Design, development and testing of a paddy hill seeder

Abstract

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is important leading food crop and it is widely cultivated in India. The farmers are facing problems due to lack of labour, time, inputs cost and also due to drudgery in work. Nevertheless, mechanization in paddy cultivation can boost higher productivity and considerably reduce the cost of production. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to design and develop a power operated paddy hill seeder in paddy cultivation. The power operated paddy hill seeder was developed and tested based on the, engineering and physical properties paddy seeds. The tests were conducted at Kelappaji College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Tavanoor, Kerala to evaluate the seed metering mechanism performance with different study parameters. The missing index and multiple indexes were less for the different combinations of study parameters (speed 1.5 kmph, cell size 9 mm, Transmission ratio 1:1.7), (Speed 1.8 kmph, Cell size 9 mm, Transmission ratio 1:1.7) and (Speed 1.8 kmph, Cell size 12 mm, Transmission ratio 1:1.7). The quality feed index was 86.1, 88.6 and 91.1 respectively for above sequence of combinations of study parameters. The average field capacity of the paddy hill seeder was 0.22 ha h-1 and 0.26 ha h-1 with efficiency of 80.00% and 76.00 % for forward speeds of 1.5 and 1.8 kmph respectively.