Development of tractor drawn multi crop planter

Abstract

Indian economy is based on agriculture. In India farmers are facing problems due to unavailability of labour, non-efficient farming equipment’s which takes lot of time and also increases labour cost. Sowing seeds at recommended spacing and depth is important for the proper establishment, growth and yield of plants. As per change in shape and size of different seeds the parameters like row spacing and seed to seed spacing, depth of seed, seed rate changes. This research is taken to produce multifunctional and highly efficient multi crop seed sowing machine which will reduce time of sowing, cost of labour and enhances yield and maintain seed to seed and row to row spacing. In the existing planters, the seeds are dropped on the soil behind furrow opener from the end of seed tube having turbulent flow. However, due to improper seed singulation, vibrations of tractor and forward drag of seed along with soil by the furrow openers which causes deviation in uniformity of seed spacing. In the existing planters, the seed metering mechanism gets drive from ground wheel. Slippage of ground wheel affects the uniformity of spacing. The hand push seeder available in the market commonly used for sowing cotton, maize, soyabean, gram etc. are hand push type and requires human power for operating in field which causes fatigue to operator and requires hard work. These research address to eliminate all the above challenges, remove hard work and reduce requirement of labour or human power, increases speed of sowing, helps in reducing the motion losses and maintain uniform seed spacing and desire seed rate and can used for different crops, gram, cotton, maize, soyabean, gram etc. by making adjustment. The sowing of different crop seeds by single planter can be easily done by adjusting the seed rollers and number of teeth or nozzles on drum. During laboratory testing, In stationary calibration of planter the seed rate was found to be 37.088 kg/ha for chickpea (Jaki 9218) and fertilizer rate was found to be 78.68 kg/ha for (DAP Godavari). The sticky belt method is performed at three different speeds i.e. 2.5 km/h, 3km/h and 3.5 km/h. For each speed the test is performed for three times and missing index, multiple index, and quality feed index is calculated. The maximum quality feed index was found at a speed of 3 km/h is 100%. Thus, forward speed of 3 km/h is taken further for field trials. During field trials, Overall performance of machine was satisfactory. The three trials are taken to get accurate observations. The average theoretical field capacity, effective field capacity was found to be 0.592 ha/h, 0.467ha/h respectively and field efficiency was found to be 78.33 %. The moisture content of soil and bulk density of soil was found to be 11.71 % and 1.66 g/cc. The mean seed spacing was found to be 15.22 cm. The coefficient of uniformity for field trial was found 88.71 %. The average missing index, Multiple index and quality feed index was 1.01%, 0.66%, 88.31%, respectively. The average seed rate and fertilizer rate for three field trials was 46.55 kg/h and 83.32 kg/h. The average draft of the machine is found to be 0.312 kg-f. The average ground wheel slippage of planter was found 3.56. The average tractor wheel slippage of planter was found 6.63. For three field trials, the average fuel consumption was found to be 5.637 l/ha and 2.46 l/h. The average cost of the sowing operation was 223.4 Rs per hour.