Agricultural Engineering

             The faculty of Agricultural Engineering formally came into existence as part of J.N. University of Agriculture (JNKVV) on August 17, 1966. This faculty has mono campus with only one College of Agricultural Engineering, situated at head quarter at Jabalpur. Activities of this faculty are spread over in all the agro-climatic zones of State of Madhya Pradesh.  This college offers B.Tech. in Agril. Engineering and M.Tech & Ph.D in three diciplines viz.Department  of Post Harvest Process & Food Engineering, Farm Machinery & Power  and Soil & Water Engineering.

             The college has well equipped laboratories, library, Instructional farm, Agricultural Research Information System (ARIS) Cell  & remote sensing & Geo Stationary Information System (GIS) Cell. Students of this faculty are employed in various National and International organisations in India and abroad and enjoying good reputation with job satisfaction. Students of this College have faired well in National level competitive examinations like Graduate Aptitude Test (GATE) examinations, ICAR (JRF/SRF) fellowships. They have also been awarded “Certificate of Excellence” at Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Bangkok. One student received second place in All India Youth Parliament Competition, organised by Department of Parliament, New Delhi in 2001-02.            

Quite a large number of technical staff members have brought laurels to faculty through:

·        Prestigious research awards of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)
·        Young Scientist Award of MPCOST, Bhopal
·        Best paper presentation of Indian Science Congress.
·        Prestigious Fellowships/Scholarships
·        Member in Executive Council of Indian Science Congress Association.
·        S.P.Arora Award for best Research Paper (Biennium 1990-98). Bhubaneswar,  1993.
·        Jawaharlal Nehru Award  in February 1995 at ICAR, New Delhi for best Ph.D work in Agricultural Engineering.

Research of applied nature has been conducted in the field of Soil & Water Conservation Engineering, Farm Machinery & Power, Post Harvest Processing & Food Engineering, Agril. Structures & Environmental Engg., Applied Physics, Agricultural Meteorology, Mathematics and Statistics. The college has well equipped laboratories for research work. While pursuing the mandates of research schemes, following have been the salient outcomes:

Paddy Husk Operated Home Oven (SIGRI) 

To utilize paddy husk as domestic kitchen fuel, wood dust home oven (burada sigri) was modified (Plate IV). The paddy husk does not bur that easily as wood powder  due to which extinguishes. Within 5 to 10 minutes. To make it burn continuously a perforated M.S. cylinder was provided inside the core of paddy husk sigri. When oven is ignited with fire wood, this perforated metal cylinder sets red hot within 2-3 minutes. During this time inner core of paddy husk catches fire. Gasses from husk are released. While escaping to atmosphere, they come in content with this heated cylinder and thus ignited. This way temperature of inner core be comes higher which help husk to burn continuously and smokelessly  kg of paddy husk is required in one batch which burns for 2.5 hours. This oven provides an opportunity to utilize paddy husk as useful domestic fuel

 

Water Chestnut Decorticator 

This is manually operated machine which decorticate dried water chestnut @ 65 kg per hour with a 99% decortication efficiency. It costs within Rs. 1000/-.

 

Pneumatic Chuni Separator 

This separator can separte cuni (broken dal) from chuni bhusi mixture (Broken Dal, Husk mixture). It operate with 200 watt electric blower and has a capacity of separation from 30 kg mixture per hour. The cost of this machine is Rs. 3500/-.

 

Seed Processing Plant

 

This plant which has been installed at Jabalpur campus is serving this University for processing of seed produced on V.V. farms since 1972. It is equipped with all necessary precious machines to enable process and pack quality seeds. It has also the storage facility for storing 4000 quintal of seeds.

 

Composite Hammer Mills 

A mini hammer mill, 2 hp, single phase has been developed which can manufacture besan, daliya, spices and herbal products at a capacity of 40-50 kg per hour. While costs Rs. 18000/-. It holds potential to open Cottage/Home Industry in above items.

 
Field Evaluation of Pumping Units

Simple status survey and testing of irrigation pumping units conducted in  Jabalpur and Narsinghpur Districts revealed that majority of centrifugal pumps ranged from 3 to 5 hp. In all 60 pumping units installed in farmers field were tested in summer and winter seasons. The testing results indicated the pumping efficiency in the ranges from 231 to 54 per cent, poor efficiencies were mainly attributed to effect of poor maintenance, excessive suction head and poor foundation conditions (Plate-10). On the basis of this study it was projected that about 49 million units (KWh) of electricity is being wasted in these small shortcomings, which can be improved through public awareness programmes.

 

Ground water Recharge through Percolation tank 

Study on ground water recharge through percolation tanks was conducted at Baghwar and Karonda villages of Narsinghpur district (Plate-11)  Water balance approach was used to compute the recharge through tanks. The water table rise due to percolation and recharge in the surrounding area was computed by a mathematical model developed with inputs, runoff from catchment, evaporation, evapo-transpiration, ground water fluctuation and change in soil moisture. The recharge through percolation tanks resulted in between 18 to 30 per cent additional rise of ground water table as compared to actual water table rise in the untreated area.

