Performance Assessementof NCRI Drum Planter for Direct Seeding of Pre-germinated Lowland Rice

Abstract

The National Cereals Research Institute (NCRI), Badeggi has developed a 12-row manually operated rice drum planter aimed at reducing the cost and labor associated with transplanting of lowland rice. The performance of the machine was evaluated and compared with the hand seeding method. The planter was tested in the NCRI Fadama rice field side by side with hand drilling method. The design is simple and the power requirement (0.0746 KW) to pull the planter was within the capacity of an average man. It enables the direct seeding of pre-germinated rice seeds at an inter-row spacing of 25cm. This makes it easy to apply fertilizer and also use weeders for weed control. A laboratory calibration was carried out with different combinations of drum fills viz., 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, and travel speed viz., 1 km/h, 1.2 km/h, and 1.5 km/h. From the laboratory calibration test the combination of 2/3 drum fill and 1 km/h speed were selected for field evaluation of the drum seeder. The theoretical field capacity was calculated as 0.38 ha/h. The effective field capacity of the machine was observed to be 0.33ha/hr while the seed rate was 65kg/ha with a loading capacity of 9kg. The field efficiency of the machine was assessed to be 86.8%. This performance indicates that the planter is suitable for adoption by small scale farmers.