Performance of animal-drawn, ripper attached maize-cum-fertilizer planter

Abstract

Availability of conservation tillage implements, especially tillage-cum-planters, in Ethiopia is limited. Some of these available tillage-cum-planters perform well only on light soils while others perform poor due to the complications they have on their seed-fertilizer metering systems. To overcome the problem, a new ripper attached animal-drawn maizecum- fertilizer planter (RAP) was developed. The implement was compared with a sweeper attached planter (SAP) and the conventional method of planting in rows (CMP) as a check in RCBD with three replication in a plot size of 10x40m² at Melkassa Agricultural Research Center (MARC). The results showed that the seed spacing and seed per hill uniformity (ability to drop two seeds per hill) of RAP were found to be 28.53+4.21cm and 69.39+3.24% respectively. Whereas, SAP achieved 34.37 + 9.11cm and 31.72+8.67% seed spacing and seed per hill uniformity respectively. Based on total time taken to prepare the land and seed sowing, RAP (14.29+2.36 hr.ha^-1) had shown greater efficiency over SAP (24.84+2.13 hr.ha^-1) and CMP (170.67+15.09hr.ha^-1). Based on planting operation time measured, statistically significant variation among the means of RAP (14.29+2.36 hr.ha^-1), SAP (24.84+2.13 hr.ha^-1) and CMP (66.70+7.15 hr.ha^-1) at 95% confidence interval was obtained. In seed emergence/plant population/ test, it was found that there was significant variation among the means of RAP (43553±2031plant.ha^-1), SAP (37347±4275 plant.ha^-1) and CMP (47117±3518 plant.ha^-1). This excelled performance of it and its easieness in manuverability make the new planter a better candidate for CA practice.