DEVELOPMFNT AND EVALUATION OF AN ANIMAL-DRAWN IMPLEMENT FOR ROW PLACEMENT OF WHEAT SEED AND BASAL FERTILIZER

摘要

Grass weeds are difficult to control by hand weeding in a broadcast wheat crop because they are not easily distinguished from the crop at an early stage. Chemical weed control, on the other hand, is highly effective, but is limited in Ethiopia by unavailability and high cost of herbicides. Moreover, grass weeds have developed resistance to several high efficacy herbicides in other countries. Row sowing of wheat facilitates hand and/or mechanical weeding by enabling farmers to identify grass weeds inthe inter-row spaces. However, manual row sowing is extremely time consuming and unacceptable to peasant farmers in Ethiopia. Row seeders developed earlier were not successful because they were either too time consuming or ineffective in cloddy and roughfields. Therefore, a four row seeder has been developed in Ethiopia which has a new type of metering mechanism. Field tests have shown that the row seeder can work effectively in rough and cloddy fields. The row seeder is labor efficient, requiring lessthan 25% of the time per unit area compared to the farmers' conventional practice of broadcasting seed and fertilizer and covering by ox-plow. The seeder also facilitates placement of seed and fertilizer together in the row, enabling the crop to utilizefertilizer more effectively and limiting the nutrients available to weeds emerging between crop rows. The row seeder used in conjunction with an inter-row weeder was the most profitable package tested on farmers' fields in 1995, representing a sustainable production technology for peasant wheat farmers in Ethiopia.