COMPARATIVE DISCHARGE AND PRECISION INDEX OF A SUGAR CANE BILLET PLANTER

摘要

The discharge consistency of a conventional sugarcane billet planter is low. A study examined the performance of an original and modified billet planter. The planter was modified by changing the inclination of the sides of the container bin. Both laboratory and field testing was done. Results from the laboratory test showed that within the desired billet discharge range of 6 to 9 billet m(-1), the precision index of the modified design was 43.3%, or 9.2 percentage points greater than the original design of 34.1%. Because of this, the modified container bin was further tested in the field and operated with a precision index of 62.5%. In addition, the effective field capacity and field efficiency of the modified billet planter was 7.1% and 6.9 percentage points higher than the original billet planter, respectively.