Performance evaluation of a rotary clod pulverizer

Rotary clod pulverizer is an agricultural implement, which help in reducing time used for farm operation in preparing the soil for planting. The objectives of this study were to carry out the performance evaluation of a tractor driven rotary clod pulverizer at different soil depth of 9, 18, 27, 36 and 45 cm of a sandy clay loamy textural soil. The parameters determined before, during and after experiment were; soil moisture content, bulk density, theoretical field capacity, effective field capacity, field efficiency. Thereafter, models were developed for the predictions of effective field capacity and field efficiency, as a function of the soil depth and the tractor speed. Results showed that the soil moisture content ranged between 17.07% and 19.78%, bulk density of the soil before penetration ranged between 1.25 gm/cm³ and 1.52 g/cm³, and ranged between 1.17 – 1.28 g/cm³ after penetration. Across the soil depth and tractor speed, the theoretical field capacities (TFC) ranged 0.1165 ha/hr and 0.357 ha/hr, while the effective field capacity (EFC) ranged between 0.1327 and 0.2347 ha h-1. The field efficiency (FE) ranged between 51.61 and 80.18% in across the soil depths and tractor speeds at 1.1, 1.6 and 2.5 km/h. The TFC values increase with tractor speed, indicating that the time required for the rotary clod pulverizer operation was lesser at higher speed than the time required for the operation at lower speed. Also, coefficient of determination (R2) of the developed regression equation between the soil depth and tractor speed for EFC and FC prediction were 73 and 94%, respectively. This showed that the developed model is reliable and accurate for the prediction of EFC and FC.