1Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004, Punjab, India
2Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004, Punjab, India
3Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Samrala, Punjab, India
*Corresponding author's email: apoorvprakash@pau.edu
Online published on 2 January, 2019.
Paddy-wheat crop rotation is very resource demanding and it badly affects the natural resource base of the Punjab state. Crop diversification is one of the options to preserve the natural resources. Maize is one of the crops which can be adopted to reduce the area under paddy crop. Traditional sowing of maize is very labour intensive, costly and time consuming. Maize planters are commercially available for sowing operation but its adoption rate is less as most of the farmers sow it manually. Pneumatic planters provide accurate and precise rate of seed placement. Therefore, two of the commercially available planters (an indigenous and an imported) were evaluated and their performance was compared with traditional ridge planting (farmer's practice) method. The quality feed index of pneumatic planters was higher (6.5%) as compared to the ridge planting method. The plant population was also higher (5.5%) in case of planting done by using pneumatic planters resulting in higher yields (3.8%) as compared to ridge method of planting. However, there was non significant difference among the planters for quality feed index, plant population and yield. Overall operational cost of planting done by pneumatic planters was considerably lower (70%) as compared to the planting done by manual ridge planting.
Maize planter, Pneumatic planter, Manual ridge planting
