Abstract:
Mechanized farming has been advocated over conventional system in order to meet the demand of an increasing population, which tractor plays a major role in agricultural mechanization. The study was carried out on sandy loam soil at the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training, Rivers State University, Port-Harcourt, Nigeria. The tractor was allowed to run on a 6m x 6m experimental plots to compact the soil using 0, 2, and 4 tractor passes (0TP, 2TP and 4TP). The compaction levels arising from the several tractor passes were measured with a cone penetrometer. Based on existing experimental data for cone index values of different passes in statistical analysis for the data gathered was conducted. The analysis revealed a model for predicting the cone index at different passes of tractor wheel for seven months with the help of two constant X and Y. The constant X is introduced as the time (monthly). Where as, Y are defined for cone index. . The simple linear regression model for 0, 2 and 4 passes of tractor were 0.028-0.001X, 0.00028-0.04312X and 0.067-0.00225X respectively. The mean cone index for 0TP were 0.026MN/m2,0.027MN/m2 ,0.023MN/m2,0.029MN/m2,0.021, 0.021MN/m2 ,0.021MN/m2, 2TP are 0.043MN/m2,0.042MN/m2 0.042MN/m2, 0.044MN/m2,0.043MN/m2 ,0.042MN/m2,0.04MN/m2 while 4TP are 0.063MN/m2,0.066MN/m2 ,0.066MN/m2,0.054MN/m2 , 0.054MN/m2,, 0.057MN/m2 and 0.052MN/m2 at different time (monthly) after compaction.
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