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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
The cover cropping in orchards is an advantageous method of weeding which suppresses the weed growth as well as adds additional income. The side-shift offset rotavator was used to prepare a weed free seed bed in orchard field. Certain machine and soil parameter which governs the quality of a seedbed were selected as independent factors, it included: type of cutting blade; kinematic parameter and soil moisture content. While the soil particle size, weeding efficiency and fuel consumption was considered as the dependent parameters. In optimization process, it was observed that the L–shape blade gives 86.84% finer soil particle, but consumes 19.53% higher fuel than the J–shape blade at optimized soil moisture content and lambda ratio of 16.40% and 8.83 respectively. The regression model for mean mass diameter and fuel consumption has the coefficient of determination (R2 value) of 0.8716 and 0.9037 respectively at 1% level of significance. It was found that there was a significant effect of soil moisture content, type of soil cutting blade and lambda ratio on the performance of side-shift offset rotavator.