Journal of Agriculture and Ecology Research International

Manual harvesting of sorghum is labour-intensive, expensive and requires a large number of laborers.  This study evaluates and carried out economic feasibility analysis of the developed sorghum harvester.  It was determined investment in mechanical harvesting is financially sound by comparing it to manual methods. The performance of the developed sorghum harvester was compared with the manual method in the sorghum field in terms of cost and time per hectare. We determined that harvesting one hectare of sorghum with a developed sorghum harvester takes between 2.78 and 2.9 h. The effective field capacity and field efficiency of the sorghum harvester were found in the range of 0.322 to 0.357 ha.h^-1 and 76.50 to 82.67 per cent. The average cost of operation of a sorghum harvester was found to be Rs.752 h^-1 and Rs.2199 ha^-1. The manual cost of operation by using sickle was found to be Rs.3000 ha^-1. It was found that there was a saving cost of Rs. 801 ha^-1. (26.70%) over manual sorghum harvesting.  The saving in time of 77.08 h ha^-1 (96.35%) was achieved for sorghum crop by tractor operated sorghum harvester. The BEP, PBP and BC ratio of the sorghum harvester was worked out as 216.25 h y^-1, 397 h and 6.04 respectively.