comparison of three conventional rice combine harvesters in mazandaran, iran

two types of paddy combine harvester (head-feed and whole-crop) are commonly available in different widths in developed countries. the use of combine harvesters can greatly decrease labor costs and efficiency. combine harvesters have been introduced in several east asian countries (china, japan, south korea) to decrease costs, but their technical and economic performance has not yet been studied. the current study examined three combine harvesters with different mechanisms and widths: iseki (2 rows, head-feed; japan), kukje (3 rows, head-feed, south korea); jiangsu (whole-crop, china). the experiment was conducted in a randomized complete block design with three replications. the results showed that there were significant differences between treatments for field efficiency, loss, feed rate, theoretical and effective field capacity, and cost per ha. there was no significant difference in slippage among the combine harvesters. the whole-crop combine had the highest rate of loss at 1.74% (excluding natural loss) and soil compaction. the whole-crop combined cost per ha was lowest at 1.3873 million rials. it can be concluded that the whole-crop combine performed the best of the tested combines.