Abstract:
Ginger (Zingiber Officinale Roscoe) and Turmeric (Curcuma longa L.)
are the oldest rhizome crops widely cultivated in India. These crops provide
excellent opportunities in raising the income of farmers. This also provides higher
productivity and offers great scope for value addition. At present, it is observed
that the farmers in the state had faced problems in ginger and turmeric planting
due to lack of labour shortage. Manual planting consumes more time and labour.
Therefore, a mechanical rhizome planter is required for planting ginger and
turmeric. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to design, develop and
evaluate the performance of a rhizome planter for ginger and turmeric. A tractor
drawn semi-automatic horizontal disc planter was developed and field tested. The
rhizome planter was designed to suit various soil type and conditions to perform
several functions simultaneously by opening the furrows, application of manure
and planting of rhizomes and covering of rhizomes by soil and forming ridges in
single pass.
The field evaluation of rhizome planter was tested for different forward
speeds and transmission ratios. Performance indices such as missing index (I miss ),
rhizome multiple index (I multi ), quality of feed index (I qf ), precision index (I p ) and
rhizome spacing (I s ) were used to evaluate performance of rhizome planter. The
mean spacing for ginger and turmeric was ranged from 21.66 to 32.63 cm and
20.53 to 31.13 cm respectively. The optimum performance for planting ginger
and turmeric were at a forward speed of 0.97 km hr -1 and transmission ratio of
1:1.25. The average field capacity and efficiency was 0.14 ha hr -1 and 78.76%.
The savings in cost and time for mechanical planting was about 59.52% and
96.57% compared to manure planting. Based on the performance evaluation
results, it is concluded that the developed rhizome planter is economical and
efficient for rhizome planting.
