Design and construction of a combined manual maize planter and fertilizer applicator.

Abstract

Small scale farmers in Uganda are faced with challenges during planting maize and fertilizer application and the traditional methods deployed during planting and apply fertilizer in the field is costly and involve non uniformity. In order to provide a better alternative to the traditional method for operation, manually operated maize planter and fertilizer applicator was design and developed. Objective of the equipment was to uniformly plant and apply fertilizer in the farm. The material used for fabrication were then selected while considering their properties such as strength, corrosiveness, availability, toughness, as well as economic aspect which was followed with series of the following activities; measurement, cutting, welding and finishing process. After fabrication of the manually operated maize planter and fertilizer applicator, it was tested and results indicate the application rate of 24.6kg/ha of maize, 26.7kg/ha of fertilizer with efficiency of 76.8%. It achieves all its design purpose hence it is recommended for adoption to the farmers.