Published on Aug 21, 2023
Sugarcane is a vegetative propagated Crop. In India, for conventional system of sugarcane cultivation, about 6 – 8 tones seed cane /ha is used as planting material, which comprises of about 32,000 stalk pieces having 2-3 buds. Cane cuttings with one, two or three buds known as sets are used as seed. This large mass of planting material poses a great problem in transport, handling and storage of seed cane and undergoes rapid deterioration thus reducing the viability of buds and subsequently their sprouting.
One alternative to reduce the mass and improve the quality of seed cane would be to plant excised axillary buds of cane stalk, popularly known as bud chips. These bud chips are less bulky, easily transportable and more economical seed material.
The bud chip technology holds great promise in rapid multiplication of new cane varieties. The left-over cane can be well utilized for preparing juice or sugar or jiggery. Despite of all these benefits of bud chips for rapid multiplication of new cane, a common problem many sugar cane farmers are facing in a developing country like India is affordable (low cost) bud chipping machine.
The existing (traditional) tools used for bud chipping of sugar cane are unsafe, messy and need skill and training. The risk of injury is also too high. This necessitates the development of a bud chipping machine for sugar cane. In this direction, literature survey, patent search, market survey and concept generation was carried out. Different concepts were developed using concept generation.
Among the different concepts developed, the best concept was selected based on concept selection strategy. The best concept was then prototyped using 25mm by 25mm hallow steel bar joined together by arc welding The punch torque tube was swaged to reduce the cross section of the tube. The punch tool was machined using lathe. The prototype was tested and the initial results indicated that equipment has reduced /totally eliminated the manual effort, as required for generating the sugar cane buds as compared traditional tools. The whole equipment is very compact and simple with additional safety measures.
Agriculture is one of the most significant sectors of the Indian Economy. Agriculture is the only means of living for almost two thirds of the workers in India. The agriculture sector of India has occupied 43% of India’s geographical area, and is contributing 16.1% of India’s GDP. Agriculture still contributes significantly to India’s GDP despite decline of its share in India’s GDP. There are number of crops grown by farmers. These include different food crops, commercial crops, oil seeds etc., sugarcane is one of the important commercial crops grown in India. Sugarcane is the main source of sugar in Asia and Europe. Sugarcane is grown primarily in the tropical and sub-tropical zones of the southern hemisphere.
Sugarcane is the raw material for the production of white sugar, jiggery (gur) and khandsari. It is also used for chewing and extraction of juice for beverage purpose. The sugarcane cultivation and sugar industry in India plays a vital role towards socio-economic development in the rural areas by mobilizing rural resources and generating higher income and employment opportunities. About 7.5percent of the rural population, covering about 45 million sugarcane farmers, their dependents and a large number of agricultural labors are involved in sugar cane cultivation, harvesting and ancillary activities. There are about nine States in India where sugarcane is grown on a large extent of area.
There are a number of varieties that are grown in India depending on the suitability of the soil. The area, output and yield and sugarcane cultivation is subjected to fluctuate in response to policies of the government and also conditions of cultivation. Taking these into consideration, this chapter presents a detailed discussion on the cultivation practices of sugarcane, growth of area, output and yield
The concept contains a punching stainless steel tube connected to a torque lever and a spring mechanism. When the torque lever is moved down, it moves the piercing rod on the sugar cane there by punching out the sugar cane buds.
The frame is built with hallow 25mm by 25mm hallow steel bar joined together by bolts and arc welding as shown in the figure below. The equipment mainly consists of punch operated by a lever and spring mechanism. For punching, sugar cane is placed over the holder in its natural rest position and the punching lever is operated. The punch is so adjusted to make a -semicircular punch on the sugar cane bud
Javadtaghinezhad[16] in study of sugar cane cutting orientation for biomass products tabulated the values for peak force require to shear the sugar cane for internodes for small, medium and large sugar canes. They used a shearing device, which was originally used for cutting stalks of crops in a harvest machine. They also used a tool with a slant cutting edge of 30° that caused energy efficient cuts [16] and the notch angle was 60° (Fig.5.1). The triangular notch of the blade self-centered the samples during cutting. The machine used was aproprietary tension/compression testing machine.
The equipment mainly consists of punch operated by a lever and spring mechanism. For punching the sugar cane bud, The sugar cane is placed over the holder and the lever was lowered to generate the sugar cane bud as shown in the figure below.
In this project work extensive literature survey has been carried out to verify the originality of the concept. As a preliminary step different concepts have been developed using concept generation. Among the different concepts developed the best concept has been selected based on concept selection strategy. Also the initial results indicated that equipment has reduced /totally eliminated the manual effort, as required for generating the sugar cane buds as compared traditional tools. The whole equipment is very compact and simple with additional safety measures
When compared to the traditional sugar cane bud chipping tools the newly designed and developed sugar cane bud machine is cheaper .Also, this new machine has totally eliminated the manual effort required in punching the sugar cane machine.
1. H. Bakker (1999) Sugar Cane Cultivation and Management The ChronicaBotanica Co.: Book Department, Waltham ISBN-0306461196
2. Ajit K. Ghosh, Ashok K. Shrivastava, Virendra, P. Agnihotri 1998 - Preview production Technology of Lump Sugar /jiggery, Proceedings of the International Society of Sugar Cane Technologists ISBN-8170351804
3. Bharat Singh – 2013 Biofuel Crop Sustainability Proceedings of the International Society of Sugar Cane Technologists ISBN-1118635647
4. Wood chipper construction US 3,392,763 patented July 16, 1968 Karl Ledergerber
