Manual vs mechanical transplanting of main sugar crops

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Agricultural Machinery and Power Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Assiut Classes, Egypt.

2 Department of Water and Irrigation Systems Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt.

3 Department of Agricultural Machinery and Power Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt.

Abstract

The main aim of this research was evaluation performance of a locally developed transplanter for transplanting cane seedlings and sugar beet seedlings. Compare mechanically transplanting and manually transplanting in terms technical and economic aspects. Sugar cane is planted once every four or five year and use of the transplanter in transplanting sugar beet crop increases the number of annual operating hours and reduces the machine operation costs. The field experiments of the transplanter were conducted at four forward speeds of (0.7, 0.9, 1.2 and 1.4km/h) and included the power required, actual field capacity, field efficiency, actual in-row spacing, missing hills percentage and cost of mechanical transplanter and manual transplanting. Results show that the maximum value of transplanting efficiency of the mechanical transplanter was (82%) and (76%) at the forward speed of 0.7 km/h for crops of sugar beet and sugar cane, respectively. Actual field capacity of manual transplanting was 0.166 fed/h. The lowest values of missed seedlings (1.28%) and (1.53%) at forward speed of 0.7 km/h for crops of sugar cane (λ=0.262) and sugar beet (λ=0.525) that of manually transplanting may be null. Reduction in the cost of mechanically transplanting more than 25 and 50% for crops of sugar beet and sugar cane respectively compared with manually transplanting.

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