tailieunhanh - Development and performance evaluation of cup-chain type metering mechanism for Gladiolus corms in the soil bin

Gladiolus is a very popular flowering plant grown for its elegant cut spike. Presently, the Gladiolus corms are planted manually which is time and labour intensive process. It also involves considerable amount of drudgery. Till date very little work on mechanized planting of corms has been reported. In order to carry out the panting operation in specific time and to mechanize this operation for Gladiolus crop, a cup-chain type metering mechanism was developed and its performance was evaluated in linear soil bin. The experiment was conducted for three levels of nominal spacings (15, 20 and 25 cm) and four levels of forward speeds (, , and km/h). The performance parameters namely, mean spacing, multiple index, missing index, quality feed index, coefficient of uniformity, precision, coefficient of precision (CP3), visible damage and number of corms per meter length were determined. The data was statistically analyzed using two factorial completely randomized design (CRD).The results indicated that the metering mechanism was able to drop the corms at desired nominal spacing at forward speed of km/h with 100 % quality feed index. The precision was found less than 10 % for all the three nominal spacings and four forward speeds. The overall performance of metering mechanism was found better for 25 cm nominal spacing at forward speeds of and km/h. | Development and performance evaluation of cup-chain type metering mechanism for Gladiolus corms in the soil bin