Hand weeding is labor-intensive and time-consuming. Although mechanical weed extraction has the potential to save time and money on labor, several obstacles prevent its broad adoption, especially in rural and hilly areas. Small-scale farmers find power weeders to be expensive and impractical, and the haphazard planting of crops further restricts the machine's usefulness. Labor-saving, regionally tailored weed control methods are urgently needed, particularly in isolated highland areas. Owing to the numerous drawbacks of the current weeder, a new weeder called ‘roller rake weeder’ consisting of a fixed rake and a roller with spikes as soil-engaging components was developed as an alternative to solve the issues. The developed machine was tested in the field for about a month. It was observed that the speed of operation was found to be optimal ranging from 1.9 to 2.1 km h−1 with an effective cutting width of 140 mm. The actual field capacity ranged from 0.038 ha h−1 to 0.04 ha h−1, while the weeding efficiency reached 88%–95% surpassing the existing tools. The labor requirement was found to be 28.6–34.5 man-hours ha−1, while the average force required for forward and backward strokes during operation was observed to be 68.4 N and 23.2 N, respectively.

中文翻译：

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滚筒耙除草机的开发及田间性能评估


手动除草是劳动密集型且耗时的。尽管机械除草有可能节省人工时间和金钱，但有几个障碍阻碍了它的广泛采用，尤其是在农村和丘陵地区。小规模农民发现电动除草机既昂贵又不切实际，而农作物的随意种植进一步限制了机器的实用性。迫切需要节省劳动力、适合区域调整的杂草控制方法，尤其是在偏远的高原地区。由于当前除草机的众多缺点，开发了一种名为“滚筒耙除草机”的新型除草机，该除草机由一个固定的耙和一个带有尖刺的滚筒组成，作为与土壤啮合的部件，作为解决这些问题的替代方案。开发的机器在现场测试了大约一个月。据观察，发现操作速度在 1.9 至 2.1 km h-1 范围内最佳，有效切割宽度为 140 mm。实际田间容量从 0.038 ha h-1 到 0.04 ha h-1 不等，而除草效率达到 88%-95%，超过了现有工具。发现劳动力需求为 28.6-34.5 工时 ha-1，而观察到操作过程中向前和向后冲程所需的平均力分别为 68.4 N 和 23.2 N。