COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF A SEED PLANTER, THE MODIFIED VERSION AND LOCAL (HAND) SEED PLANTING METHOD

This study evaluated the performance of a seed planter against the modified version, and hand planting method. A performance test was carried out on the two planters and hand method on a piece of land of known dimension over a period of time. Performance was evaluated using five (5) different parameters; sowing rate, area covered, throughput capacity, efficiency and level of uniformity. Sowing rate showed that hand method had the lowest sowing rate of 1 seed per sec, while the modified planter had the highest sowing rate of 5 seeds per sec. The modified planter had the highest for area covered at 91.5 m2 , while the existing planter performed second best at 73.5 m2 . Throughput capacity was highest for the modified planter at 292.8 kg/hr and lowest for hand planting method at 29.3 kg/hr. Efficiency result showed that hand method was better than the existing method at an efficiency value of 94 % against 89 % for existing planter; the modified planter performed best at 97 % efficiency value, while uniformity result showed that the modified planter was the best along the row and column arrangement at 97 % for both, while hand method had the lowest for both cases at 85 % and 88 % respectively. This study showed that the modified planter performed better than the two others in all the parameters assessed.