1. Introduction
Rice straw is a by-product of harvesting paddy. After traditional
manual harvesting, rice straw is carried outfrom the field and saved
for other uses. However, with farmers’ wide adoption and use of
combine harvesters that leave the rice straw spread out in the field,
gathering them has become a more difficult and tedious task. This
has resulted in the increase in the cost of gathering straw which,
together with the heavy labor requirement during harvesting sea