Ergonomic assessment of maize shelling activity using traditional and modern tool Lohani Tanushree1, Rana Shivani2,* 1Research Scholar, Department of Family Resource Management, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab 2Scientist, Department of Family Resource Management, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab *Corresponding author email id: shivanirana@pau.edu
Online Published on 18 March, 2024. Abstract Women play an important role in agriculture making up 43 per cent of the total agriculture workforce. Farm women are involved in plethora of agricultural activities from sowing to harvesting including post harvesting activities. But unfortunately majority of farmwomen utilize traditional tools and implements that involve lot of drudgery, leading to their exploitation as an agricultural worker. Traditionally farm women accomplish shelling of maize cob manually through finger nails, sickle or beating of cob by wooden sticks. They perform this activity either in sitting cum bending or in squatting posture for long time which leads to fatigue and drudgery. So, the present study was undertaken to investigate the existing practices of maize shelling and ergonomic assessment of maize shelling using traditional and modern tools. Study was conducted in district Hoshiarpur, Punjab where 40 farm women from each village i.e., Talwara and Mahilpur were selected purposively due to extensive involvement of farmwomen in this activity. The data was collected with help of self-structured interview schedule. For ergonomic analysis data was collected on objective and subjective parameters. Results revealed that cardiovascular, physiological and muscular cost of work decreased significantly while working with modern tool. Further, musculoskeletal disorders were also reduced significantly with modern tool. Further increase in output was from 14 kg/hr (Traditional tool) to 26 kg/ hr (Modern tool) when we compare the traditional and modern tools. Top Keywords Musculoskeletal problems, Total cardiac cost of work (TCCW), Physiological cost of work (PCW), Drudgery reducing tools, Maize shelling tool. Top |