Development and testing of manually operated single row planter for groundnut seeds Singh Uday Veer*, Moses Sheen C Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering VIAET, Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences Naini, Prayagraj211007Uttar Pradesh, India *Email for correspondence: uday1187@gmail.com
Online published on 6 May, 2021. Abstract India is one of the largest producers of oilseeds in the world and occupies an important position in the Indian agricultural economy. Groundnut is an important oil, food and forage crop generally distributed in tropical, subtropical and warm temperate zones. A manually operated single row planter for groundnut seed was developed to improve planting efficiency and reduce drudgery involved in manual planting method of groundnut. The major components of the planter were developed as seed hopper, seed metering device, jaw clutch assembly, seed delivery tube, furrow opener, furrow covering wheels, drive wheel and row marker. The developed planter was tested in the laboratory for its specifications performance parameters and was also tested in the field for field efficiency. The overall dimension of the developed planter was found as 1,474 × 960 × 330 mm. The diameter of drive wheel was found 350 mm. The diameter of seed metering device was found 116 mm and number of cells on the periphery of seed metering device was 6. The physical properties of groundnut seed were determined. The average length, width and thickness were 12.20, 6.90 and 7.70 mm respectively. The planter was calibrated for the seed rate, seed to seed spacing and seed damage. The minimum and maximum seed rate was found 60.76 and 66.34 kg/ha respectively. The minimum and maximum seed to seed distance was found as 19.50 and 20.00 cm respectively. The planter was tested in the field for theoretical field capacity, effective field capacity and field efficiency and the average theoretical field capacity, average effective field capacity and average field efficiency were found 0.101 ha/h, 0.081 ha/h and 81.94 per cent respectively. Top Keywords Groundnut planter, Drudgery, Field capacity, Field efficiency. Top |