Design,Development and Performance Evaluation of a Pull Type Single Row Maize Seeder

Abstract

Maize (Zea mays) is the second most widely grown cereal crop in Sri Lanka. As the attention for mechanization is very poor, high labor cost is the crucial problem in maize cultivation. Despite having several seeders in the market, farmers are unwilling to use them due to high initial cost and some operating drawback. Therefore, this study intended to introduce a user-friendly and affordable maize seeder with high capacity and efficiency. The fabricated seeder's performance was tested in both completely prepared (with primary and secondary tillage) fields and incompletely prepared fields (only with secondary tillage) using male and female laborers, separately with three replicates. The suitable forward speed for the better operation was 0.25 ms-1. The within row spacing is properly maintained by the machine itself, and between row, spacing is controlled by the operator with the help of the marker. The results manifested that, the actual field capacities for female and male laborers at completely prepared fields were 0.12 hah-1 at 79% efficiency and 0.13 hah-1 at 82% efficiency respectively. Corresponding values in incompletely prepared fields were 0.11 hah1 at 76% efficiency and 0.11 hah-1 at 78% efficiency, respectively. The results showed that the type of land preparation and gender do not affect (p>0.05) on the machine's efficiency. Due to the affordability, user-friendliness, higher capacity and efficiency, the machine can be recommended for maize cultivation in Sri Lanka.