The Influence of Drum Arrangement of Spindle Harvesters on Fiber Quality and Yield

It has been stated that mechanical harvesting has had the greatest impact on cotton since the invention of the cotton gin and plays an important role in determining fibre and seed quality, as the quality of ginned cotton is directly related to the quality of seed cotton prior to ginning. Irrespective of which mechanical harvesting method is used, the set-up and adjustment, training and skill of the operators, as well as the timing of defoliation and harvesting play a major role in the amount of trash and moisture present in the seed cotton. The efficiency of harvesting and the resultant fibre quality can be influenced by many factors and many studies have been conducted to investigate the consequence of seed cotton moisture and set up in terms of spindle type and size as well as speed.

 

Spindles are attached to picker bars which are arranged on rotating drums. Conventional picking units have two opposed rotating drums, one on each side of the row whereas in-line drum arrangement, have both drums on the right side of the row. This presentation will focus on drum arrangement as there has been no recent published research conducted in which the two different drum arrangements have been compared in terms of harvesting efficiency, using high yielding commercial varieties, and fiber quality.