Background:
Garlic cloves are planted in lines at a depth of 30-40 mm and maintaining the desired spacing between the rows and plants. About 65-85 man-days are required for planting of cloves in one hectare. The farmers prefer manual sowing due to higher seed rate and uneven seeding by existing seed drills. To address this problem, a tractor drawn eight-row garlic clove dibbler has been developed for precise dibbling on broad beds. There is a savings in cost of 77.5% and labor requirement of 97.7% as compared to manual method of garlic sowing. It can also save 30-35% seeds as compared to commercially available garlic planter. It is capable of planting garlic cloves at uniform depth and maintains equal row to row and plant to plant spacing which is an unique feature.:
Technology Details:
The machine is capable of dibbling garlic cloves at seed to seed and row to spacing’s of 150 mm. The overall dimensions of the machine are 2200×1525×1370 mm. It consists of main frame, dibbling unit, metering unit, stationary cups, seed box, cam & guide, levelling roller, depth control wheel, power transmission unit, bed shaper and three-point hitching system. The garlic cloves are picked from the seed box and dropped into the cups of the dibbling unit using the chain-cup type metering unit. Main function of the dibbling unit is to receive the garlic cloves from the metering unit cups and dibble them into the soil at proper depth. Levelling roller is attached to the main frame in the front of the dibbling unit. The machine has been evaluated in the field for dibbling of garlic cloves in eight rows on broad beds of 150 mm height and 1200 mm top width with 300 mm furrow width. The depth of sowing was maintained as 40 mm during operation. The field capacity and field efficiency of the developed unit were about 0.22 ha/h and 73.6%, respectively at 2 km/h forward speed of operation. The missing and multiples were found as 3.5 and 8.5% respectively.