Development of a Tractor Operated Mat Type Paddy Nursery Sowing Seeder

摘要

Paddy occupied 2.84 million hectares in Punjab state during 2012-13 with total production of 11.37 million tons. Paddy transplanting is still done manually in the state which is highly laborious requiring 180-250 man-h/ha. Farmers are facing difficulty in timely transplanting of paddy due to dearth of labour. For mechanical transplantation of paddy large numbers of plastic trays are required for raising of mat type nursery, which increases the cost of mechanical transplanting. Further, manual method of raising mat type nursery requires a number of operations. To accomplish all these operations in one go and to reduce the labour requirement, a tractor operated mat type paddy nursery sowing seeder has been developed. It consisted of 100 cm wide blade, two mould boards at both sides of blade and two counter rotating conveyors. In first prototype, choking of belt conveyor was observed due to accumulation of soil in pulleys and conveyor. Thereafter, soil collection unit was replaced by a positive drive chain conveyor. Performance of the conveyor unit for soil collection was found to be satisfactory, however, even depth of soil mat could not be maintained. The machine is having capacity of sowing nursery in 0.88 ha/day which is sufficient for transplanting paddy nursery in an area of about 160 hectare. There is saving of labour up to 85-90% and saving of 80-85% in cost of sowing mat type nursery as compared to traditional method of sowing mat type nursery on polythene sheet.