Analysis of market of row-crop cultivators

The row crops occupy a prominent position in agriculture. For example, in the Rostov Region nearly 25% of the acreage annually is under row crops. One of the features of cultivation of row crops is the possibility of mechanical weed control after emergence of seedlings. Mechanical inter-row cultivation could not be substituted for the chemical one, because the first gives rise to a loose mulch layer on the soil surface that contributes to the accumulation of soil moisture. This is particularly important for arid areas of agriculture, including the North Caucasus and Lower Volga Region. Among other things, mechanical cultivation is much more environmentally friendly than chemical one. There is a large number of row-crop cultivators of both domestic and foreign manufacture in the Russian market. The purpose of the study is to identify the main trends in the manufacture of row-crop cultivators that are typical for global enterprises of agricultural machinery industry. With the aim of a qualitative assessment of domestic and foreign brands of row-crop cultivators, the paper analyzes the technical parameters of the most common samples in the market of the South of Russia. The study reveals that in their design domestic and foreign row-crop cultivators differ from each other slightly, mostly only in the width of rows. On all of the considered row-crop cultivators, the parallelogram suspensions of working organs are used. Their basic designs are identical for nearly all machines: the main working organs are the A-hoe blades with different grasp width. The motion speed of the unit lies in the range of 5-10 km/h and depends on the type of working organs and landscape conditions. Weight of fertilizer distributing system in row-crop cultivator is 11-16% of the total weight of the machine, while the specific weight of Russian cultivator is 1.35 times larger than the imported one, which is due to the use of lighter and stronger materials in the manufacture of imported cultivators.

inter-row cultivation, row-crop cultivator, technical characteristic, working organs, analysis of indicators, specific metal consumption, fertilizer distributing system