Abstract
During the harvesting operntion, i fairly good quantity of wheat grains and ears fall on the ground. Some of these ears are restored to the human populatIon b' the poor women folk of the rural community who pick the ears. Generally, picking of the ears is allowed after the sheaves are shifted to the threshing ground. As .!.;oun as the harvested crop is removed the field is olso opened to buffalo, goat and sheep grazing. SO, these animals also play a role in restoring indirectly some of the food energy lost in the grains to the human population.
Tn order to estimate the quantity of wheat grains lost during harvesting, about 33 hectares of harvested wheat flel&; in central Punjab were sampled with the help of 1 m quadrats during the period extending from April 15 to May 15, 1987. In each acre of the fields, 3 quadrats were randomly selected and all the wheat grains present inside the quadrats were collected, dried and weighed.
About 947 of the qu;qdrate had grains in them. An average quadrat contained G.0059 kg of wheat in it. In other words, in each hectare 59.0 kg of whea- grains were lost due to shedding mainly during the harvesting operation. The is 3.14Z of ihu per hectare yield of wheat in Pakistan dung the year 1986-87, the per hectare yield being )880 kg
** (Source: Federal Bureau of Statistics, Government or Pakistan).
