INVESTIGATION ON MECHANIZED HARVESTINGREQUIREMENTS OF POKKALI PADDY FOR OPTIMIZING HARVESTER DESIGNRathinavel S., Sindhu Bhaskar, Manoj Mathew and Jayan P.R.Abstract Saline tolerant and the tall cultivars of paddy in the pokkali system is native to central parts of Kerala haveimportance on several factors such as traditional value and nutrition, taste etc. The cropping area is decliningdue to the several constraints in cultivation, mainly due to lack of suitable harvesting machine. In initiate aharvester design, the requirements in traditional cultivation practices are to be identified and itâs essentialto ensure the design is fulfilling the existing requirements. In this context, the requirements of mechanizedharvesting of paddy in the pokkali system were investigated through survey on farmers, field observationsand sample experimentation. The identified data are crop parameters, sub operations of harvesting to beoptimized, customer (farmer) preferences and technical aspects of the machine to be designed, and theyform the base for a new design. The chapter discusses the requirements identification and results out of theresearch. |