Abstract:
Spices play an important role in Indian cuisine since long time. Turmeric has been used
as a medicine, a condiment, and a dye since at least 600 B.C., while ginger has been used
extensively throughout history for its medicinal purposes. These crops provide excellent
opportunities in raising the income of farmers. This also provides higher productivity and offers
great scope for value addition. However, manual planting of ginger and turmeric consumes
more time and labour. To overcome this problem, a tractor drawn semi-automatic rhizome
planter was developed by Er. Madhukumara DM under the guidance of Dr. Manoj Mathew at
KCAET Tavanur. The present study was undertaken for testing and evaluating the performance
of the tractor drawn semi-automatic planter. The planter was field tested for different
combinations of forward speed and transmission ratios. The selected forward speeds of the
tractor were 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 km hr -1 . A combination of forward speeds with two transmission
ratios viz., 1:1.33 and 1:2 were taken for testing.
The performance evaluation was conducted for turmeric rhizome in a field of 0.075 ha.
Performance indices such as miss index (M), rhizome multiple index (DI), quality of feed index
(A), precision index (I p ) and rhizome spacing (S) were used to evaluate performance of rhizome
planter. The mean spacing for turmeric was ranged from 19.67 to 33 cm. The miss index and
multiple index ranged from 4.34 % to 6.34 % and 2.34 % to 8.34 % respectively. Missing
index and multiple index increases with increasing planter speed and increasing seed meter
velocity. Quality of feed index was between 85.34 % and 93.34 % and the values of precision
index was obtained in the range of 8 -13 % .The average field capacity and efficiency was 0.19
ha hr -1 and 83.69 %. The crop parameters and soil parameters were experimentally found during
the test. The rhizome planter reduced the seed rate of turmeric setts to 1033.19 kg ha -1 and
688.79 kg ha -1 for rhizome spacing of 20 and 30 cm respectively. Based on the performance
evaluation results, it is concluded that the tractor drawn semi-automatic rhizome planter is
efficient at various conditions and can be subjected to further modifications at the seed metering
disc so as to minimize the damage to the rhizome seeds.
