Paper Title
Musculoskeletal Problems in Polyhouse Workers

Abstract
In 21 St century, world has an alternative new technology of agriculture i,e Polyhouse Farming. It reduces dependency of rainfall and makes the optimum use of land and water resources. Polyhouses are the structures utilized as microclimate environment to make the plant grow well in unfavourable climate conditions. Under optimum conditions, growing vegetables and fruits in polyhouse can give the farmer up to ten times for what they would get if they did the same in an open rain fed field. But the polyhouse farming is done in vertical Form due to the shortage of land, so the workers have to stretch their body to perform the task. In some activities working requires bent over position for prolonged period of time and to bend excessively requires rotation of lower spine and hence, May also place undo stain on the supporting musculature and supporting ligaments structure. The present research was conducted to study the postural discomfort in workers at workplace. For research, 15 workers who were involved in their respective task for more than 2 years were taken as respondents. The eight main activities viz; bed washing, bed making, field preparation, sowing, tying, pruning, irrigation and fertilising and harvesting which were carried out by workers for more than 5 hours daily were taken for study. On the basis of NORDIC scale maximum percentage (66.7%) of the respondents were suffering from severe problem of neck and shoulder trouble including workers of bed washing (2), bed making (1), sowing (1), tying (3), pruning (2) and harvesting (1). Low back problem was found to be severe in 60 percent polyhouse workers with score 16-23. Finding unfolds that the maximum percentage of the respondents (93.3%) were suffering from shoulder problem, followed by a same percent of the respondents (86.7%) who were found to be suffering from upper back and lower back problems. On the basis of worksheet recommendation there should be immediately changes in activities to overcome the postural hazards. Keywords - Polyhouse, Postural Discomfort and Microclimate.