A continuous feeding mechanism for precision vacuum trays seeder was developed and fabricated from locally materials for seeding single seed in the trays. The developed seeder was evaluated under two trays types of 84 and 209 cells, four different suction pressure levels (0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2 kPa) & (0.3, 0.6, 0.9 and 1.2 kPa) and four different hole size diameters of seed plate (1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8 mm) & (0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0 mm) for cucumber and cabbage seeds respectively. The seeding unit comprises of different parts whose functions are coordinated to place one seed into the center of tray cells in certain position. Trays were placed one by one without any gap in between for continuous seeding. Seeded trays were collected from the other end of the machine. The performance of the seeder was evaluated using the singulation efficiency, seed utilization efficiency, seeding efficiency, the seeder productivity, the specific energy requirement and the seeding operation costs. It was found that the trays seeder productivity was 240 trays h-1 (20160 and 50160 cells h-1 for cucumber and cabbage seeds respectively). The proper seeder results for seeding singles seed in trays (90.5 and 70.4%) were obtained with the dual interaction effect between the suction pressure at 1.5 and 0.9 kPa and hole diameter at 1.6 and 0.8 mm for cucumber and cabbage seeds respectively, when the consumed specific energy of 4.16×10-3 kWh tray-1. The precision trays seeder reduced the estimated cost by 5 to 12 times than the seeding trays manually for cucumber and cabbage respectively.
A portable compact precision plug tray vegetable seeder was manufactured in Agricultural Engineering Research Institute (AEnRI) workshop to plant fine and large vegetable seeds with low cost and high seed singulation ratio. The seeder was depended on a controlled negative and positive pressure passed through a set of nozzles to pick up and drop the seeds into the tray cells. For tomato seeds, four nozzles holders equipped with 209 nozzles with inner diameters of (0.47 mm, 0.62 mm, 0.76 mm and 1 mm for each set) were tested with negative pressure of (1, 1.25, 1.5 and 1.75 kPa). For cantaloupe-melon, four nozzles holders equipped with 84 nozzles with inner diameters of (0.76 mm, 1.00 mm, 1.2 mm and 1.4 mm) were tested with negative pressure of (6, 7, 8 and 9 kPa). The performance of the seeder was evaluated using seed singulation efficiency, seeding efficiency, seeder productivity, specific energy requirement and seeding cost. The machine succeeded to plant large and small seeds in different types of plug trays. The optimum nozzle diameter for planting tomato seeds was 0.62 mm operated at negative pressure of 1.25 kPa that gave percentage of single seed 89.95%, double seeds 4.79%, multiply seeds 2.39% and missed seeds 2.87%. Meanwhile, the optimum nozzle diameter for planting the cantaloupe-melon seeds was 1.20 mm operated at negative pressure 8.0 kPa that gave percentage of single seed 94.05%, double seeds 2.38%, multiple seeds 2.38% and missed seeds 1.19%. The productivity of precision vacuum trays seeder was 320 tray/ h (66880 and 26880 cells/ h) for tomato and cantaloupemelon seeds respectively. The total power requirement for the seeder was 1.075 kW.h for tomato seeds and 1.216 kW.h for cantaloupe melon seeds.The consumed specific energy was (3.36×10 -3 kWh/ tray) for tomato seeds and (3.80×10 -3 kWh/ tray) for cantaloupe melon seeds.
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