DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A GROUNDNUT PLANTER

Abstract

Farm machinery is an important element for agricultural development and crop Production in many developed countries. The use of machines for agricultural operations has been one of the outstanding developments in the global agriculture during the last decade. Groundnut has been an important crop for human even for animals since time memorial. However, the production of groundnut has been limited by inadequate mechanization. The aim of this research is to develop a low cost two-row groundnut planter and to evaluate its performance. The developed planter consists of the handle, seed hopper, furrow opener, seed discharge tube, main body (frame) and metering roller housing. The machine was powered by the rotation of the wheel and its motion was transmitted through the shaft to the metering unit. The seed tube was made of hollow cylindrical metal designed from the hopper to the seed meter. A 25 mm diameter hole on the metering device houses the seed to be planted. Seeds picked from the hopper pass through the upper hole at the open and close castellated metering mechanism to the lower hole into the discharge tube, which deposits the seeds into the opened furrow. Field test was carried to determine field efficiency, metering efficiency and field capacity. The field test results showed that the two-row planter has a metering efficiency of 92% with 0.7 m/secs machine speed while the field capacity efficiency of the planter was 82%. The ANOVA shows that speed as significant effect on metering efficiency at 5% level of significance. The cost of Production of the planter is about 220 US dollar. The planter was compared with manual two-row groundnut, tractor planter machine and groundnut planter. The planter has advantage in terms of cost, energy required, wastage of seed and time required to plant. The planter could plant an average of five seeds per point. It is simple, cheap and the ergonomics of the machine was considered which makes it easy to operate