Design and development of a vegetable plug seedling transplanting mechanism for a semi-automatic transplanter

Abstract

The most important operation in the vegetable cultivation is transplanting of vegetable seedling which can be acomplished efficiently by transplanters. A transplanting unit is a crucial component of the vegetable transplanter since it can substantially impact its overall effectiveness. The current study designed and developed a transplanting unit of a two-row tractor-mounted semi-automatic type vegetable seedling (plug type) transplanter. It includes a 5-bar planting mechanism, a hopping dibber planter with a bearing-fitted lever, and a half-open double-door planter opening mechanism. The planting geometry of 0.60×0.45 m was considered during the design process. To evaluate the functional viability and basic machine settings, the transplanting unit underwent preliminary laboratory testing. The field testing investigated the impact of the two types of germination tray cavities, three feeding systems, soil-covering wheel tilt angle, and plant age on the upright plant percentage. For the tomato and eggplant crops, the mean value of the upright plants transplanted by machine ranging from 89.35-94.21 % and 91.32-94.91 % across all treatment combinations; at a 5 % significance level, the differences were not statistically significant. However, the main effect of the soil-covering wheel tilt angle and the plant age on the upright plant percentage was statistically significant at a 5 % significance level in both crops. The mechanism has the ability to significantly raise transplanting quality, which may satisfy the mechanism's design and manufacturing requirements.