Benefits of Harvester Front Extension in Reducing Canola Harvest Losses

Abstract

Today in Iran, the cultivation of oilseed rape has been developed in all area through the country. However, this operation has been faced to some difficulties for land preparation, crop cultivation and grain harvesting. Mechanized harvesting has been done by using some technical operation, and doing some arrangement with current common grain combine harvesters and also adding several header extensions that adjunct to the grain combine platform. Because of not enough proficiency and also the requested specific conditions of canola harvesting, the mechanized harvesting systems were caused considerable losses especially with common combine platforms. To study the effects of a modified platform and two platform extensions on canola grain losses, an experiment was conducted with respect to the quantity and recognition the causes of losses. Three kinds of platform were compared. These models were included the current cereal platform, Hamed and Bizo header extensions with mechanical and hydraulic side knife cutterbar respectively. A statistical randomized complete block design was applied with six replications. Seed loss was measured using trays placed in the ripening crop prior to harvest. The result consisted that header extension could decrease the amount of losses in combine harvester with increasing the distance between platform auger and cutterbar. Hamed header extension which made in Iran, only in vertical cutting had more grain losses than Biso platform. So, from total amounts of losses, the significant differences were found between current cereal platform and other two extension platforms. Headers using side vertical cutting loss was 71 kg ha1 against 599 kg ha1 with the common combine platform. Also, using of hydraulic system instead of mechanical system and double knife cutterbar instead of the single cutterbar could decrease the amount of grain losses. Shattering seed loss was measured 39.60 kg ha-1 that only from this rate it was 1.12% of total harvested yield. Therefore this rate was not considerable amount of losses, and with improving the conditions before harvesting it could be able to reduce grain loss.