1 Agricultural Mechanization Division, CIAE, Bhopal.
Vegetable transplanting at present is carried out manually all over the country. A tractor operated semi mechanical vegetable transplanter was imported and after design refinements it was adopted for use under Indian conditions. The transplanter is a row unit which is modular in design. Each unit is mounted on a tool frame. The feeding of seedlings is carried out manually by person sitting on machine. One person is required for each row. A finger type metering mechanism is used in the transplanter. A runner type opener opens the furrow and two covering wheels are used to close furrow and compact soil around the plant. Depth adjustment is made with help of two pneumatic depth wheels. The transplanter was used for transplanting tomato and chilly crop in Rabi season of 1999–2000 and kharif season of 2000–2001. The average seedling height during transplanting ranged from 16–25 em. Field capacity of adopted unit ranged from 0.08 to 0.10 ha/h depending upon row and plant spacings adopted. The labour requirement was about 20–25 man-h/ha as against 300–320 man-h/ha in manual transplanting.
