The management of rice residue is still a challenging issue and factors such as poor feed quality of rice residue, limited and timely unavailability of suitable residue handling machines and narrow window period available prior to seeding of next crop act as driving forces for residue burning by the farmers. In-situ management of rice crop residue can prevent ill effects of residue burning on the natural resources. In this study, three types of power-driven disc coulter; serrated, plain, and toothed, with three different arrangements of residue holding device, viz. no holding wheel, single holding wheel, and twin holding wheels with speed ratio (ratio of rotational speed of coulter and forward speed) of 5.2, 6.94, and 8.67 were evaluated in the soil bin of ICAR-Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, India. Horizontal forces, vertical forces, torque, and residue cutting performance were measured with residue density ranging from 3000 to 5000 kg ha-1. The experiments were conducted according to CRD design. The mean horizontal forces, vertical forces, torques, and cutting percentage increased significantly at level of significance (p) < 0.05 with the increase in the number of residue holding wheel. Increasing the residue load had no effect on the cutting percentage of the residue. The results showed that the residue cutting performance of the plain coulter with twin holding wheels was nearly 100% at any combination of selected variables. Introduction of residue holding wheels to the coulters helped in sowing successive crop (like wheat, maize etc) in the combine harvested rice field with heavy residue.

Keywords: Conservation tillage, coulters, residue holding wheel assembly, residue cutting, residue clogged.

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