During irrigated rice harvesting occur losses and physical and phisiological seed damage. Late 80's, appeared the strippers headers that strip the grain, instead of cutting the spike. However, little is know about physical and phisiological seed damage by harvest header. The objective of this work was to evaluate the mechanical damage caused to BR-IRGA 409 and BR-IRGA 410 rice cultivars by three harvesting methods: (a) manual harvesting and mechanical strip; (b) cutterbar harvesting and; (c) stripper header harvesting. Samples were collected directly in the grain tank when the harvest was mechanical. The experimental design was randomized blocks with six replications. Results demonstrated that the rice seeds of the studied variety didn't showed significant differences in physical and phisiological in seed quality when harvested by cutterbar or stripper header. These two harvesting forms, however, showed significantly seed damages when compared to manual harvesting and mechanical strip.
harvest; vutterbar header; stripper header
