ROMANIAN farmers can continue to preserve a way of life unchanged since medieval times, thanks to a horse-drawn hayrake and tedder designed by Imperial undergraduates.

The Queen's Lawn proved an ideal testing area for the unusual looking device earlier this month. It has been sent to Romania, followed by two internship students to observe it being tested.

Designed by mechanical engineering students Eleanor Davies, Tayyab Gandhi, Nicholas Everett, Johannes Werhahn, Olivier Djopwouo, Amit Visrolia, Benjamin Diethelm and Stephen Gallimore, the work formed part of a project for the Working Horse Association of Romania, an organisation which supports peasant farmers in the rural north west of the country and hires out farming implements to which farmers would not otherwise have access.

The machinery will be reproduced by Romanian blacksmiths and play a major role in preserving the local ecostructure. The tedder turns the hay, improving its nutritional content by allowing it to dry more quickly. The hayrake gathers it, ready for stacking in the traditional way.

Haymaking in the area is currently done by hand. The new equipment provides an environmentally friendly way of increasing the quality and quantity of the farmers' hay yield, suitable for the local landscape and skills base.

"Everyone is thrilled to be involved with this, because of the opportunity it offers to make a real difference to farmers in Romania," explained Johannes Werhahn. "We are happy to have brought it to a successful end so that the machines are ready to be used — it's exciting to think that our designs will be reproduced and used across the region."

The project is sponsored by Developing Technologies, a UK charity working in association with Imperial to use student projects at all levels to provide an engineering design service for the developing world in a way that is suitable for local manufacture and maintenance.

Manager Fiona Pullen added: "Our aims are to relieve poverty and to promote education and we are very grateful to Imperial and particularly the department of mechanical engineering for their commitment to this project, which will not only benefit the communities in Romania, but will also give students hands-on experience and the chance to follow the progress of their designs as they are used.

"As we believe it is invaluable for tomorrow's designers to see the impact of their solutions on other peoples and countries, we will be working hard during the next few years to increase the numbers of students we are able to send on internships.

"We are also keen to expand our work to staff and students of other departments, especially to those academic staff with experience of appropriate technology or who would like to act as supervisors for our projects."

Contact: k.pullen@imperial.ac.uk or fiona@developingtechnologies.org for further details.

www.imperial.ac.uk/P4247.htm