Development and evaluation of an inter-row corn cultivation and fertilization machine / [electronic resource].

Year book of Misr Society of Agricultural Engineering : The 20 th. Annual Conference of the Misr Society of Agricultural Engineering "Agricultural Engineering and Country Challenges"

Includes references.

The main objective ofthis research was to design, construct and evaluate a precision combined machine (Dual purpose for cultivation and fertilization) for inter-row of corn plants to achieve high performance, low costs and minimum energy consumption. The machine was locally fabricated to be mounted on the tractor to suit the small and medium Egyptian farms. The jield evaluation experiments were carried out in Shanawan village, El-Menojiya Governorate during summer season of 2015. Operation principles of the machine depending on, llsing an electronic control units to send consecutive signals. These signals were adapted to put dry chemical fertilizer on the soil in forms of spot placement. beside every plant (takheesh). Performance of the developed machine was evaluated underfour different machine forward speeds (l.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 km/h), three different cultivation depths (5, 8 and 11 cm), three different areas of fertilizers gate (l.5, 2.1 and 2.7cm2 , which represent fertilize flow rate of£lbout 2, 3 and 4 g/plant respectively) and four different speed ratios between wheel shaft speed andfeeding shaft of the fertilization unit (1.2, 1.5, 1.7 and 2.0) at average of soil moisture content 18 % and 22 % during jirst and second cultivations. The combined machine was evaluated in terms of jield capacity, jield efficiency, weeding efficiency, injured corn plants, percentage of fertilizer, distribution efficiency, energy requirements and economic evaluation after two different planting methods (mechanical and manual) for corn plants. The obtained results concluded that the precision combined machine can be operated successfully for bothjirst and second operations at the optimum operating parameters of 2.5 km/h forward speed, , 2 speed ratio. 2.1 cm2 area offertilizer gate (feeding opening)·and cultivator depth of 8 and 11 cm for first and second cultivating
respectively. The total hourly cost and operating costs for the combined
machine were 178.8 LE/h and 177 LEIfed. The estimated cost ofmanual
cultivating and fertilization was 740 LEifed. This means that the
developed machine was less about 4.1 times than the manual cultivation
andfertilization process.

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