Farm Power And Machinery (1+1)

Potato Harvester

Potato Harvester

• On large size farms where potato cultivation is practiced on commercial scale, animal drawn cultivators or country ploughs were used for harvesting the potatoes. However, the implement consisting of a ridge bottom and a replaceable bar point share has been successfully employed for this purpose. The potato soil mass while moving on the rods provided at the back of the share, gets separated. The potatoes are then dropped on the ground which is later collected manually. The same implement has been modified and can be hitched by a power tiller also. The animal drawn groundnut digger can be successfully used for digging of potatoes.
• A potato digger suitably designed to be operated as a mounted machine by a tractor. The potato harvester is used extensively for harvesting potatoes in Northern States of India. The machine uses conventional digging blade and a shaker conveyor made of steel rods. As the tractor with the machine moves over the field, the soil and potatoes are dug out and lifted on the conveyor chain. The soil is shaken out by agitation where as the potatoes are collected in bags.
• The tractor operated potato digger consists of a three point hitch frame, main frame, and two column frames with blade. Blade is fixed to with two detachable ridge opening devices. On the sides of the columns, two furrow guides are provided for stability of the digger. Two replaceable high carbon steel shovels are fitted in front of the blade for easy penetration in dry field conditions and to prevent it from wear.
The tractor powered potato digger can be conveniently divided into four broad categories:

• Blade type diggers,
• Single row spinner digger type machines,
• Single or double row elevator diggers,
• Oscillating / vibrator diggers.
The most common among the four designs as stated above is the elevator type digger. The commercial machines are of both single row and two row types. The machine consists of a shovel type digger and endless elevator to complete the total operation.