Development and evaluation of self-propelled Planter for seeding in terrace farming conditions

Abstract

A light weight two row self-propelled planter for terrace farming was developed, and its performance was evaluated for planting buckwheat seeds. Laboratory testing was conducted to evaluate the performance and optimize the operating parameters. The independent variables considered were peripheral speed of seed plate (0.28, 0.42, 0.50, 0.55 m s-1), cell size (5.2,6.2, 6.8, 7.0 mm) and gate opening height (10, 30, 50, and 70 mm). The response considered were missing index, multiple index, feed index and degree of variation. The experiments were planned using afull factorial design. Analysis of variance indicated that effects of peripheral speed of seed plate and cell size on the responses were significant, while the gate opening height did not affect the performance significantly. The independent parameters were optimized by numerical optimization technique by using the desirability function of Design Expert software. The objective of the optimization was set to minimize missing index, multiple index, degree of variation and maximize feed index. The solution with highest desirability value was taken as the optimum. The optimum performance was obtained at 6.2 mm cell size, 0.28 m s-1 peripheral speed of seed plate and 30 mm gate opening height with missing index, multiple index, degree of variation and maximum feed index of 10.0 %, 15.0 %, 75.30 %, and 16.39% respectively. The planter was then tested in field for sowing buckwheat seeds at the optimized operating conditions. The theoretical field capacity, actual field capacity and field efficiency of the planter was found to be 0.06 ha.h-1, 0.04 ha.h-1 and 68% respectively. Seed rate for planting of buckwheat was found 16.7 kg ha-1, which was much lower than the broadcasting seed rate of 40 kg.ha-1.