Swapnil Choudhary, Naresh Sihag, Ganesh Upadhyay, Bharat Patel, Vijaya Rani
Effective post-harvest management of cotton stalks is critical to prevent pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella) infestations, which can cause yield losses exceeding 20%. Conventional practices like in-situ burning or field-side stacking degrade soil health and facilitate pest survival. To mitigate these issues, the performance of a single-row cotton stalk shredder operated with a 41 kW tractor was evaluated for the management of cotton stalks. The evaluation was done under varying conditions involving two cotton varieties - Desi (HD 324) and Bt-cotton (HS 45), four forward speeds (between 1.8 to 3.8 km h-1) and at three levels of stalk moisture content (between 10.6 to 60.4%). The experimental results revealed that cotton variety and forward operating speed had a statistically significant influence on the effective field capacity and field efficiency of the machine. In contrast, fuel consumption, chopped stalk length, standing stubble height and boll crushing efficiency were significantly affected by all three operational variables. Optimization using Design-Expert software identified the best performance with Bt-cotton at 3.1 km h⁻¹ and 10.6% moisture, achieving 96.21% crushing efficiency, 0.243 ha h⁻¹ effective field capacity, and 87.07% field efficiency. Field validation closely matched these predictions. Economically, the shredder reduced labor requirements by 92% and operational costs by 21% compared to manual methods, with a break-even point of 77.5 hours and a payback period of 1.93 years. The study demonstrated that the shredder is a technically efficient and economically viable solution for sustainable cotton residue management.