Design and Development of a Seed Metering Mechanism for Ginger Planter

Manual ginger planting is a tedious, drudgery-prone, and time-consuming operation, due to the constant bending posture during planting. To address this issue, a seed metering mechanism was developed and evaluated at the ICAR-Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Bhopal. The metering mechanism consisted of a vertical rotating disc, fingers, lever and cam, seed hopper, agitator, and rhizome delivery system. The laboratory study was conducted using a sticky belt set up to determine the seed distribution pattern at different forward speeds (0.42 m/s, 0.56 m/s, 0.69 m/s, and 0.83 m/s), rhizome sizes viz. small (< 35 mm), medium (35–50 mm), and large (> 50 mm), and types of pickup fingers (P₁ and P₂). The factorial CRD design with three replications for each variable was used in the laboratory experiment. The performance parameters were measured, including average spacing, missing index, multiple index, quality of feed index and visible damage. The result revealed that speed of operation, seed size and finger type had statistically significant effects on the average seed spacing. As the speed of operation and seed size increased, the multiple index and Quality of Feed Index (QFI) decreased, while the missing index and damage percentage increased for both types of fingers. The main factor significantly influencing the performance indices was the speed of operation. The highest QFI of 77.14% was observed at the forward speed of 0.56 m/s for P₂ fingers. The lower values of miss index, multiple index, and visible damage were observed with P₂ as compared to P₁. The visible damage was observed to increase at increasing speeds and seed sizes for both types of fingers. The performance of the metering system was found satisfactory with finger (P₂) at the optimum speed of 0.56 m/s for medium seed sizes. The automatic seed metering mechanism holds great potential for ginger planting to improve accuracy, efficiency, yields, and cost-effectiveness.