Excerpt from the Study
The two-row engine propelled ridge seed planter was developed and evaluated for performance in comparison with an existing single row animal drawn seed planter and the manual planting method. The developed planter has the capacity for planting two seeds per hole in one hectare in 4.55 hours. Seedling emergence under the developed planter was 30,636 per hectare as against the 26,091 per hectare for the animal drawn planter and 28,545 per hectare for the manual planting. The field capacities for the developed planter, the animal drawn planter and the manual planting method were 0.22, 0.18 and 0.19 ha/hr respectively. The average speeds of planting were 0.55 m/s, 0.37 m/s and 0.17 m/s for the developed planter, animal drawn planter and the manual planting methods respectively. The average plant-plant spacings were 25.97 cm for the developed planter, 32.42 cm for the animal drawn planter and 29.93 cm for the manual planting. It was therefore concluded that the developed enginepropelled planter was more efficient in terms of intra-row spacing of plants. The developed planter was also more efficient in terms of energy use in operation. It can take 218 in 262.73 MJ/ha as against the 2,368.18 MJ/ha and 1,099.09 MJ/ha for the animal drawn planter and the manual planting respectively. A Response Surface Optimisation method was adopted for optimizing the performance parameters of the developed planter with two input parameters (planting speed, x1 and soil moisture content, x2). The Central Composite Design (CCD) of the Response Surface Matrix (RSM) was adopted. Within this, thirteen (13) experiments were laid out for estimating the coefficients of the models for the optimization process. Quadratic optimization models were developed for the parameters and were used in estimating the effects of the input parameters and their interactions on the performance parameters of the developed two-row engine-propelled seed ridge planter. With these, the optimal values of the performance parameters were determined and indicated on their respective contour and response surface plots for the performance parameters. The engine-propelled planter is a good replacement for the animal drawn planter and the manual method of planting as it will reduce drudgery and reduce the operational planting costs.
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