Proso millet is a minor cereal crop commonly cultivated in rain fed marginal uplands particularly in the mid and far western mountain region of Nepal. It is potential crop for ensuring food and nutrition security and conservation of local crop biodiversity in high mountain region. Traditionally Proso millet (locally as chino) is processed manually on Mortar and Pestle (Okhal) by using muscular power. However, de-husking (pearling) of Proso millet is very tedious job. The traditional method of processing takes 1 hour to dehusk 2 kg – 3 kg of Proso millet for two women and cause lots of physical exertion to them. Therefore, GEF UNEP Local Crop Project in collaboration with Agricultural Engineering Divisionof NARC initiated program in 2017to design, fabricate and test electric Proso Millet de-husking machine (called chino kutak) that is safe and economical in operation for the use of the local farmers of remote Himalayan region. The model-1 designed, fabricated and piloted at Humla (Chhipra, Kharpunath Rural Municipality) in 2018 was improvised version of Finger millet processing machine. The Model-2 was based on the Centrifugal type working on impact principle was developed in January 2020. The Model-2 was very much successful in all variety of Proso millet and higher capacity up to 52.5 kg/hr.it is equally applicable to other millets.
This paper attempts to evaluate the impact of generalized System of Preferences (GSP) scheme on exports of Nepal to the United States (US
Traditional threshing (pounding, animal trampling, beating the harvested heads with sticks on bare ground or in bags), a most common manual threshing practice for majority of the farm households is a slow, tedious, drudgerious and labor intensive practices in Nepal. Therefore, there is need of threshing mechanization option suitable for smallholder farmers to replace the manual threshing of sorghum. As most of the farmers have small land holding, poor economy and insufficient electric power supply, a pedal operated millet thresher was playing important role especially for threshing millet in Nepal. Hence, a study was conducted to evaluate the performance of a NAERC pedal millet thresher for threshing sorghum. Thresher was evaluated in terms of different performance parameters such as threshing capacity, threshing efficiency, grain loss, and associated threshing labour and cost. In addition, the physical and engineering properties of sorghum grain namely, moisture content, linear dimensions, 1000 grain weight, particle and bulk density, arithmetic mean diameter, geometric mean diameter, equivalent diameter, shape index, sphericity, aspect ratio, porosity, repose angle and friction properties behavior on different surfaces were studied. The average threshing capacity of the pedal thresher (machine threshing) for sorghum was obtained as 28.20±3.07 kg/hr with a threshing efficiency of 93.36% at an average moisture content of 11.44%, and concave clearance of 6 mm, respectively while that of stick beating (manual method) was 12.2±0.2 kg/hr. The average broken grain losses of 5.00±1.19% and 6.8±0.9% were found in machine threshing and manual threshing, however, unthreshed grain was higher in thresher (6.6±0.91%) than stick beating (4.1±1.2%). Considering economic perspectives, a labour saving of 46.41% was achieved by the use of pedal thresher (47.85 man-hr/mt) compared to manual threshing (103.9 man-hr/mt). Manual threshing needs almost 2.15 hours to thresh equal mass as that by thresher in one hour. Similarly, cost saving of 24.24 % was occurred in custom hired machine threshing (NRs 7000/mt) with respect to manual method (NRs 9239.7/mt). Conclusively, this technology is widely accepted by farmers for threshing finger millet, thus this study on sorghum threshing explored its multi-use benefit in maximizing thresher use per year and increase profitability.
Protected agricultural structures have been adopted by commercial farmers throughout the world including Nepal to cope with climate change and its adverse effects on agriculture. Technology based production system is important for sustainable agricultural development. It could be the tool for low-income countries like Nepal where agriculture is the priority of income generation for the rural people. A field study was conducted in 2021 and 2022 to understand the prospects of protected agriculture structures adaptation by farmers and agricultural entrepreneur in Nepal. The study was traversed with both physical observation and the user’s interviews. The opportunities and the constraints have been critically analysed based on these field study along with the review of different policy documents and success stories published. This study found that the protected cultivation practice has been rapidly increased with increasing number of protected structures like plastic house or tunnel framed with bamboo or GI pipe, Agri-net house, naturally ventilated poly house and semi or hi-tech green house. In contrary, the import of horticulture products has also been increased more than 200% in last 10 years. This study finds the gap mismatching between technology enhancement, production and import of horticulture crops.
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