reaper influenced by the ground speed and MC of the
crop.
Results of the means comparison reported that the treatment 1 (S1 x MC1) was found to the best for % slippage
and field efficiency in wheat and brassica crops (Table 2). Treatments 8 and 9 resulted in lowest field efficiency

2015 ASABE Annual International Meeting Paper Page 4

 76 74.22
74 72.14
71.9 71
72 70.14 70.32 69.88

Field Efficiency (%)

70 68.05
68
66 64.08 MC1
64
MC2
62
60 MC3
58
56
1 2 3
Speed (km h-1)

Where MC1=27%, MC2=22% and MC3=19% moisture contents and 1= S1 (1.94 km h-1) 2=S2 (2.54 km h-1) 3=S3 (3.18 km h-1) speed of machine.
Figure 4: Effect of ground speed and moisture on field efficiency in rice field

Table 2: Results of multiple means comparison using least-squares method to identify the effects on slippage, shatter losses and
field efficiency during wheat and brassica harvesting.

Wheat
Shatter losses
Treatment Speed (km h-1) Moisture contents % Slippage (%) (%) Field efficiency (%
1 1.94 16.7 9.37 c 0.24 b 71.46 a
2 1.94 14.5 11.04 ab 0.13 c 69.29 ab
3 1.94 13.9 11.81 ab 0.11 c 66.03 bc
4 2.54 16.7 9.67 c 0.22 b 70.37 ab
5 2.54 14.5 11.8 ab 0.27 ab 68.72 b
6 2.54 13.9 12.25 a 0.27 ab 66.96 ab
7 3.18 16.7 10.64 b 0.29 ab 67.19 bc
8 3.18 14.5 12.75 a 0.37 a 65.53 c
9 3.18 13.9 12.97 a 0.42 a 64.53 c

Brassica
Shatter losses
Treatment Speed (km h-1) Moisture contents % Slippage (%) (%) Field efficiency (%
1 1.94 18.32 7.78 c 0.27 c 72.93 a
2 1.94 16.05 8.21 bc 0.21 c 70.92 b
3 1.94 15.7 8.99 b 0.19 c 67.69 b
4 2.54 18.32 8.42 b 0.50 b 71.77bc
5 2.54 16.05 8.93 b 0.62 a 69.95 bc
6 2.54 15.7 9.32 ab 0.46 b 68.5 bc
7 3.18 18.32 9.29 ab 0.54 ab 68.99 c
8 3.18 16.05 9.25 ab 0.67 a 66.8 c
9 3.18 15.7 10.26 a 0.62 a 67.51 c
Means with different letters are significantly different at p=0.05.

and highest % slippage, indicating poor performance of the reaper at these combinations. Lowest speed in
combination with lowest MC provided a gentle impact resulting in better crop recovery with minimum %slippage.
Significantly lower shatter losses were observed at treatment 3 (S1 x MC3) for wheat and brassica crop (Table
2). Lower speed could be the reason for lower shatter losses. In general, shatter losses were more at higher
ground speed, which might be due to excessive shaking of the plants due to higher ground speed. Results
revealed that the ground speed of 1.94 km h-1 in combination with MC1 (18.32%) resulted in lowest slippage and
2015 ASABE Annual International Meeting Paper Page 5
 highest efficiency for both wheat and brassica crops. Overall, the results of ANOVA and LS means comparison
indicated that the % slippage, shatter losses and field efficiency were influenced by the ground speed and crop
MC. A suitable combination of ground speed in conjunction with MC can increase the harvesting efficiency of the
mechanical reaper which will increase the profit margins for small farmers.

Conclusions
The economic recession and shortage of labor in Pakistan will emphasize the need to use self-propelled reaper
for multiple crops harvesting. The modifications in the existing reaper were made using nut and bolts for farmer’s
ease to assemble and disassemble for different crops. Manufacturing cost of the self-propelled reaper was low
because of its light weight, compact design and fabricating according to engineering calculations. Based on the
results, it is concluded that the performance of self-propelled reaper was quite satisfactory. The shatter losses,
%slippage and field efficiency were influenced by the selected levels of ground speed and MC. In general, lowest
ground speed resulted in lowest %slippage, shatter losses, and highest field efficiency for multiple crops. The
higher ground speed resulted in more shatter losses and reduce the field efficiency of the self-propelled reaper.

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Endowment fund secretariat, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
The authors would like to thank Bushra Nadeem, Mubashir Umar, Kamran and Usama (graduate students),
Hassan Shafaqat, Sidhra Qasim, Usman Zafar and Hafiz Usman Ghani (PhD, Scholar) and Shahid Bashir
technician for providing technical support during the experiment and modification at the workshop.

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2015 ASABE Annual International Meeting Paper Page 6

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