Weed control is a major issue in Paddy cultivation for farmers / farm owners. Most farm women control weeds using hand hoe tools. Nonetheless, this approach proves useful but requires hard-hitting work and is full of sullenness. Bending for a prolonged period of time increases their physical load and they also suffer many types of muscular problems and because of these women’s efficiency decreases dramatically. Non availability of labour during peak season is added burden to the farmers. Modified conoweeder was evaluated for its performance with existing conoweeder in farmer’s field at Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Tirur, Tiruvallur district. This experiment was carried out in 20 farmers field of Tiruvallur district during the year 2017-18for assessing the reduction in drudgery in weeding operation by different weeders in paddy. The experiment consisted of 20 women farmers belonging to age group of 25- 40 years who were working regularly in the field. The experiment for hand weeding method consisted of 12 women farmers belonging to the age group of 20 -48 years. The weeding efficiency for modified conoweeder was on par (88%) with the weeding efficiency of manual weeding (89%), while the weeding efficiency of conoweeder was comparatively low (79%).The cost of operation of different weeders revealed that, manual weeding was costliest among all the methods. The cost of operation for modified conoweeder was Rs. 2800/ha and for conoweeder was Rs. 3200/ha. The pulse rate was recorded higher in conoweeder (116) compared to modified weeder (108) and manual weeding (106).

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