Advanced Farm Machinery Transforming Potato Cultivation in India
Table of Contents
Introduction
India is the world’s second largest producer of potatoes after China and the average productivity of potatoes in the country is higher than the world’s average. Potato is one of the most important horticulture crops and the third most consumed food crop in the world after rice and wheat. This horticulture crop is rightly dubbed as ‘Commodity for Class and Mass’ due to its critical role in achieving food security in a country like India.
The ever-increasing population of India, the diminishing land for agriculture, and shortages of labour in agriculture sector is making the production of food crops like potatoes more challenging. The need is to expand the use of already existing advance farm machineries like Potato Planters and introduce more advanced farm machines like Deep Hillers. The use of these specialised farm implements at different stages of potato cultivation will not only make cultivation of potato easier and efficient but also raise potato yield.
Let us see in the paragraphs below the most important farm implements that can be used by Indian farmers to raise the production of potatoes.
What are the Important Farm Implements for Potato Cultivation?
Potato cultivation is a complex process and involves various stages starting from tilling, seedbed preparation, planting, weeding, harvesting and sorting of potatoes. Each stage requires a specialised implement once the primary tillage is done with the help of MB plough, disc harrow, rotavator, or subsoiler. The tillage provides the good tilth soil, adequate aeration, and good drainage environment required for potato cultivation.
Let us see the specialised farm machineries used in potato cultivation one-by-one.
Deep Hiller
Mounted on a tractor rear, this implement with a full width tiller ensures optimum seedbed preparation for optimum development of potato tubers. These implements work best with tractor above 75 HP.
The use of Deep Hillers ensures perfect seedbed preparation in single operation along with saving fuel & time, conserving moisture, and reducing mud clods during harvesting.
Potato Planter
A potato planter is a compact implement used for planting potato tubers precisely with uniform row spacing and accurate fertiliser placement. It is simple to operate and can be attached to a mini tractor and suits even small farmers.
The use of these machines ensures high planting efficiency, high planting speed, enhancing plating quality and high potato yields. Besides, it has low maintenance and operational cost.
Some of the famous models of potato planters are Mahindra PlantingMaster Potato+ and Sonalika Automatic Potato Planter.
Plant Topper
Potato Topper is a robust farm implement designed to reduce haulm in potatoes to promote uniform ripening of potato tubers. These machines are used two to three weeks prior to harvesting.
The potato planter mechanically crushes and deposits the haulm of potatoes between the ridges so that potato plants can be treated with herbicides afterwards.
The use of Potato Toppers helps prevent transmission of viral infections from haulm to tuber. It sets good skin on the tubers improving storability of potatoes. It also reduces the risk of blockage faced during intake of the potato harvester. It is a sustainable solution of haulm topping.
Root Crop Windrower
Root Crop Windrower is an implement designed to lift potatoes from ridges, separate the soil and place potatoes on the ground in a row ensuring easy pickings by hand. This implement is used usually 10 days prior to using potato harvesters reducing significant loss of potatoes. It has low maintenance and requires a minimum tractor power of 60 HP.
Potato Harvester
A potato harvester is used to harvest the potatoes. It is used widely across North India belt. This implement uses a digging blade to dig out the potatoes and the steel-made shaker conveyor separates the soil and puts them on the conveyor belt to discharge the potatoes into tractor trailer. The machine requires a 4WD tractor of 50 HP and can be easily used in small farms also.
Conclusion
Potato is a horticulture crop with huge output per unit area. Production, handling and processing of potato requires lot of time and energy if all the operations are completed manually or with the help of animal drawn implements. Besides, there is an urgent need to ensure food security for all in a country like India. This calls for the use of advance farm machineries in the cultivation of potatoes so as to save time and cost, reduce labour requirement, and increase potato yield.
Further, some of these farm implements are costly and are out of reach of small farmers. In such cases, a group of farmers can purchase the implement or an individual farmer can approach Custom Hiring Centres under Sub Mission on Agricultural Mechanisation (SMAM) scheme.
You can explore farm implements page of Tractorkarvan to know the detailed specifications and price of these implements. Besides, you can read about Top 5 tractors for potato farming in India on the portal.
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