Design and development of equipments to cut crop plant materials require some basic data to avoid waste of energy on a wide range of area. In this research, the effect of some plant and blade factors on specific cutting energy (SCE) requirement to cut sugarcane stalks was investigated using pendulum method. A pendulum-like apparatus was designed and calibrated. SCE in this research means energy requirement per area per dry matter (d.m) density of section of cut (j/g.cm -1 ). Blade factors included velocity and knife angles; while plant factors included moisture content, cane cutting position from node or internode and maturity degree by one month of time difference. A 3-replicates factorial experiment with completely randomized design (CRD) layout was conducted. The results showed that minimum SCE of 0.21 j/g.cm -1 of dry matter was obtained with a minimum velocity of 1.33 m/s (p 0.05), minimum moisture content of 48% (p 0.01) and also with lower degree of maturity (p 0.01). Knife angle and cutting position (node or internode) had no significant effect on SCE, while interaction between them with moisture content had significant effect on SCE (p 0.01). Furthermore, interaction between maturity degree with cutting position and also with knife angle had significant effect on SCE (p 0.05).
