Grain crops like wheat, pulses, barley and rye are onlypartially edible as seeds at the top, known as grains, are used as food source.The dry coatings of these seeds are useless and inedible, thus discarded in harvesting. Earlier far workers used to manually harvest the crops performinglengthy processes in different steps. But with increasing technological advancements, farmers no more have to depend on manual methods of harvesting.
In current times strong improvements have been made in machineryand its application and it has widespread in the agricultural machinery industry also. Combine Harvester also popularly and commonly known as ‘combine' is a key innovation that not only saves cost but also saves time for farmers.
As its name suggests, it simply combines three majorharvesting steps – reaping, threshing, and winnowing into a single operation.Harvesting grain crops with a combine allow farmers to save time and cuts down the costs of overall work, resulting into high farm output and making their farmbusiness more profitable.
There are three major types of combine harvesters that arecurrently in use:
Self-propelledcombine harvester - These harvester machines have wheels and work excellentfor farms with hard soil. These are commonly used standard type of combine harvesterin India.
Track – This kindof harvester are fitted on tracks instead of wheels and work very efficient wherewheels have possibility to get bogged down. These are generally used for harvesting rice and other crops in wetlands.
Tractor Mounted harvester- It’s driven by a tractor and work best on lands where the soil is looseand the farm land is extensive.
While the structure of a combine harvester looks simple from outside, its functionally is quite advanced and complicated. Its heavy engineand it’s capability to handle various operations makes it a expensive machinery.
Yet is the only solution of the growing problem of finding sufficient and skilled labor for farm work as due to fast increase in migration from villages to towns is causing a major deficiency to find farm labors in India. A combine harvester can work more efficiently and can provide better yield atcomparatively lower prices. As agriculture industry is seeing rapid growth in technology there are many additional features and benefits a combine harvester can offer.
