Thakur, S.S.Verma, Kanishk2019-10-042019-10-042019http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810130231Onion (Allium cepa L.) is one of the major vegetable crops grown throughout the country. The labour requirement in manual transplanting of onion seedlings is as high as 100-200 man-days/ ha as 8.9 lakh seedlings per hectare are to be transplanted. Because of the high requirement and shortage of labour, the area under onion cultivation is low. To increase the mechanization of this crop at low cost a prototype of the manual onion drum seeder was developed and fabricated. Three drums were developed and fabricated with three different hole size i.e. 3.0mm, 3.5mm and 4.0mm based on the physical properties of onion seeds. The drums of the seederwere evaluated in laboratory at three speeds 1 km h-1, 1.5 km h-1and 2.0 km h-1.In the laboratory evaluation it was observed that average seed rate for drum D1, D2 and D3 was 6.60, 6.77 and 12.73 kg ha-1. The average seed spacing was 6.7, 7.7 and 4.10 cm for drum D1, D2 and D3. Average missing index was 11, 11 and 6% for drum D1, D2 and D3. Average multiple index was 14, 14 and 27 % for drum D1, D2 and D3. Average singulation was 75, 74 and 66 % for drum D1, D2 and D3. The developed onion seeder was then evaluated in the field.It was found that forwarding speed of onion seeder was 1.2 to 1.5 km h-1. The field capacity observed was 0.05 ha h-1 and field efficiency was 83%.Seed rate of drum D1 (7.3kg ha-1) and D2 (7.4 kg ha-1) was less than the manual sowing (8.2 kgha-1) and drum D3 (13.4 kgha-1) have higher seed rate than recommended seed rate (10-12 kg ha-1), drum D1 and D2 was found suitable in maintaining plant to plant spacing (7-8 cm).Missing index of Drum D1 and D2 was (11%) more as compared to the data of drum D3 (9%). Multiple index of drum D1 and D2 (14%) was less than drum D3 (28%). Singulation was higher in drum D1 and D2 (74%) as compared to drumD3 (67%). The yield obtained was 28tonnes ha-1, 26 tonnes ha-1 and 21 tonnes ha-1 from drum D2, D1 and D3 respectively.ennullThesis