Nursery raising in trays/container is preferred as they conserve valuable seed and most importantly, improve the chances of plants survival in difficult conditions. The plug tray is filled with a soil-less substrate and one seed is manually placed in each cell. However, placing a single seed in each cell is the most labour-intensive operation. Placing a single seed in each cell is the most labour-intensive operation. About 290-317 sec/tray of 104 cells are required to sow a single seed in a single cell of portray, one labour can sow 100 trays in a day. Considering the increased use of portray grown seedling and labour requirement in the seeding of portray as well as high cost of commercially available precision machinery. A need was felt to develop and manually operated seeder which can be developed by local artisans to increase the labour productivity and rural prosperity. Performance parameters such as percent single, percent multiple, percent miss, singulation efficiency, seeding efficiency and seed utilization efficiency for 2 mm thick and 3.5 mm orifice diameter plate (CP4) for chilli was found to be 65.28, 29.38, 5.34, 69.10, 91.02 and 76.51%, respectively. Similarly, for 2 mm thick and 2.9 mm orifice diameter plate (BP4) for brinjal was found to be 78.21, 16.35, 5.45, 82.76, 90.91 and 85.61%, respectively. Moreover, for 2 mm thick and 3.5 mm orifice diameter plate (TP2) for chili was found to be 74.23, 21.35, 4.42, 77.76, 91.90 and 81.85%, respectively. Hence CP4, BP4, and TP2 were used for further evaluation of the setup. Total time saving with developed setup over traditional method was found to be 68% for all selected seeds. Cost of operation and labour saving was found in the range of 67-68% when compared with manual seeding by the traditional method. Cost of the developed manually operated portray type nursery seeder is about Rs. 2200/- and weight is 15 kg.