Development and evaluation of a revolving magazine type transplanting mechanism (dropping type) for vegetable crops

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Date
2011
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Punjab Agricultural University
Abstract
Vegetables are a major source of protein foods in human nutrition. India is the second largest producer of vegetables after China. Production of vegetables in India stands at 7% of the world production. Area under vegetable crops was about 7.803 million ha and production is about 125.89 million tons during 2007-08. Manual transplanting of seedlings, weeding and harvesting are the most labour consuming operations in vegetable cultivation. Therefore, the area under vegetables crops is low and can be increased by mechanization of these crops. Transplanting of vegetable seedlings in developed countries like U.S.A, China, Holland, Japan and Canada is being done mechanically using vegetable transplanters. To decrease missing and workload on the operator in existing finger type mechanism , a study was undertaken to develop a revolving magazine type transplanting mechanism for planting nursery of vegetable crops. Nursery characteristics of vegetable crops like chilli, capsicum, brinjal and tomato were studied using soil less media of coco peat, perlite and vermiculite in the ratio of 3:1:1 (on volume basis) in three plastic trays having different shapes and volume (8.8 22 and 56 cm3).The effect of types of cell on plug compactness and damage to plug of seedlings was studied. Damage to plug of seedlings of cell having volume 22 cm3 was lowest and plug compactness was 9.7 for chilli seedlings. The revolving magazine type metering mechanism was designed on the basis of nursery characteristics of nursery grown in cell having volume 22 cm3. The developed revolving magazine mechanism was evaluated in the field for chilli and capsicum. Based on the study, a two row vegetable transplanter was developed having revolving magazine type metering mechanism. Ergonomic evaluation of the machine with respect to physiological parameters heart rate, stress on eyes, overall discomfort rating, body part discomfort score, postural configuration and plant missing was carried out with dummy plants. Three feed rate( 34 plants per minute, 68 plants per minute and 102 plants per minute and three subjects (S1, S2, S3) were selected as independent parameters. The heart rate among all treatments ranged from 80.71 to 91.95 beats per minute; Stress on eyes 2.72 to 7.37 per cent; overall discomfort rate varied from 1 to 4; postural configuration varied 4.21 to 7.1 degree respectively. The workload on the operator was under moderate load. The machine was evaluated in the field for three crops i.e. two varieties of brinjal (sandhya and Punjab Barsati) and one variety of tomato crop. Plant missing varied from 2.22 to 4.44 per cent for brinjal and tomato crop. Upright plants (plants having 0 to 30 degree planting angle), depth of planting, plant mortality after 20 days was observed in the range of 85-90 per cent, 5 to 6 cm and 3.33 to 5 per cent respectively. The average field capacity of the machine was 0.122 ha/h for brinjal and 0.1115 ha/h in tomato crop.
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tomato
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