Journal of Applied Horticulture. 2005: 7(1): 49-51

Design and development of tray type vacuum seeder and tray type dibbler for vegetable nursery

Rathinakumari, A C; Kumaran, G S; Mandhar, S C

Section of Agricultural Engineering, Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bangalore, Karnataka 560 089, India.

A tray type dibbler with capacity of 100 portrays/h and a vacuum seeder with capacity of 50 portrays/h were designed and developed. The tray type dibbler is made out of wooden board with 98 nylon pegs to dibble in the media. The tray type vacuum seeder is made of acrylic sheet and it consists of a vacuum chamber, seed plate with 98 holes to pick the seeds, vacuum pump and necessary control valves. It was observed that the seeder picked and dropped the round shaped seeds like cabbage, cauliflower and knol khol perfectly, i.e., 100% singles. For other vegetable seeds, the metering performance of the seeder was good with singles in the range of 93-97%, doubles between 3-7% and no missing was recorded. It is suggested that these handy and low cost tray type dibbler and tray type vacuum seeder are very much useful for small vegetable nursery growers.