Wet Land Paddy Weeding - A Comprehensive Comparative Study from South India

Evaluation of the performance of wet land weeders is inevitable as weed infestation is one of the limiting factors in the rice cultivation in India. The advent of mechanical rice transplanter to Indian agriculture encouraged farmers to use inter-row weeding tools like Rotary weeder, Cono weeder etc. These instruments are now popularising among farmers instead of tedious and low productive hand weeding. The main objective of this study was to evaluate these weeding tools quantitatively and qualitatively in terms weeding performance, economic aspects, ergonomic effectiveness, subjective judgement of Work Related Body Discomfort (WRBD) and work performance in comparison with hand weeding and the study was conducted in Malappuram district of Kerala State, India. In addition, different weed management practices viz. hand weeding, Rotary weeding + one hand weeding, Cono weeding + one hand weeding, Rotary weeding alone, Cono weeding alone, were conducted in the study area to assess the effect of different weeding methods on crop growth and yield with the help of statistical analysis. Ergonomic results showed that the energy requirements for the male subject group corresponding to rotary weeding, cono weeding and hand weeding were respectively 26.5, 24.0 and 16.0 kJ/ min. For the Female subjects, the corresponding values were 18.0, 15.0 and 9.5 kJ/ min respectively. The Field Performance Analysis in 15 experimental plots at the study area showed the weeding efficiency as 79 % and 72.5 % respectively for Rotary weeder compared to Cono weeder with damage factor of 7.06% and 4.55% respectively. The ANOVA based statistical analysis shown that weeding operation has significant influences on crop growth and yield parameters.