Design, Development, and Evaluation of a Belt Metering Device for Potato Planter

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Department of Biosystems Engineering, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

 
Potato ranks 4th in terms of production volume among various agricultural products after wheat, rice and corn. Potato planters, usually plant seed potatoes at a constant distance regardless of their size which leads to a heterogeneous distribution of stems at field. The main aim of this research was to design, develop and evaluate a special potato belt metering device. Belt planters use a group of belts to receive, deliver and plant potatoes. In this type of planters, the potatoes first fall from the hopper onto the middle of the planting belts. Return belts move in the opposite direction and guide the extra potatoes to the beginning of the path to be used for reloading by the middle belts. In this study, the evaluation of the metering device was performed in the laboratory with the use of a test rig. A factorial experiment conducted in a completely randomized design with 3 replicates to investigate the effect of the forward speed of planting belts and test rig, potato sizes and potato shapes on the mean planting distance, standard deviation, multiple planting index, miss and quality of feed indices and the accuracy. Results indicated that the mean seed spacing, standard deviation, multiple planting index, miss and quality of feed indices were significantly depend on the planting belts and test rigs forward speeds, potato size and shape. With the increase in the forward speed of the test rig, the mean seed spacing and miss index increased by 4.21 and 17.69%, respectively , while the amount of reduction in the feeding quality and multiple planting index were equal to 7.78 and 10%, respectively.

Keywords

References

Anonymous. )2021(. Structural belt planters. https://www.dewulfgroup.com/media /2802/ structural-belt-planters.pdf.
Anonymous. )2015(. The GB-series of belt planters, professional planting technology for extraordinary requirements. https://static.grimme.com/files/2015/01/08/9e813e 746a2cc20fb73473c89d4b11c6576fa22d.pdf.
Bejaee, F. (2013). Design and development of a potato online sizing system using machine vision technique. MSc. Thesis, College of agriculture, University of mohaghegh ardabili, Ardabil, Iran. (In Persian)
Ebubekir A. (2005). The Effects of Some Operational Parameters on Potato Planter Performance Agricultural Mechanization in Asia, Africa and Latin America. 36 (2): 71-74.
Kachman, S. D. and Smith, J. A. (1995). Alternative measures of accuracy in plant spacing for planters using single seed metering. Transaction of ASAE. 38 (2): 379-387.
Khajepoor, M. R. (2004). Industrial plants. Jehad daneshgahi pblication, Isfahan University of Technology. (In Persian)
Malik, A., Kumar, V., Sharma, S. and Kumar, A. (2017). Design and Development of Automatic potato planter for mini tractor. International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research. 8 (7): 13-28.
Mandloi, K., Swarnkar, R., Yoganandi, Y. C., Raulji, H. K. and Dabhi, K. L. (2015). Development of a mini tractor drawn semiautomatic two row planter cum fertilizer applicator. International Journal of Agricultural Engineering. 11 (1): 13-22.
Mansouri-Rad, D. (2002). Tractors and agricultural machinery. Bu-Ali Sina University Press, Hamadan, Iran. (In Persian)
Meijer, E. N. C. and Frederiks, J. (1975). Development of an automatic planter for presprouted seed. Potato Research. 18: 451-454.
Mohsenin, N. N. (1986). Physical Properties of Plant and Animal Materials. 2nd Ed. Gordon and breach science publisher.
Nazer, A. (2012). Design and manufacturing method of mechanical measuring device for apple fruit. MSc. Thesis, College of agriculture, Tabriz University, Tabriz, Iran. (In Persian).
Peter, R. (1990): On the state of the art in potato planting. Landtechnik. 45 (5): 174-176.
Shigley, J. E., Budynas, R. G. and Keith Nisbett, J. (2011). Mechanical Engineering Design. 9th Ed. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Zheng, Z., Zhao, H., Liu, Z, He, J., and Liu, W. (2021). Research Progress and Development of Mechanized Potato Planters: A Review. Agriculture. 11, 521. https://doi.org/10.3390/ agriculture11060521.
 
Agricultural Mechanization
Volume 7, Issue 2
January 2023
Pages 39-48

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 11 October 2022
  • Revise Date: 19 October 2022
  • Accept Date: 05 December 2022

Share

How to cite

Statistics