Deptt. of Farm Power and Machinery, Punjab Agricultural Universuiy, Ludhiana 141 001, India.
Paddy is the most important cereal crop and staple food in most of the south-east Asian countries. In India, it is grown on an area of more than 41 million ha with a production of about 111 million tones of paddy. Paddy is grown by transplanting under wetland conditions or direct sowing depending upon the availability of water. The main difference between the two methods are in direct seeding method, the seeds are sown directly in wet or dry field, whereas in the transplanting method, seedlings are first raised in a seedbed in the nursery and uprooted for transplanting either manually or mechanically. The transplanters are classified on the basis of nursery used i.e. machine using wash root seedling and machine using mat type seedlings. Mat type seedlings are raised on a polythene sheet with the help of frames. 20–30 days seedlings were found most suitable for transplanting. The mat thickness for best results should be about 2 cm. Transplanting mat type seedling is becoming more popular due to its superior performance and reduced labour requirement (50 man-h/ha). The 6-row manually operated machine was found to be the most economical.
