QUATRO SUGARCANE SINGLE BUD CUTTER

A low cost cutting machine for settling nursery

Traditionally, sugarcane cultivation requires huge quantity of seed material nearly 7.5 to 10 tonns per ha, which accounts 10-15% of total the productivity. The seed multiplication rate of sugarcane is very low (1:8). Due to bulky nature of propagating material, very low average germination (35-40%), the non uniform and inadequate germination of crop causes huge fluctuation in productivity. Planting of sugarcane crop with pre germinated settling plants is the best solution for improving seed health, seed multiplication ratio and uniformity in plant population, which ultimately assures higher sustainable crop yield. The foremost requirement of settling raising and transplanting work is the availability of cost effective cutting tool for detaching uniform size mini single bud setts.

Many sugar mills and farmers of southern states, had successfully adopted this method, but in north India the unavailability of motorized single sett cutters was one of the biggest bottleneck towards adoption of settling transplanting techniques. The cutters were manufactured in southern states, viz., Maharashtra, Tamilnadu etc but due to their higher price and huge transportation cost there was least interest in adoption of setting transplanting method by the sugar mills of the region.

To address this issue, ICAR-SBIRC, Karnal have designed and developed, a cost effective single budded sett cutting tool namely “Quatro Sugarcane Single Bud Cutter” which begged design patent in the country “Design No. 297432”. Nearly 7-8 thousands single bud setts, adequate to grow settlings for transplantation in an acre area, can effectively be detached in one hour by this machine, when it runs at full capacity i.e. four persons operating on each cutting slot of the machine. The technology was commercialized by giving licensing rights to M/s Hanzra Engg Works, vill-Bansa, Karnal. Nearly 53 units had been supplied to the sugar mills and farmers of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar and Uttarakhand states.

Advantages

Improvement in Seed Health

From the last three crop seasons nearly 272 lakhs single bud setts were detached and utilized either in raising settlings for transplanting or direct planting of treated single budded setts in around 2899 acres of area as follows.

User Institute/ Sugar mill/ farActivitymer	No of healthy single bud setts detached	No. of setts utilized in Settlings raising & transplanting	No. of setts utilized in Direct planting	Area planted/Transplanted.
ICAR-SBIRC, Karnal for on and off farm seed production	5 lakhs	5 lakhs		80 acres
Sugar mills of UP	158 lakhs	55 lakhs	103 lakhs	1670 acres
Sugar mills of Punjab	50 lakhs	35 lakhs	20 lakhs	480 acres
Farmers & Sugar mills of Haryana	30 lakhs	20 lakhs	10 lakhs	400 acres
Sugar mills of Uttarakhand	25 lakhs	5.42 lakhs	19.57 lakhs	239 acres
Sugar mills of Bihar	4 lakhs	0.50 lakhs	03.50 lakhs	30 acres
Total	272 lakhs	115.92 lakhs	156.07 lakhs	2899 acres

Stakeholders

Major stakeholders who used the machine

M/s Superior Food Grains Pvt Ltd, Unn, Shamli, UP (9 units), M/s Rana Sugar Mill unit Butter Seviyan, Amritsar (10 units), Uttam Sugar Mills Group (4 units), Balrampur Chini Mill Group (10 units), Birla group (4 units), Cooperative sugar mills of Haryana (10 units), Harinagar chini mill (1) and Tirupati chini mill (2), Bihar

Contact Details

THE DIRECTOR,

ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute,

Coimbatore 641007,

Tamil Nadu,India.

Phone: 0422 2472621

Email: director.sbi@icar.gov.in; itmu.sbi@icar.gov.in;