Journal of Experimental Agriculture International

Conventional seedbed preparation commonly involves mouldboard ploughing followed by secondary tillage, requiring multiple field passes. This study evaluated a tractor-operated auger plough designed to combine soil inversion and clod crushing in a single operation. The implement incorporated two truncated mouldboard bottoms and two PTO-driven vertical shafts carrying 24 L-shaped blades. Its performance was assessed against a rotavator and a cultivator in a 3 × 3 × 3 factorial randomised block design comprising three implements, soil moisture levels of 12, 15 and 18% on a dry basis, forward speeds of 3, 4 and 5 km/h, and three replications. The auger plough achieved a mean operating depth of 220 mm, compared with 150 mm for the rotavator and 170 mm for the cultivator. Its mean weight diameter was 24.9 mm, intermediate between the rotavator (17.8 mm) and the cultivator (35.3 mm). The auger plough achieved 86.5% soil inversion but had a lower effective field capacity (0.19 ha/h) and higher draft (12.42 kN), wheel slip (11.76%) and fuel consumption (4.94 l/h) than the comparison implements. Soil moisture and forward speed significantly influenced the parameters subjected to analysis of variance. The estimated operating cost was ₹3,638.99/ha, with a reported benefit–cost ratio of 1.20:1. The auger plough demonstrated the capacity to combine primary tillage and moderate soil pulverisation, although comparison with the complete conventional tillage sequence is required to establish overall operational savings.