| Abstract: |
Field experiments were carried out through two successful agricultural seasons of 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 at Hehia farm, Sharkia Governorate, Egypt to develop a combination machine for secondary tillage, fertilizing and planting some medicinal and aromatic plants; fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Mill.) and caraway (Carum carvi L.) The objectives of this work are to: -Develop a combination machine for secondary tillage, fertilizing and planting some medicinal and aromatic plants - Compare the developed machine performance with the conventional method. - Optimize some operating parameters affecting the performance of the developed machine. - Evaluate the developed machine from the economic point of view. The developed combination machine consisted mainly of secondary tillage unit, fertilizing unit, planting unit added to furrow opener, covering device, transmission system, frame and land wheels. Field experiments were conducted under the following variables: two methods of planting medicinal and aromatic plants (seed drill and developed combination machine), two different kinds of medicinal and aromatic plants (fennel and caraway) and four machine forward speeds (2.1, 3.6, 4.5 and 6.3 km/h). The experimental results revealed that soil physical properties, slippage, seed scattering, emergence, energy requirements and operational cost were in the optimum region for fennel and caraway under the following recommended conditions: The use of the developed combination machine for secondary tillage, fertilizing and planting medicinal and aromatic plants as a multi-purposes machine because of its minimum both energy and cost, added to the improvement of soil properties. Adjust fluted roll length of the feeding device at 10 mm for seeds and 22 mm for fertilizer to obtain the desired quantity of seeds and fertilizers per feddan Operate the developed combination machine at an average forward speed of 4.5 km/h, which corresponded to kinematic parameters of 3.28 for seeds and 7.5 for fertilizers.
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