Comparative Evaluation of a Seed Planter, the Modified Version and Local (Hand) Seed Planting Method

摘要

This study evaluated the performance of a seed planter against the modified version, and hand planting method. A performance test was carried out on the twoplanters and hand method on a piece of land of known dimension over a period of time. Performance was evaluated using five (5) different parameters; sowing rate, area covered, throughput capacity, efficiency andlevel of uniformity. Sowing rate showed that hand method had the lowest sowing rate of 1 seed per sec, while the modified planter had the highest sowing rate of 5 seeds per sec. The modified planter had the highest for area covered at 91.5 m2, while the existing planter performed second best at 73.5m2. Throughput capacity was highest for the modified planter at 292.8 kg/hr and lowest for hand planting method at 29.3 kg/hr. Efficiency result showed that hand method was better than the existing method at an efficiency value of 94 % against 89 % for existing planter; the modified planter performed best at 97 % efficiency value, while uniformity result showed that the modified planter was the best along the row and column arrangement at 97 % for both, while hand method had the lowest for both cases at 85 % and 88% respectively. This study showed that the modified planter performed better than the two others in all the parameters assessed.