1School of Agro and Rural Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati-781 039, Assam, India.
2Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur-721 302, West Bengal, India.
*Corresponding Author: Sapunii Sebastian, School of Agro and Rural Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati-781 039, Assam, India, Email: sapusebastian@gmail.com
Online Published on 10 May, 2023.
Paddy is one of the most important staple food in most south-east Asian countries. It is grown either by direct sowing or by transplanting under wetland conditions depending upon the availability of water. India produces 116.48 million tonnes of rice with a productivity of 2659 kg ha-1. Manual transplanting of rice seedlings by hand is generally done in stooping posture which is laborious and drudgery. It also requires a huge amount of labour during peak season. Considering the need and to suit the hilly region, a two-row manually operated paddy transplanter was developed.
For picking the seedlings, a four-bar mechanism was selected as the basis of design. The machine construction consists of a float, seedling tray, fixed-fork type finger, chain sprocket system and lugged wheel. For operation, the operator has to rotate the crank handle which transmits the motion through the chain sprocket system and four-bar linkage which in turn picks the seedlings and plants them onto the soil.
The machine was tested in the actual field condition and was working satisfactorily. The designed fixed fork-type finger can hold 5 to 8 seedlings at a time. The developed machine was found to be comfortable working at a speed of 0.5 kmph. The actual field capacity of the machine was 0.02 ha/h.
Coupler curve, Fixed fork finger, Four-bar mechanism, Paddy transplanter, Root washed seedlings
