Wheel Hoe Weeder (WHW) designed and developed by the Department of Agronomy, College of Agriculture, Vellayani under Kerala Agricultural University has been granted patent for ten years. It is a manually operated push-type machine with a wheel and weeding blade for weeding.
The machinery can easily be operated by women for weeding in inter-row spaces of row planted crops. The long handle lets the operator to avoid bending over to pull out the weeds. An operator using the machinery with a weeding blade of sweep size 20 cm attached to it can weed an area of 0.015 ha (3.7 cents ) in an hour in loamy soil.
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The machinery is operated by pushing action through force exerted by operator on the handlebar with grips, which allows the soil working part of the machinery i.e. weeding blade to penetrate into the soil, skim below the ground surface and cut or uproot the weeds in between the crop rows. Soil mass to a depth of 1.5 cm is manipulated by the machinery during operation.
Wheel Hoe Weeder has been developed as a part of doctoral/postgraduate research programme of Seethal Rose Chacko, Dhanu Unnikrishnan, Krishnasree R K and Anitrosa Innazent under the guidance of Sheeja K Raj, Jacob D and Shalini Pillai P, Department of Agronomy, College of Agriculture, Vellayani.
Weeding blade is attached to the headpiece such that the weeding blade is slanted to an angle of 15 degree to the horizontal while the headpiece remains vertically attached to the chassis. This design is incorporated so that the weeding blade can easily penetrate soil with least resistance.