© Kamla-Raj 2004                                                                          J. Hum. Ecol., 15(3): 165-167 (2004)

Assessment of Workload of Weeding Activity in Crop

Production Through Heart Rate

Suma Hasalkar, Renuka Budihal, Rajeshwari Shivalli and Nutan Biradar

Family Resource Management, Department of Family Resource

Management,College of Rural Home Science, University Agricultural Sciences,

Dharwad 580 005, Karnataka, India

KeyWords Heart Rate. Energy Expenditure. Total Cardiac Cost of Work. Physiological Cost of Work.

Abstract Heart rate is one of the accurate means to evaluate the physiological or functional demands of work on the worker. Hence the study was undertaken to know the workload of women in weeding activity. The results revealed that, the total cardiac cost of work while weeding was 6165.87 beats and the physiological cost of work was 14.67 beats/min. The average working heart rate during weeding was observed to be 94.36 beats/min and the average energy expenditure was 6.28 kj/min. Though weeding was performed for maximum, number of days in a year, continuously from morning till evening in squatting position, majority of the women perceived it as light to moderately heavy activity. The heart rate responses showed similar result as far as the classification of workload is considered.

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