Mechanized rice harvesting opportunity in Southern delta of Bangladesh

Rice harvesting is an important agricultural operation which demands considerable amount of labor. The Southern region of Bangladesh is lagging behind in adoption of mechanical harvesting of rice due to its agro-ecological characteristics as saline and cyclone prone area. On the other hand, shortage of labor and delayed harvesting cause huge harvesting losses to the farmer. To maintain timeliness of harvesting and reduce losses "Appropriate Scale Mechanization Innovation Hub (ASMIH)-Bangladesh" with financial assistance of University of Illinois and USAID, has taken initiative to adapt harvesting technologies in the southern region of Bangladesh. An experiment of Aman rice (November-December, 2016) harvesting at Dumuria, and Wazirpur Upazilas of Khulna and Barisal districts, respectively of Bangladesh was conducted using two models (ACI and Metal) of reaper and mini-combine harvester (Glory Engineering). Technical and economic performances of the selected harvesting technologies were estimated based on the field data. Average fuel consumption, effective field capacity and field efficiency of (a) ACI reaper, (b) Metal reaper and (c) Minicombine harvester were (a) 3.29 L/ha, 0.22 ha/hr, 57.78% (b) 3.87 L/ha, 0.23 ha/hr, 66.43% and (c) 18.12 L/ha, 0.09 ha/hr, 55.40%, respectively for Wazirpur, Barisal, and (a) 3.18 L/ha, 0.26 ha/hr, 65.32% (b) 4.19 L/ha, 0.18 ha/hr, 53.5% and (c) 19.52 L/ha, 0.09 ha/hr, 54.16%, respectively for Dumuria, Khulna. The farmers found the mini-combine harvester more attractive as it performs several tasks like harvesting, threshing, cleaning and bagging in a single operation. Further investigation is needed to identify the suitability of these harvesting machines in Boro harvesting.