Development and evaluation of a dry seeding attachment to a riding type rice transplanter

Abstract

Rice is the crop that can be regarded as the foundation of the Indian food security, vital in meeting the goal of ensuring food for all. There are three principal methods of rice cultivation; dry seeding, wet seeding and transplanting. Direct seeded rice plays a great role in satisfying the food grain requirement of Kerala. Direct seeded rice is either dry seeded or wet seeded. Dry seeding is a common practice in the Khariff (Virippu) season in major rice growing areas like Palakkad. Paddy drum seeder is one of the common machines for wet seeding of rice for sowing pre-germinated paddy seeds in puddled paddy field. A modified self-propelled pre-germinated seeder was developed at Rice Research Station, Moncombu of KAU by replacing the transplanting unit of Yanji-Sakthi rice transplanter with a drum seeder unit. Since the machine could only be used for wet seeding, its utility could be increased by incorporating dry seeding attachment to it. Hence an effort was taken up to modify the available machine with the objectives of developing a rice dry seeding attachment to the power operated eight row riding type single wheel rice transplanter and to evaluate the performance of the developed prototype. The methodology used for the development and evaluation of a dry seeding attachment to the modified KAU self-propelled paddy drum seeder included preliminary studies for the development of the attachment to the Yanji-Sakthi rice transplanter followed by development of the attachment. The development procedure included fabrication of components, assembly and preliminary testing of the prototype in laboratory as well as field. The prototype was also further refined based on the field tests. The dry seeding attachment to the riding type rice transplanter was found to be comparable with the existing KAU self-propelled pre-germinated paddy seeder in its performance. With limited constructional modification, the dry seeding attachment to a Yanji-Sakthi riding type rice transplanter could render the rice transplanter as a multi-purpose machine for different seeding and planting operations such as dry seeding and wet seeding which in turn helped to increase the annual working hours of the machine.