Разработка технологии и многофункционального лемешно-роторного плуга для возделывания картофеля в малых формах хозяйств

The average gross production of potatoes in Russia is estimated as 29-31 million tons, with about 80 % being produced in smallholdings with very limited application of mechanized technologies and a significant proportion of manual labour. Due to analysing modern scientific and technological advances for improving operating elements of tillage tools the authors suggest to use an innovative technology for growing potatoes on an area of 10 hectares with a multifunctional rotary ploughshare with changeable operating elements that is engineered in South-Ural State Agrarian University. It can be used to comply with the necessary agro-technical requirements for cultivating potatoes and to perform technological operations with minimum changeovers, namely: simultaneous ploughing combined with soil pulverizing and tubers planting, potato vine removing combined with digging up potatoes. According to patent № 2552900 bearing rods are welded to a backing disk located approximately in the middle of the rotor for possible fixing changeable operating elements on them in the form of cutting blades or prisms to improve the tillage of grass-covered or heavy-textured soils. To change the ploughing mode for general tillage into the one for digging up tubers it’s necessary to replace changeable elements with flat digging up plates which overlap the areas of the operating elements of the second and third tiers to reduce the damage of tubers. Each plate has an outer outline parallel to the rotor axis, a lower outline with an increasing gap between the rotor axis relative to the upper surfaces of lifting vanes. The quality parameters of ploughing, planting, hilling and inter-row cultivation meet agro-technical requirements, with dug up tubers equaling 97 % and their damage being 3 %. Such parameters are higher than the ones of produced diggers. When using the multifunctional plough with a tractor of the traction class 1,4 tones and with a mini-tractor combined with a mini-plough the total costs are lower 11270 and 13350 rub./ha, respectively (as compared with the existing technology).