Pre-extension Demonstration and Evaluation of Engine Driven Sorghum Thrasher Technology in the Selected AGP-II Districts of Harari region and Dire Dawa Administration

Abstract

An engine driven sorghum thresher was designed and developed in Fedis Agricultural Research Center with a view to increase the threshing efficiency, threshing capacity and to reduce the cost of threshing in comparison with traditional methods of threshing sorghum crop. The machine was demonstrated in Harari Region and Dire Dawa administration council. The result indicated that the average efficiency, output capacity were 88.97 to 97.08%, 6 to 8.36qt/ha and grain damage less than 1%.Sorghum is also the most widely cultivated and consumed cereals in Ethiopia. According to (CSA, 2008), it ranks third after maize and tef in total production, after maize in yield per hectare and after tef and maize in area harvested. Currently sorghum is produced by 5million holders and its production is estimated to be 4 million metric tons from nearly 2million hectares of land giving the national average grain yield of around 2 tons per hectares (CSA, 2012). In fact sorghum is not only drought-resistant, it can also withstand periods of water logging (Taylor, 2010).Hence Fadis Agricultural Research Center developed complete sorghum threshing machine and demonstrate to overcome sorghum threshing challenges such as beating with stick, moving tractor on sorghum as it take longtime, consume human energy consuming, hardly detach the grain from sorghum head, thereby decreasing tremendous sorghum grain post-harvest loss because of traditional threshing  method

Keywords: Sorghum Thrasher, Engine driven, Demonstration, Harari and Dire Dawa

DOI: 10.7176/FSQM/97-05

Publication date:May 31^st 2020