Technical and economic evaluation of three dry bean harvesting methods in Markazi Province

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Mahmood Safari ¹
• Abolfazl Hedayatipor ²
• Saeed Zarifneshat ³
• Hooman Sharifnasab ⁴

¹ Scientific board member / Agriculture Engineering Research Institute(AERI)

² Member of scientific of Agricultural Engineering Research Department, Agricultural Research and Natural Resources Center of Markazi

³ Agricultural engineering department, Khorasan Razavi Agricultural and natural resources research and education center, AREEO, Mashhad, Iran

⁴ Member of scientific board of Agricultural Engineering Research Institute (AERI), Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Karaj, Iran

Abstract

Keywords

• Dry been
• Harvesting machine
• Legumes
• Mechanization of harvesting legumes

Main Subjects

• ??

Technical and economic evaluation of three dry bean harvesting methods in Markazi Province

EXTEND ABSTRACT

Introduction

The area under bean cultivation in Iran is 100 thousands hectares and its production is 200,000 tons with a yield of 2.58tons per hectare. The most important bean-producing provinces are Fars, Lorestan, Marakazi, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Zanjan and East Azerbaijan in Iran. Markazi province with 24.713 thousand hectares of cultivated area and production of 29,900 tons and yield of 2.72 tons per hectare is considered one of the important production areas of this crop. In cultivation of this crop, tillage, planting and cultivating operations are done in mechanized method, but harvesting operations are often done with the manual method, which increases the labor and costs (for each hectare of bean harvesting,20 man-days are needed). During of harvest time, the wage of a seasonal worker has reached 800 thousand tomans per day. If we consider the average worker's wage to be 700 thousand tomans, the cost of one hectare per day of bean harvesting will be 14 million tomans per hectare. This cost is only related to the harvesting, to which the costs of threshing and cleaning should be added to this cost. If a bean harvesting machine is used for rent, the cost of harvesting will be reduced to 3.5 million tomans per hectare (about a quarter of the cost of manual harvesting). Recently, several companies have made bean harvesting machines, and in this research, the performance of these methods has been evaluated compared to the manual method.

Materials and Methods

This study was conducted in 2023 to determine the performance of bean harvester machines in comparison with manual method in Khomain area from Markazi province. The study used two machine harvesters, including Root cutter machine and Conventional machine harvester equipped with cutter bar and reel. These methods compared with manual methods in Randomize Complete Block Design (RCBD) in three replications. The experimental plot dimension was 40m*150 m and the yield and losses were measured by 50cm*50cm frame in four replications to attend 1m² area. These methods were evaluated and compared based on natural and harvesting losses, field capacity, field efficiency and yield in field conditions in Markazi province.

Results and Discussion

The results of the research showed that the use of the cutting comb mechanism along with the pickup unit for harvesting of the dry bean crop did not suitable. There was a significant difference between the other experimental treatments in terms of field capacity, field efficiency and harvesting losses. In the rooting machine, the conventional harvesting machine and the manual method, the theoretical capacity was 0.63, 0.37 and 0.15 hectares per hour, effective field capacity was 0.56, 0.28 and 0.11 hectares per hour, field efficiency was 87.9, 76.59 and 76.01 percent and harvesting losses was 1.48, 3.35 and 7.07 percent respectively. Economically, the difference between the methods was not significant at the 5% level, and the benefit-cost ratio was 2.48, 2.61, and 2.26, respectively. According to these results, the use of a rooting machine was recommended in terms of technical and economic point of view.

Conclusion

The using of cutter bar equipped with pick up mechanism is not suitable to dry bean harvesting. In this method, there are problems such as crop blocking in front of the machine and high harvesting loss. The root cutter machine is suitable for dry been harvesting and can be effectively used for mechanized harvesting. Theoretical capacity was 0.63, 0.37 and 0.15 ha per hour, effective capacity was 0.56, 0.28 and 0.11 ha per hour, and field efficiency was 87.9, 76.59 and 76.01 percent in root cutter machines, conventional harvesting machine and manual method respectively.

Harvesting losses was 1.48, 3.35 and 7.07%, in root cutter machine, conventional harvesting machine and manual method respectively and the manual method had higher harvesting loss than other methods. The ratio of benefit to cost was 2.48, 2.61 and 2.26 in root cutter machine, conventional harvesting machine and manual method respectively and did not show any significant difference between harvesting methods. According to these results, the use of a root cutter machine is recommended in terms of technical and economic point of view.