Design and Development of a Two-row Power Operated Maize Dibbler

Abstract

Seed sowing is an essential and time-bound process agriculture. The basic objective of the sowing operation is to put the seed in rows at the desired depth and maintain seed to seed spacing, covering the seeds with soil and providing proper compaction over the seed. Early or postponed sowing adversely disturbs the crop yield. Therefore, the sowing of seeds in the optimum level is important to ensure more outcomes and high quality of crops. At present, the maize planting is done manually by broadcasting, dibbling, putting seed behind the plough, and other methods or with the help of animal or tractor-drawn seed drills/planters. Though, these techniques have many problems, such as worse efficiency and reduced quality seed placement. Currently among different sowing methods, dibbler planter delivers more uniform and adaptable seed spacing than other approaches for sowing hybrid seeds. But available dibbler planter has some shortcomings of lower field capacity. By considering the apparent advantage of the dibbler planter mechanism, the power-operated dibbler planter for pulse crop was modified and improved to minimize the problems of the existing dibbler planter. Henceforth, the two-row power-operated dibbler was designed and developed to promote mechanization of maize planting operation among small and marginal farmers.