| Abstract: |
The aim of this investigation is to develop and evaluate a two rows garlic-cloves planter. The developed garlic-cloves planter consists of the main frame with three hitching-points and two planting units. Each planting-unit consists of cloves hopper, agitator, cutoff, metering device, housing and metering device shaft. Laboratory experiments were carried out as a function of change in metering device speed, agitator speed, cutoff clearance and cloves size. While field experiments were conducted to optimize machine forward speed, the machine performance was studied in terms of cloves damage, plant scattering, emergency, crop yield, specific energy and planting cost. The main results can be summarized as follows: The optimum conditions for large, medium and small cloves were as follows: metering-device speed of 20 rpm, agitator speed of 50 rpm and cutoff clearance of 15 mm clove - discharges of 256.4, 244.5 and 124.0 kg/fed, and clove damages of 2.1, 0.8 and 2.5 %, respectively. The maximum garlic-plant emergence of 99.81 % was obtained with forward speed of 1.40 km/h and cutoff clearance of 15 mm. Meanwhile the minimum garlic-plant emergence of 98.05 % was obtained with forward speed of 4.73 km/h and cutoff clearance of zero mm. The garlic-cloves planter is recommended to be used under the following conditions: -Metering-device speed of 20 rpm (0.21 m/s) for all sizes of Chinese garlic cloves. Agitator speed of 50 rpm (0.22 m/s) for all sizes of Chinese garlic-cloves. Cutoff clearance of 15 mm for all sizes of Chinese garlic-cloves. - Planter forward speed of 3.44 km/h for the medium clove size.
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