Investigation on environmentally friendly wheat harvest technology

Unpredictable weather conditions shorten the harvest period, the harvest itself becomes more and more complicated. During the harvest period, combine harvesters must be used not only at the maximum possible efficiency, but also to protect the environment and apply harvesting technologies that comply with the principles of sustainable agriculture. Harvesting is one of the most important agricultural operations, requiring a lot of equipment, energy resources and manpower. Unfavourable natural conditions can delay harvesting, which would lead to lower grain quality and lower economic benefits. Therefore, new harvesting technologies and ways of solving them are constantly being sought, which help harvest more efficiently and with better quality and at the same time protect the environment. Usually, for grain harvesting, combine harvesters are equipped with cutterbars of various sizes and technological solutions. A little less often, when harvesting grain, a stripper header mounted on the combine is used, thanks to which only the grain ears are scraped off. The purpose of this study is to investigate the technological process of harvesting using a stripper header in order to determine the most optimal working parameters. Combine harvesters CLAAS Lexion 550 with a conventional cutterbar and stripper header harvested wheat. The influence of the working parameters of the stripper header on the quality of wheat harvest and grain losses was studied. It was determined that with the same settings of the harvesters, but equipped with a conventional grain cutterbar and stripper header, the average yield losses were 1.58% and 0.89%, respectively. The results of the research showed that increasing the driving speed increases the yield loss when working with a conventional cutterbar. Meanwhile, by increasing the driving speed, when working with stripper header, grain losses decrease.