Development and Performance Evaluation of Manually Operated Seedling Planter for Horticultural Crops

Abstract

A low cost manually operated single row vegetable seedling planter was developed for transplanting of plug and pot type vegetable seedlings on ridges and mulch beds. It consisted of jaw assembly, delivery pipe, lever, handle and spacing marker. Operating principle of the developed transplanter involves the raising the transplanter up to one feet height and allow to free fall in the soil, dropping the seedling in the seedling delivery tube, pressing the lever in upward direction which enable the jaw to open the soil and seedling was placed in the soil by gravity and lifting the transplanter with open jaw and close the after raising the transplanter by one feet height. It was evaluated for inter and intra-row spacings of 45×45 cm. Manual transplanting on plastic mulch beds (MPMB) was compared with developed transplanter on plastic mulch beds (TPMB). The transplanting rate using single labour was found to be 5 and 12 seedlings /min for MPMB and TPMB respectively. The field capacity was calculated as 0.0031 and 0.0166 for MPMB and TPMB. Similarly, field efficiency was 21-28% and 42-57%. Moreover, cost of operation (Rs/ha) in was found to be 9218 and 1753Rs/ha. The time saving over manual transplanting is 80.96% by using seedling planter. The weight of developed transplanter is 2.4 kg and cost is Rs. 500. It is completely made up of stainless steel Developed vegetable transplanter found more suitable for vegetable transplanting as compare to traditional method of manual transplanting. The aim of this study is to reduce the human effort, to increase the field efficiency, to reduce the cost of operation and to increase the field capacity while planting horticultural crops.