Collection of Crop By-Product: Experience on Wheat Chaff

Wheat is one of the most widespread crops worldwide because of its high yield and importance for food, chemical purposes and livestock feed. Some of the residues of this crops (wheat chaff) remain in the field after grain harvesting. In Europe, the only wheat chaff could provide an annual potential biomass of 54.8 Mt. Collecting such a biomass could be of interest for bioenergy production and could increase farmers’ income. However, progress in harvest technology play a key role in order to turn untapped by-products into valuable feedstock. The research represents a study of the performance and the quality of the work of an innovative system (Harcob), developed for maize cob collection, during wheat chaff harvesting. Results highlighted that it was possible to harvest 0.67 t ha-1 of chaff, without affecting the harvesting performance of the combine. The Harcob system resulted suitable to harvest such different and high potential crop by-products and may represents a solution for farmers investing in the bioenergy production chain.