Verma, A.K.Tirkey, NiteshMahapatra, D.Naik, R.K.Pisalkar, P.S.Pradhan, M.K.2022-03-242022-03-242021https://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810183791DESIGN MODIFICATION IN PLANTING MECHANISM OF TWO ROW MANUAL RICE TRANSPLANTER FOR IMPROVED PERFORMANCEAgriculture is the most important sector in India and is the primary source of livelihood for about 58 percent of population. With this increase population, it’s necessary to grow sufficient food to meet the demands of our people. In Chhattisgarh state, rice is usually grown either by broadcasting or direct seeding methods in the field with hands. Traditional methods, that are popular, are labour intensive, hazardous, and cost consuming. Due to these factors the farmers face low per acre production with high production cost. To mechanize the transplanting system several attempts have been made to design and fabricate transplanting machine. A small scale farmer cannot afford to buy a non-subsidized automated paddy transplanter due to the very expensive cost. Hence manually operated rice transplanters will serve to such population. A slight modification in the existing mechanism of transplanter has been proposed to improve the existing design. The overall mechanism of the manual rice transplanter consists of a simple four bar mechanism which is powered by ground wheel through chain and sprocket. A quick return mechanism is added to control the speed of the picking finger. Thus the developed manual paddy transplanter consists of seedling picking mechanism, quick return mechanism, and power transmission, seedling tray with frame, handle and float. The newly developed machine was evaluated in laboratory as well as in field conditions. The newly developed transplanter had a plant to plant spacing of 250 mm. The average height of the seedlings was 162.1 mm, 192.7 mm, 225.8 mm and 247.9 mm for 10, 15, 20, and 25 days, respectively. The average planting depth of transplanter was found to be 30 mm. The average number of seedlings per hill was 2 and the average number of missing hills was 3.33 per sq. m. The total number of hills per m2 area was found to be 15.7. The transplanter's operational average speed was measured at 1.10 km/hr. The percentages of missing hills, floating hills, buried hills, and damaged hills were found to be 5.71, 5.23, 6.19 and 3.80 percent respectively. The actual field capacity and theoretical field capacity were obtained as 0.0179 ha/h and 0.0268 ha/h, respectively. The transplanter's field efficiency was 66.80 percent. The cost of transplanting by the transplanter was Rs. 3743.5/ha weighting around 22 kg which can be easily pulled by a labour.EnglishThesis