USE OF POTATO DIGGER WITH CALIBRATOR IN ORGANIC FARMING

Abstract

Potato is an important food product, and there is a growing demand for it, according to the UN FAO statistics. Modern potato varieties are evaluated for at least 40 economically valuable characteristics in the process of selection and seed production. It is early products that are of great commercial value. In order to reduce the damage caused to tubers during harvesting, and especially that of the large ones, when directly exporting potatoes from the field to the consumers or to the retail network, the authors propose to improve the design of a potato digger. The experimental potato digger, while passing along the ridge, forms two parallel stacked rows: one of them having tubers of a large fraction Field experience tab, records and observations were made in accordance with the field experiment methodology requirements and the "Potato Research Methodology". The authors made a comparative assessment of an experimental potato digger with KTN-2B by damage caused to potato tubers of the Zhukovsky Early variety, heap purity and tuber selection productivity. Comparative tests of the experimental digger have shown that a potato digger performing calibration and harvesting operations complies with agrotechnical requirements for the heap purity and tuber damage on different soil types. The use of the improved potato digger leads to an increase in the selection performance by 20...30% and reduced damage to tubers by 25...30% and simplifies the technology of direct delivering potatoes from the field to the consumer.