Agricultural Engineering Today

Production of vegetable seedling in paper pots demands a suitable metering device to handle them while transplanting. Therefore, an attempt was made to develop an auger conveyor type metering device. A laboratory setup of a single row automatic vegetable transplanter with auger conveyor type metering device was developed. It consisted of an auger conveyor type metering device, a seedling delivery tube, a shovel type furrow opener, a double disc type furrow closer, a combination of bevel gears as well as chain and sprocket type power transmission system and a frame. Developed setup was evaluated under simulated field conditions in a soil bin to identify the maximum forward speed for successful transplanting of paper pot seedlings of tomato crop. Experiments were conducted with five forward speeds i.e. 1.6, 1.8, 2.0, 2.2 and 2.4 km/h. Data on intra-row spacing, soil coverage, angle of inclination of seedling was collected and conveying efficiency (CE), feeding efficiency (FE), transplanting efficiency (TE) and overall efficiency (OE), average seedling spacing (SS), sufficiently covered seedling (SCS), excessively covered seedling (ECS), partially covered seedling (PCS) and tilted planting (TP) were determined. The FE, CE, TE and OE were found to vary from 82.86% to 100% at forward speed from 1.6 to 2.0 km/h. With further increase in forward speed up to 2.4 km/h, the FE, CE, TE and OE drastically decreased to 85.00%, 89.95%, 67.46% and 52.14%, respectively. Moreover, SS, TP, PCS, ECS, and at 2km/h was found to be in the range of 50.81 cm, 5%, 6.33%, 11.45% and 80.49%, respectively. The developed setup with auger conveyor type metering device was found suitable for metering of vegetable seedlings up to forward speed of 2.0 km/h.