Assessment of Chickpea (Cicer Arietinum) Grain Quality and Losses in Direct Combine Harvesting

ABSTRACT An experiment was conducted at the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) to test the effect of several combine harvester settings on returns of two chickpea varieties ILC 482 and ILC 3279 developed at the Center as potentials for mechanical harvesting. The settings on the harvester included three forward speeds, three concave clearances, and two cleaning fan capacities. The experimental design was general randomized complete block design with multiple observations per treatment. The two varieties were considered as the blocks and all treatment combinations were replicated four times within each block. Harvesting output studied included harvest total weight, and that of whole grains, broken grains, and unthreshed pods. Losses included those of threshing and shattering which were sampled and weighed using known standards. Statistical analysis showed that forward speed was a highly significant contributor to variations in harvest returns among all other treatments. The block effect (varieties) was also highly significant for all sample parameters in the experiment. Variety ILC 482 proved to be a better potential variety for mechanical harvesting due to its higher inherent yield even though it had higher percentages of harvesting losses.