Grain Losses of Wheat as Affected by Different Harvesting and Threshing Techniques

Grain losses of wheat as affected by different harvesting and threshing techniques were studied at Adaptive Research Farm, Vehari during 2010-11. Three methods of harvesting and threshing i.e. i) manual plus thresher ii) reaper plus thresher and iii) combine harvester were used in the study. The data revealed that different harvesting and threshing techniques had considerable impact on grain losses of wheat. The harvesting losses with manual plus thresher and reaper plus thresher at the field level were observed to be 164.37kg ha -1 and 142.93 kg ha -1 accounting for 3.16% and 2.76%, respectively of wheat grain yield. Total grain losses during harvesting and threshing processes with manual plus thresher, reaper plus thresher and combine harvester were 222.63kg ha -1 , 199.41kg ha -1 and 149.87kg ha -1 which were 4.28%, 3.85% and 2.92% of the total yield, respectively. The minimum amount of waste belonged to reaper plus thresher (0.82%) by providing 42.58 kg ha 1 broken grains and inert material in the produce. The cleaning efficiency of combine was a bit poorer (98.90%) as compared to other harvesting and threshing techniques.