An Analytical Study on Evaluating the Performance of Developed Cultivator Mounted Seed Metering Mechanism

Abstract

Prototype cultivator-cum-seed drill was designed, fabricated and tested for sowing of paddy. The machine consisted of cultivator frame, tines, seed box, seed tubes, metering mechanism, power transmission unit, furrow opener and hitching attachments. The selection of materials and fabrication was done following the standard manufacturing process. The cultivator-cum-seed drill with shovel type furrow openers was tested for sowing of the paddy. The performance of the machine was evaluated considering the effect of field capacity, field efficiency, energy requirement and cost of operation in relation with conventional seed drill in the laboratory as well as in the field. The seed rate of cultivator-cum-seed drill was found to be 80.87 kg/ha and that of conventional seed drill was found to be 80.26 kg/ha.when seed drill was half filled and flute exposure was 14.9 mm & 13.8 mm. The standard deviation for inter row variation for sowing paddy with cultivator-cum-seed drill was 0.46 with CV of 1.8 % and that for conventional seed drill was 0.41 and 1.5 % respectively.The effective field capacity of the cultivator-cum seed drill was 0.537 ha/h with field efficiency of 82.8 % as compared to conventional seed drill which was 0.596 ha/h and 82.32 %. The cost of operation for cultivator-cum-seed drill was 591.08 Rs/ha and that for conventional seed drill was 535.016 Rs/ha. The Energy requirement for cultivator-cum-seed drill was found to be 454.18 MJ/ha and that for conventional seed drill was found to be 416 MJ/ha.