Development of a Chisel Digger for Harvesting Groundnut

A chisel digger was designed and developed at ICRlSAT Asia Center for harvesting virginia bunch type groundnut crops. It consists of a digger-bottom and a standard. The digger-bottom has two shares that are inclined at 120" to each other and contain chisel points for inc~eased penetration into the soil. A single digger-bottom attached to a draw pole can be pulled by a pair of oxen and two or more digger-bottoms attached to a tool bar can be pulled by a tractor. The bullock-drawn chisel digger can harvest a 60-cm wide strip or two rows of the crop sown at a 30-cm row spacing. It can harvest about 0.7 ha per day (8 h) with less than 5% losses. It undercuts the tap roots of groundnut plants and leaves the plants upright without any dragging. The chisel digger performed satisfactorily even under soil conditions where blade type diggers could not penetrate up-to the desired depth.