Abstract:
Ethiopian smallholder farmers are confronting a shortage of farm machinery for growing
perennial crops. They are still employing old conventional farm hand equipment and human
force to make holes for planting perennial crop seedlings. However this kind of farming is
exceedingly tedious, time-consuming and labor-intensive and resulted in extremely low
production and productivity. Therefore, this study was conducted to improve production and
productivity those farmer’s and make attractive perennial crop farming environment by
developing a hole digger for perennial crop production. In this study a motorized hole digger
was designed, fabricated and evaluated for its performance. To evaluate the digging
performance of the digger, an experiment with full factorial design at three replications was
conducted on sandy and clay soil at different soil moisture content and working speed. The
digger was tested on clay and sandy soils separately at soil moisture content of (15.00, 22.00
and 29.00%) and working speed of (100.00, 150.00 and 180.00 rpm). The result of the test
revealed that the maximum digging capacity and efficiency of the digger were 45.00, 43.33
hole/hr and 85.00%, 84.67% observed at working speed of 180.00 rpm and soil moisture
content of 29.00 % for hole dug on sandy and clay soil respectively at depth of 40.00cm and
35.00 cm diameter. The highest fuel consumption of 0.68 L/hr was observed when the soil
moisture content was 15.0% and at working speed of180.00 rpm on clay soil. Generally, the study was successful in designing, fabricating, and testing a motorized hole digger prototype.
The performance evaluation result showed that the digger's digging capacity and efficiency
were greatly increased by raising the working speed from 100.00 to 180.00 rpm and the soil
moisture content from 15.00 to 29.00%.
