Development of a Precision Planter for Cotton Crop with Variable Application Rate of Fertilizers at Different Depths

Abstract

A tractor operated, three point hitch mounted cotton precision planter was developed for variable rate application of fertilizers at different depths along rows of seed placement. The developed planter creates two bands (each 25 cm wide) of tilled soil at 67.5 cm centre to centre distance by rotary tillage. It is capable of placing fertilizers in variable proportions and depths of placement in each band of tilled soil. The fertilizer application on both sides of a crop row always remains constant. After fertilizer placement the tilled band of soil is leveled and is followed by seed placement at the centre of tilled band by an inclined plate metering mechanism ensuring that two water soaked cotton seeds are dropped per hill. The plant spacing has been set at 90 cm. All these operations were completed in single pass operation. The planting with the planter resulted in to significantly higher germinated hills over manual planting. There was overall 15.01% increase in germinated hills with planting with precision planter in comparison with manual planting. The field capacity and fuel consumption were in the range of 0.36 to 0.37 ha/h and 3.89 to 4.28 l/h, respectively. An experiment on planting with precision cotton planter for placement of fertilizer at different depths and proportions comprising of seven treatments (i.e. placement of 70% of fertilizers at 15 cm & 30% at 25 cm depths; placement of 50% of fertilizers at 15 cm & 50% at 25 cm depths; placement of 70 % of fertilizers at 10 cm & 30% at 20 cm depths; placement of 50% at 10cm & 50% at 20 cm depths, placement of 100% of fertilizers at 10 cm depths;