Design of an Innovative Tractor-Operated Seeder for Mat Type Paddy Nursery

Abstract

This study contains the design approach, development details, and field evaluation of an innovative tractor-operated seeder for sowing mat type paddy nursery. In order to design and select the various components of mat type nursery seeder, the fundamentals of farm machinery design were taken into due consideration. The machine comprises of soil cutting unit, inclined conveyor unit, screw type conveyor auger, sieving unit, compaction roller, polythene sheet laying unit, soil metering and seed metering unit. The basic criteria for design were to prepare a soil bed with a width of 1000 mm and width of cut of channel 240 mm on both sides of the bed to irrigate the prepared soil bed. The soil cutting unit and conveyor unit were designed based upon amount of soil required on soil bed to have 20–30 mm soil mat bed thickness and seed metering unit was designed to deliver 2–3 seeds∙cm⁻² on the bed. The machine was fabricated based on design calculations and then evaluated in laboratory as well as actual field conditions. During field evaluation of this machine, it was found that the coefficient of uniformity for seed spread was 7.33%, coefficient of uniformity for soil spread 5.67%, fuel consumption 39.6 l.ha⁻¹ and actual field capacity 0.11 ha∙h⁻¹ with 1.7 km∙h⁻¹ forward speed of machine. Labour saving using the designed tractor-operated seeder was observed to be 86.4% as compared to the manual method of sowing mat type nursery using steel frames.