Abstract

A nine tyne tractor operated cultivator and spinner type fertilizer spreader were used to evaluate the efficiency of tractor. Tractor was operated without navigator and with navigator guidence to the operator to observe the missed area, overlapped area and actual productivity of the machines. Missing percentage was only 8.5% of total area cultivated in case of navigator assisted cultivator as comaperd to the 23.5% missed area without navigator guidence. For smaller field having area were 4.2 and 14% espectively of the total area under trials. But for larger area of 1.62 ha, on an average  percentage missed area observed without and with navigator trials were 19.8 and 5.5% of the total area under trial. Overlapped area during cultivation without navigator was observed to be 0.042 or 18% as comaperd to the overlapped area of 0.006 ha or 3%  by using navigator. Areas of  overlap during fertilizer spreading for without and with navigator trials were observed to be 0.066 or 13.75% and 0.002 ha or 0.4% respectively for smaller fields. But for larger field, without navigator trial overlap of 0.027 ha which is 1.7% was obsereved and with navigator trial  overlap was observed for area 0.048, which is  2.9% of total area of 1.62 ha. The actual productivity of the operation without navigator  was 0.53 ha/h with 23.5% missing area as comapred to the actual productivity of  cultivator with navigator i.e. 0.75 ha/h with 8.5% missing. It was concluded that actual productivity by using satellite navigator guided cultivator was 1.42 times more as compared to the actual productivity without navigator. During fertilizer spreading, the actual productivity of the spreader using navigator was 1.64 times more than the machine without naviagator. For larger field, satellite navigator guided fertilizer spreader was about having 1.37 times more productivity than spreader without navigator.

Key words: Satellite navigator, global positioning system (GPS), overlapped area, missed area, machine productivity, precision farming.