Performance Evaluation of a Tractor Mounted Groundnuts Harvester

The performance of an existing tractor mounted groundnut harvester was evaluated at different levels of machine speed (2 km/hr, 3 km/hr, 4 km/hr and 5 km/hr) and a constant penetration depth of 10 cm. Harvesting efficiency decreased with increasing speed while percentage damage increased with increasing speed. The highest harvesting efficiency (75.3 %) was obtained for 2 km/hr operation speed and the lowest harvesting efficiency (63.7%) was obtained at 5 km/hr operation speed. The highest percentage damage (34.2 %) was obtained at 5 km/hr machine speed and the least percentage damage (17.1 %) was obtained at 2 km/hr speed. Analysis of variance showed that machine speed made significant effects (p≤0.05) on the parameters evaluated and the separation of means using F-LSD showed significant difference at. ≤ 0.0