Development of a Manually Operated Vertical Seed-Plate Maize Planter

Abstract

Maize has been of great importance in providing food for man, feed for livestock and raw materials for some agro-based industries. It constitutes a stable food in many regions of the world. Studies in maize production in different parts of Nigeria have shown an increasing importance of the crop amidst growing utilization by food processing industries and livestock feed mills. A manually operated vertical seed-plate maize planter was designed, fabricated and tested. The research was aimed at developing a planting machine that is simple in operation, easy to maintain and affordable by peasant farmers. Design criteria, calculations and analysis of various components of the machine were critically considered and determined in the cause of the development. The laboratory and equivalent field investigations were carried out, these include; the seed metering performance tests, number of seed discharge per meter length, the average distributive seed spacing test and functioning speed efficiency. The planting population was analyzed with average depth between 35 mm and 45 mm, average spacing of 313.5 mm, with optimum speed of 1.38 ms^-1 and the sowing efficiency was determined to be 89.7% with planting capacity of 1.53 ha/hr.