Зерновое хозяйство России (May 2018)
Improvement of harvesting technology of sorghum
Abstract
The last years have seen a wide application of grain crop stripping technology. All harvesting combines are now equipped with stripper heads. Due to the decrease of number of stems in the stripped grain mass the load on the threshing unit also decreases on 75-80%. It increases productivity of grain harvester in 1.5-1.7 times. Because of a small share of the lands under sorghum, participating in crop rotations, the implementation of sorghum harvesting by stripping technology is paid little attention. At the same time when sorghum is harvested by the traditional method of threshing, plant stems are compressed and rubbed. As a result moisture of the stems falls on grain, it is absorbed by grain and it increases grain humidity. The stripping harvesting does no deform the stems that allow harvesting grain with the same moisture as before stripping. Thus the article considers the possibility to adapt harvesting stripping technology for sorghum, though it has been predominantly designed for grain crops. The experiments showed that the share of non-grain part after stripping of the grain sorghum variety ‘Zernogradskoe 53’ was 17.3%, that was similar to the stripped grain mass of grain crops and in 1.77 times less than after stripping of sweet sorghum. The data about losses of grain obtained during the study greatly vary. The grain losses after stripping of sweet sorghum were 7.6%, that was in 2.64 times more than after stripping of grain sorghum variety ‘Zernogradskoe 53’. Thus, the grain sorghum variety ‘Zernogradskoe 53’ and other varieties of the similar morphology can be harvested with crop stripping technology, using constantly manufactured stripper headers. But the present stripper headers are not suitable for harvesting of sweet sorghum and other varieties of similar morphology and they require large modernization.
