www.tjprc.org editor@tjprc.org ENGINEERING PROPERTIES OF PADDY FOR DESIGNING OF THRESHING MECHANISM GIRISHKUMAR BHANAGE 1 , PRASHANT SHAHARE 2 , VIJAY AWARE 3 & PRASHANT DESHMUKH 4 1 Research Scholar, Department of Farm Machinery and Power, College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Dr. Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, Maharashtra, India 2 Professor and Head, Department of Farm Machinery and Power, College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Dr. Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, , Maharashtra, India 3 Associate Professor, Department of Farm Machinery and Power, College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Dr. Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, Maharashtra, India 4 Scientist, Central Institute for Research on Cotton Technology, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India ABSTRACT Harvesting, threshing and winnowing are the final operations which play the significant role in realizing the full benefit of raised crop. The morphological characteristics of paddy plant are essential to know for operating settings of the harvesting machineries. The single grain detachment and stripping force are important parameters for design and development of different mechanism for threshing. The morphological characteristics of paddy plant, physical properties of paddy grain, single grain detachment force, panicle stripping force, bulk density and paddy uprooting force were studied following the standard procedures. The Ratnagiri-1 is popular variety of Konkan selected for this study. The morphological characteristics of paddy plant like plant height, plant dropping height, panicle height, panicle length and stem diameter were found to be 851.7, 744.6, 648.1, 203.6, and 1.77 mm respectively with number of tillers per hill to be 9.07. Thousand grain weights were found to be in the range from 29.27 to 27.77 g and 31.11 to 29.37 g at 19.90 and 22.05 % moisture content (wb) respectively. The maximum single grain detachment force was found to be 3.07 N at 19.47 per cent moisture content (wb). The maximum stripping force for paddy panicle was found to be 20.59 N at 22 to 26 per cent moisture content of (wb). The single grain detachment and stripping force for paddy panicle found to be decreased in magnitude with decrease in moisture content. The minimum paddy uprooting force was found to be 19.4 kg at 35.09 per cent moisture content of soil, where as maximum uprooting force for paddy was found to be 40.2 kg at 17.5 per cent moisture content of soil. KEYWORDS: Stripping, Paddy, Engineering Properties, Grain Detachment Force, Stripping Force & Uprooting Force Received: Dec 12, 2016; Accepted: Jan 05, 2017; Published: Jan 19, 2017; Paper Id.: IJASRFEB201729 INTRODUCTION Rice is an important crop on which food security of the world is strongly associated as it is the staple food of half of the world’s population [1]. China and India are the two biggest rice producers in the world with production of 141.4 million tonnes and 106.54 million tonnes of paddy respectively, i.e. almost 50 % of the world rice production [2]. Maharashtra is one of the major producer of rice about 2.83 million tones with the productivity of 1880 kg/ha during the year 2014-15 [3]. Konkan, is a major producer of rice, cultivated over an area of 3.86 lakh hectares with an annual production of about 10.84 lakh tones and average productivity of 2810 kg/ha [3]. Original Article International Journal of Agricultural Science and Research (IJASR) ISSN(P): 2250-0057; ISSN(E): 2321-0087 Vol. 7, Issue 1, Feb 2017, 215-224 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.