K Madhusudhana Reddy, D Vijay Kumar, B Ravindranatha Reddy and B Sahadeva Reddy

Groundnut is an important oil seed crop in India and is the predominant dryland crop grown in an area of 5.8 million ha with a production of 5.5 million tons annually. As the soil moisture availability is limited to a very short period in dry land agriculture, timely sowing is crucial for groundnut crop establishment. Also other operations like intercultivation, harvesting and threshing should be done at correct time to get better productivity and good market price for product. Traditional methods of field operations require huge number of labour and more time ultimately lead to increase in cost of cultivation. Acute shortage of labour is experience now a days during field operations due to increased industrialization and other opportunities for labour. To overcome the shortage of labour and to perform the field operations at right time and to take the advantage of favorable situation in dry-land conditions, the farmers can go for farm mechanization by the use of efficient and improved tools, equipment and machines suitable to the Indian dryland soil conditions for groundnut crop cultivation.

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