A Sensor based tractor drawn ginger planter

Abstract

India is the largest producer of spices in the world and ginger contributes 43.00 per cent of world production of ginger. Ginger, turmeric, garlic, clove, etc. are some of the common spice crops. The production of ginger in Kerala was 51.18 million tonnes in an area of 2.58 thousand hectares with the productivity level of 19820 kilogram per hectare in 2022-2023. The major constrain in raising of ginger crop is the non-availability of labour in time, especially, during peak periods of sowing and harvesting. Traditional methods of growing ginger involve manual planting of excess rhizomes and thinning of the plants is needed to obtain the desired plant population at uniform plant spacing. For obtaining a high yield, it is very essential to drop the desired number of seeds in rows maintaining accurate seed rate and seed spacing during metering. Among the different planting techniques, precision planting is the preferred method, since it provides accurate spacing of single seeds in the row with proper planting depth and creating a uniform germination environment for each seed. In conventional planters, the metering mechanism is usually driven by a ground wheel while operating with tractor. The speed ratio between the ground wheel and seed metering mechanism could not be maintained due to the power transmission loss, resulting in a reduction in uniformity of seed distribution. To solve the above problem, an alternative method of driving the metering mechanism with a 24 V DC motor was identified in this study. The metering unit was synchronized with the forward speed with the help of an encoder, Arduino Nano and Cytron drive. The performance of the seed-metering device of a sensor based ginger planter was investigated under laboratory and field conditions to optimize the operating parameters for ginger planting. The effect of operational speed of the metering chain, forward speed and cell size were evaluated by examining the minimum values of mean hill to hill distance 16.0 cm, 0.95 per cent, miss index 1.71 per cent, multiple index 0.95 per cent, and highest quality of feed index 97.54 per cent as well as cell fill efficiency 93.33 per cent. For picking single seed, the planter cell sizes of 40 mm, 50 mm and 60 mm diameter were tested under laboratory. From the laboratory test, optimised cell size of 50 mm was tested in the field condition. For the field evaluation, forward speeds of 1, 1.5 and 2 km h-1 were selected for ginger planting. When the speed of chain was increasing from 86 rpm to 106 rpm, increase in mean hill to hill distance 16.0 cm, missing index 1.7 per cent, multiple index 0.95 per cent and decrease in quality of feed index 97.54 per cent as well as cell fill efficiency 93.33 per cent was observed. However, lower miss index was observed at optimum cell size and lowest speed. Low multiple index was observed at optimum cell size and highest speed. The maximum field capacity and efficiency of the developed sensor-based tractor drawn ginger planter were found to be 0.11 ha h-1 and 84 per cent respectively. Cost of planting with the developed ginger planter is Rs. 5583.07 ha-1. By manual method, it is Rs. 12500 ha-1. The cost and time saving over manual planting was about 89.1 per cent and 98.84 per cent respectively. The cost of rhizome planter was Rs.80238.18. Based on the field performance evaluation, it is concluded that the developed tractor drawn sensor-based planter is economical and efficient for planting ginger.