Farm machinery testing fees in India — a 2026 budgeting guide
What power tiller testing, power weeder testing, power reaper testing, and battery sprayer testing actually cost, using SRFMTTI's revised 2026 charge schedule as a worked reference.
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Testing fees rarely get the same planning attention as the testing calendar itself. Most OEM budgets carry a single line — "FMTTI testing" — sized off a rough number a colleague quoted from a prior programme, sometimes years out of date. SRFMTTI Garladinne's revised power tiller testing charges, effective 1 April 2026, are unusual in being a fully itemised, dated, signed schedule — and they're a useful anchor for building a disciplined testing-fee budget across a full mechanization range: power tillers, power weeders, power reapers, and battery sprayers alike.
This is the reference companion to our ARAI, ICAT & FMTTI homologation service, which covers the technical testing process end to end. This guide is narrower and more numerical: what testing actually costs, how that cost is built up line by line, and how to budget it responsibly across machine classes where a published schedule isn't always in hand.
The reference schedule: SRFMTTI's revised power tiller charges
SRFMTTI — the Southern Region Farm Machinery Training & Testing Institute, one of four regional FMTTI centres, located at Garladinne in Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh — issued File No. 16-29/2017-Test on 25 March 2026, revising testing charges for mandatory power tiller tests with effect from 1 April 2026, under Ministry Office Order No. 13-17/2021-M&T(I&P) (FTS-98794) dated 2 April 2024.
| Test | Revised fee (₹) |
|---|---|
| Specification – Initial Inspection | 22,693.48 |
| Running-in for 20 hours | 76,887.92 |
| Rotary Performance Test | 23,562.45 |
| Brake Performance Test | 5,338.61 |
| Drawbar Performance Test | 25,579.15 |
| Noise Level Test | 9,066.43 |
| Turning Ability Test | 3,442.05 |
| Nominal Speed Test | 3,661.33 |
| Haulage Test | 17,517.00 |
| Field Test | 1,09,234.53 |
| Torture Test | 7,229.35 |
| Material Test & Chemical Composition | 9,734.77 |
| Miscellaneous Charges | 93,531.28 |
Two items carry most of the weight: the Field Test (₹1,09,234.53) and Miscellaneous Charges (₹93,531.28) together account for roughly half the total. Running-in (₹76,887.92) is the third-largest line, and the one item that materially changes the total if your test regime doesn't require it.
GST and the biannual revision clause
All charges in the schedule are exclusive of GST. SRFMTTI's testing activity has been classified — per a 2017 clarification from the Office of the Assistant Commissioner of Central Tax, GST Division, Anantapur — under "Technical Testing and Analysis Service," SAC 998346, attracting GST at 18% of the test fee, charged separately.
| Component | Pre-GST fee | With 18% GST |
|---|---|---|
| With running-in | ₹4,07,478 | ≈ ₹4,80,824 |
| Without running-in | ₹3,30,590 | ≈ ₹3,90,096 |
The notification also states that all testing fees/charges are revised biannually at 8%, under the same Ministry office order that sets the current schedule. A budget built off a fee quote that's more than six months old should be treated as stale until reconfirmed — an 8% step every two revision cycles compounds meaningfully across a multi-machine, multi-year testing programme.
Payment runs through the NTRP portal (www.bharatkosh.gov.in), the Government of India's non-tax receipt portal, per SRFMTTI's own notice — the same payment channel applies regardless of machine class or centre.
Budgeting power weeder, power reaper, and battery sprayer testing fees
A published, fully-itemised schedule as clean as SRFMTTI's power tiller notice isn't uniformly available for every machine class or every centre. That doesn't mean the underlying cost structure is a mystery — it follows the same architecture this schedule demonstrates, just against a different test code.
| Machine class | Governing test code | How the fee is likely structured |
|---|---|---|
| Power tiller | IS 9935 | Specification/inspection + running-in + machine-specific performance tests (rotary, brake, drawbar, field, haulage) + miscellaneous charges — fully documented in SRFMTTI's 2026 schedule above. |
| Power reaper | IS 11467 | Specification/inspection + cutting-width, field-efficiency, crop-loss, and mechanical-reliability tests + miscellaneous charges — priced under the centre's own reaper-specific schedule. |
| Power weeder | No single codified IS number; centre-specific protocol | Specification/inspection + a negotiated set of performance tests (engine/motor output, noise, turning, weeding efficiency, plant-damage) + miscellaneous charges — confirm the exact test plan and its pricing with the centre before committing an engineering sample. |
| Battery / power sprayer | Category-specific test procedure, separate from IS 9935 | Specification/inspection + sprayer-specific performance tests (spray pattern, discharge rate, battery/engine endurance) + miscellaneous charges — request the current schedule directly from the target centre. |
A worked example: budgeting a four-machine mechanization range
Consider an OEM planning to test a power tiller, a power weeder, a power reaper, and a battery sprayer as a coordinated small-farm range, across two FMTTI centres chosen for logistics.
