Development and Assessment of Black Seed Planter

Abstract

Black seed (Nigella sativa), which belongs to the botanical family of Ranunculaceae, is a widely used medicinal plant all over the world. Nigella sativa seeds and oil have been used in the treatment of different diseases. The aim of the present investigation is to develop and evaluate the performance of a planter to be used for planting black seed. The developed black seed planter consists of three hitching points, frame, seed hopper, four vertical rollers with cells metering, shovel furrow openers and chain covering devices. Laboratory experiments were carried out as a function of change in metering device speed; cells shape (cylinder and truncated cone (and cells volume (0.98, 1.41 and 1.92 cm3). While, field experiments were conducted to optimize machine forward speed. The machine performance was studied in terms of seed damage, plant scattering, emergency, crop yield, specific energy and planting cost. The experimental results reveal that the developed black seed planter is recommended to be used under the following conditions: forward speed of 4 km/h and cell volume of 1.92 cm3 with truncated cone cells. The obtained results at optimum conditions were: plant emergence of 94.71%, seed yield 0.73 Mg/fed, ground wheel slip of 4.5 %, required power of 5.21 kW, specific energy of 3.94 kW h/fed, field capacity of 1.32 fed/h, hourly cost of 84.37 L/E./h, operational cost of 63.74 L.E/fed and production cost of 86.72 L.E./Mg.