Development and Evaluation of Inclined Plate Metering Mechanism for the Sowing of Maize (Zea mays L) Seed
Inderpal Singh
Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004, India.
Anand Gautam *
Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Ferozepur-152001, India.
Anoop Kumar Dixit
Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004, India.
Gursahib Singh Manes
Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004, India.
Arshdeep Singh
Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Maize (Zea mays L) is the third most imperative food cash crop after wheat and rice in India. Inclined plate seed metering mechanism was developed and evaluated in the laboratory for singulation and uniform placement of maize seeds with three varieties (PMH-1, PIONEER-3396, PMH-10). Metering device was tested at three inclinations of 45°, 50° and 55° using three types of metering plates (P1, P2, P3) having 24 groove number cells. The average spacing between seeds at 3 km/h forward speed with metering plate P1, with angle of inclination 50° was 18.35 cm, 17.67 cm and 17.98 cm for PMH-1, PIONEER-3396 and PMH-10 seeds, respectively. The overall quality of feed index obtained with the parameters are 83.38%, 87.20% and 85.40% for PMH-1, PIONEER-3396 and PMH-10 seeds, respectively, which was higher than other parameters and seed rate of (6.70, 6.75 and 6.70) kg/acre for PMH-1, PIONEER-3396 and PMH-10 seeds, respectively.
Keywords: Maize, inclined plate, quality of feed index, missing index, multiple index