Treatment of sewage water through soil aquifer 

Use of sewage as irrigation has been successful in Vegetables & Forage, Sewage contains a number of nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other micro elements required by the crop and landscape. The use of sewage effluent however requires a higher level of management than in case of ordinary water supplies. The sewage water is quite suitable for irrigation as it contains ample quantity of nutrients and micro nutrients necessary for good crop production. It contains heavy metals and toxic elements, therefore requires treatment before use for irrigation.

 

Management of Excess Water in low lands

The experiments were carried out on medium and low lands (Plate-13) in the fields of four farmers at Bijadadi block of Moiyanalla watershed in Mandla district. The sediment loss from the fields during runoff was found to be 2-4 gm/lit. The same varieties of crops were grown in the low land also. The yield of IR-36 was found to be the highest, i.e. 5.88 t/ha while farmer’s local variety yielded 4.14 t/ha. Fish culture was carried out in different water bodies of medium as well as low lands. The growth of fingerlings over a period of 4 months was found to be from 50 to 175 mm in length and from 1.5 to 5.1 gms in Rohu and 48 gms in case of Catla. Growth of Rohu was found to be more than that of Catla. During Rabi, 2003 oilseeds and vegetables have been grown in low lands.

 

Remote Sensing & GIS based approach of water Utilization  

Remote Sensing Satellite IRS-IC, LISS-III Images were procured for two seasons, Rabi and Kharif. Training sites at three locations were selected after unsupervised classification. Ground truth information, generated from these sites, was utilized for verification of objects and for supervised classification. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) further supported this classification. Drainage lines and contours were digitized (Plate-14) from Toposheet (1:50,000) for entire area. Twenty-one thematic maps on various themes like soil, slope, elevation, transport, canal ground water, land use/cover, NDVI, etc were prepared. 

 

Power weeder

A new machine, power weeder for interculture was developed. It is a low cost unit and can be easily fabricated by village artisan. Its average draft requirement was assessed to be 86 kg.  5 hp diesel engine is the main source of power. Weeding efficiency of the machine is about 88 per cent with field capacity of about 0.155 ha/hr. the average weeding cost was about Rs. 430/ha.  Field performance index was found to be 78/%.

Modification of Manual Transplanter 

A manual transplanter was developed by modifying the existing mannual transplanter, to make the design simple so that it can be fabricated even by rural village artisans.Cost of the transplanter would be about Rs. 3000/-. Transplanter works very smoothly. The cost of fabrication has been reduced significantly, retaining the field capacity and the old one efficiency.

 

Tillage Tool for Tractor drawn Cultivator 

Nine tillage tools were designed and fabricated with load angles of 45, 32 and 190 and setting angles of 37.50, 32.50 and 27.50 with 15.24 cm height and 15.24 cm length, to obtain about 12.5 cm depth of tillage. The tillage tools were tested under friable soil condition and the tool with 190 load angle and 37.50 setting angle gave minimum draft requirement of 0.57 kg/cm2 compared to other tools at the speed of 5 km/h and the design is recommended for the use in 9 tyne cultivator with 35 hp tractor.

 

Handling devices for Safflower 

Safflower crop has a pricking effect on the limbs at the time of harvesting, collection and threshing. To minimize the inconvenience and drudgery to labour during the handling of crop a set of devices has been developed to facilitate manual harvesting. This set contains hand gloves, winnow collecting tong made of conduit pipe of 90 cm long with maximum jaw opening of 30 cm. Similarly a bundle lifting tong of 12 cm length with maximum jaw opening of 60 cm was also developed.

A transportation trolley made of  M.S. rod and angle has been developed to carry crop bundle from field to threshing floor which has carrying capacity of 7 to 8 bundles of 14 to 15 kg each. During threshing a bend fork with wooden handle is recommended to carry the crop from heap to thresher. This set of handling devices for safflower would reduce the labour drudgery and help to extend the cropping area of safflower. The device has been appreciated and adopted by the farmers.

Modification of multi-crop thresher for Sunflower 

Sunflower is harvested by flower-heads at the maturity. Flower head contains about 45 to 50 per cent moisture content whereas the grain contains 13 to 14 per cent moisture. A concave of opening size 45 x 50 mm was developed to thresh the harvested sunflower heads at such higher moisture conditions. A 5 hp multi-crop peg type thresher equipped with this concern gives the output of 336 kg/h with 100 per cent threshing efficiency and 83.50 per cent cleaning efficiency.

The scalping screen extended 20 cm in length, gives more surface area for separation of grain from threshed material. A mild steel screen having hole size of 13 mm was found to give maximum separation of threshed sunflower crop.

 

Agricultural drought analysis

 Water balance approach was found appropriate for the analysis. Daily rainfall and evaporation data for 46 years (1957-2002) were analysed for assessment of agricultural drought for Niwas Tehsil of Mandla district. The analysis indicates that Maize and Kutki crops are drought free for the soils in which they are grown. However Paddy crop in very shallow loamy soils may experience a 31 days drought at a probability of 60 per cent. Maps are prepared to indicate agricultural drought days for different crops and soil combination at different probability level.