Power tiller. Budgeted directly off SRFMTTI's published 2026 schedule: ₹4,07,478 plus 18% GST, call it ≈ ₹4,80,824, with running-in included since the model's test regime requires it.
Power reaper. No public itemised schedule available for the target centre, so the OEM requests a current quote in writing rather than assuming parity with the tiller figure, and budgets a placeholder pending that quote, flagged as unconfirmed in the finance model.
Power weeder. The OEM engages the centre early — before the engineering sample is finalised — to confirm both the test protocol and its pricing simultaneously, since neither is fixed by a published IS code. This avoids a rebuild-and-repricing cycle later.
Battery sprayer. Treated as its own line with its own quote request, on the same logic as the weeder and reaper — no extrapolation from the tiller schedule.
Contingency. The whole budget carries an 8% contingency against the biannual revision clause, applied to any fee quote older than three months by the time testing actually begins.
This is a more conservative process than pricing three of the four machines off the one schedule that happens to be well-documented — but it's the version of the budget that survives contact with the actual invoice.
Where this sits in the wider certification picture
Testing fees are one line in a larger regulatory budget. For farm machinery and components that also require the ISI mark, see our guide to BIS / FMCS certification for agricultural machinery. For tractors and any machine variant that will be registered for road use, CMVR type-approval at ARAI or ICAT runs alongside FMTTI testing rather than in place of it — covered in our tractor & farm machinery homologation guide.
Explore our ARAI, ICAT & FMTTI homologation service →Frequently asked questions
- At SRFMTTI Garladinne, the revised schedule effective 01.04.2026 sets the full test fee at ₹4,07,478 with the mandatory 20-hour running-in, or ₹3,30,590 without it — both exclusive of GST. This is one notified centre's schedule for one machine class; the other three FMTTI centres (Budni, Hisar, Biswanath Chariali) set and revise their own fees independently, though most build up charges the same way, test-by-test.
- Not one as complete and dated as SRFMTTI's power tiller schedule, at least not one uniformly published across all four centres. Power reapers test under IS 11467 and power weeders under a negotiated, centre-specific protocol (there being no single codified IS number for weeders yet). Both will carry their own itemised fee schedules built the same way as the tiller one — specification and inspection, machine-specific performance tests, and a miscellaneous-charges line — but you should request the current schedule directly from the target centre rather than assume it mirrors the tiller figure.
- Battery and engine-operated sprayers are evaluated under their own test procedure, separate from a power tiller's IS 9935 code, and priced under a separate schedule. The underlying cost architecture — a specification/inspection charge, a set of machine-specific performance tests, and miscellaneous charges, all exclusive of GST — follows the same pattern this guide walks through for power tillers. Request the current sprayer-specific fee schedule from the relevant testing centre before finalising a budget.
- Yes, in SRFMTTI's case at 18%, since its testing activity is classified under 'Technical Testing and Analysis Service' (SAC 998346) per a 2017 clarification from the GST authorities. Budget the quoted fee plus 18% as the real cash outlay — the pre-GST figure alone understates the actual cost by close to a fifth.
- SRFMTTI's notification states charges are revised biannually at 8%, under the Ministry's Office Order No. 13-17/2021-M&T(I&P) (FTS-98794) dated 02.04.2024. Any fee schedule — for tillers, weeders, reapers, or sprayers — should be treated as time-boxed. A multi-quarter testing programme should be budgeted with the revision cycle in mind, and reconfirmed with the centre if it spans a revision boundary.
- Through the NTRP portal (www.bharatkosh.gov.in), the Government of India's non-tax receipt portal, per SRFMTTI's own notice. Confirm the correct head of account and challan procedure with the specific centre before paying, since payment routing errors are a common, avoidable source of delay in getting a sample accepted into the test queue.
- [1]Southern Region Farm Machinery Training & Testing Institute (SRFMTTI), Garladinne — Revised Testing Charges w.e.f. 01.04.2026— Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India; accessed 2026-07-29
- [2]NTRP — Non-Tax Receipt Portal— Government of India; accessed 2026-07-29
Devendra K Jha· Director, AgriMachinery Consulting
Engineer-leader and founder of AgriMachinery Consulting. Works with India's small and unorganised farm-machinery manufacturers on certification, homologation, subsidy empanelment, supply chain and dealer-network strategy from offices in Pune and New Delhi.
- Farm-machinery certification & homologation
- SMAM / state subsidy empanelment
- Manufacturing & supply chain