Adoption Status of Roto Seed Drill In Punjab

Wheat is the second most important cereal crop in India after rice. There are several methods by which sowing of wheat is done in the country which include sowing by conventional technique, no-till drill, happy seeder and roto seed drill. The survey was conducted on roto seed drill, which included questions related to the pros and cons of the machine in respect of yield obtained, inputs required and the economies of the machine. The details of the farmers were taken from fairly trusted manufacturers of agricultural machinery. Random sample of 80 farmers who owned this machine were selected and surveyed. During the survey it was observed that the machine was owned by farmers having land area more than 2 ha. A high percentage of farmers (24%) believed that the use of this machine makes the crop more susceptible to weed growth. A large number of farmers i.e. 68% believed that the crop yield remained the same with the use of this drill, 19% said that the yields obtained by this machine were higher than that obtained by other methods, while the remaining 13% farmers said the yields obtained by sowing with this method resulted in lesser yield. Maximum (61%) farmers said that they were satisfied with germination of crop sown by the roto seed drill, 21% believed that the germination was good and the remaining 18% farmers reported that they were not satisfied with the crop germination. The use of this machine has led to early sowing of the next crop which resulted in higher profits as the harvest was achieved at an early stage.