Development of multipurpose four row animal drawn planter for groundnuts.

Abstract

Groundnut is one of the important cash crops mostly grown in the north and eastern districts of Uganda. They are rich sources of proteins, edible oils and add nitrogen into the soil and can be grown in poor soils. In Uganda the production level was 160,000 metric tonnes per year 2006. The small scale farmers are capable of growing 1 to 2.5 acres, under natural Ugandan climatic conditions, and yields of between 3-8 bags per acre of shelled Red Valencia and 6-12 bags per acre of Manipinta can be realized. One of the major challenges in groundnuts production at smallholder level in Uganda is the lack of an implement which ensures precision in row planting, saves time and reduces drudgery in planting. The current traditional methods for planting groundnut, are labour intensive and time consuming estimated to take approximately 25 to 30 man days to plant an acre. In a bid to improving yields and ease weeding and harvesting operations, small scale farmers have massively responded to planting groundnuts in rows from traditional methods, however these operations are still manual. The groundnuts crop plays a big role in the economy of Uganda and a number of traditional varieties such as Màsoga, Tatu, Bukene, and improved varieties such as Red beauty, SERENUT, IGOLA are commonly grown in Uganda and planting season vary according to the region. The groundnut do best in deep, well drained sandy, sandy loam or loamy sand soils below an altitude of 1500m above sea level. Groundnut seeds are sown depth of 5-6 cm, Research results have shown that a spacing of 45 cm x 10 cm gives better yields in Uganda than 60 cm x 10 cm for most varieties except IGOLA and SERENUT II varieties which are spaced. at 45cm w15cm. The methods used in planting ground nuts in Uganda include both traditional such as broadcasting and improved methods which involve use of new technologies developed by use of tractor operated planters, ox-drawn planters and hand operated planters such as jab planter. The main objective of this project is to develop a four row animal drawn planter for groundnut crops that meets farmers’ planting requirements. In achieving the above objective, the researcher has carried out necessary assumptions and calculations needed considering the basic engineering principles and some physical properties of groundnuts such as, size, density and weight of the grains, to design the various components of groundnut planter which has parts such main frame, seed hopper, metering mechanism assembly, furrow opener assembly and furrow coverer. The research has fabricated the designed parts assembled them following recommended procedures and then carried out evaluation of the working efficiency and performance of the prototype through on station testing which will be followed by field testing.