Mariano Marcos State University

College of Engineering

Design, Construction and Evaluating Performance of Mungbean Seed Planter

For Small Holder Farmers

Bangayan, Jhunbert T.

Domingo, Jessa Mae B.

Miguel, Elija M.

Quetalias, Janella T.

BSAE-4B

ENGR. MICHAEL DULDULAO

(PROFESSOR)
INTRODUCTION

Working with hand for planting can be frustrating, depending on the soil type,

soil condition, land size and most importantly the physical condition of the farmers. Lighter

duty planters tend to work better in lighter soils or heavy soils under the ideal condition

(perfect moisture content, completely mellow, friable). Seed planter can generated by the

force of a person who use it. There’s no need for us to buy expensive machine planter.

The seed planter was designed to help farmer overcome the challenge of using

their hand in planting. And also designed to preserve the soil as possible. It benefits the

environment due to their lower energy inputs and the fact that fewer resources are used (or

wasted) in the process. It increases the crop production at affordable costs and with less

energy required. Creates rural employment opportunities. A maintained seed planter gives

seed its best chance. Planter maintenance is especially important for producers in no-till and

reduced tillage system.

Various types of design have been developed with different design approaches

which have their advantages and disadvantages and also operation limitation. Adisa and

Braid(2012) [1] designed and constructed a manually operated flute planter/fertilizer

distributor which was found to be 94% efficient in seed spacing but could not be used on the

ridged seed bed and requires quite some effort and time to change seed drill size and spacing.

Seed planting is possible for different size of seed and variable depth and space between two

seed. Seed planting placement and accuracy was made of durable and cheap material

affordable for the small scale peasant farmers.

Large scale of farming it is easy to use seed planter because it is capable of

accomplishing the task over a huge area in a much shorter time. It is efficient time saving for

the farmer. The success of cultivating a crop is related to the process planting seed. The
importance of this seed planter is responsible for the distribution of plants on the land, which

in turn greatly influences the productivity of crops.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Planting is one of the most important thing in every farmer’s life. Every people eat

their meal in order to live longer. Planting is one of the most people business. Without

planting life become miserable. Millions die annually from different kind of diseases taken by

eating a food with high additives.

OBJECTIVES

The overall aim of the study is to undertake a comparative analysis of the mungbean

seed planter using different materials.

Specific objectives are:

1. Design and construction of mungbean seed planter

2. Evaluating and testing the mungbean seed planter

SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY

The importance of the study is the conservation of agriculture. Most of the physical

responsibility for manipulating soil and placing the seed in the designated area. It help the

plant grow faster because of the proper placement that can gives higher productivity.

The main concern of the study is the health related issues and the productivity of the

crop.
SCOPE AND LIMITATION

The focus of the study is mungbean seed planter and only limited information on

other types of seed planter.

The result of the study depends on the material to be used, the location, and also the

weather.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Spacing of plants, within and between rows, can be important. The range of possible

planting patterns used to describe the spatial orientation and placement of seeds planted in the

field are briefly discussed below:

1. Broadcast planting

The pattern resulting from the random scattering of seed on the soil surface.

2. Drill planting

The pattern resulting from the random dropping (and subsequent covering) of

seeds in the furrows to give definite rows and randomly placed plants.

3. Precision drill planting

The pattern resulting from the accurate placement (and subsequent covering) of

single seeds in furrows at about equal intervals to give definite rows of almost equally

spaced single plants.

4. Hill drop planting

The pattern resulting from the accurate placement (and subsequent covering)

of groups (or hills) of seed in furrows at about equal intervals to give definite rows of

almost equally spaced groups of plants.

 5. Check row of planting

The square-grid planting pattern resulting from the accurate and indexed

placement (and subsequent covering of seed) of individual seeds or groups of seed.

Individual plants, or groups of plants, are spaced equidistant apart and aligned in

perpendicular rows.

6. Dibble or punch planting

The pattern of resulting from placing single or multiple seeds in individual holes

that have been punched or otherwise dug in the seed bed. The holes are usually

aligned to from rows of established plant. Nevertheless, when hand, rather than

machine, planting methods are used the holes may be randomly placed over the

seedbed surfaced.

Now-a-days the world agriculture is counteracting multiple challenges at the same

time like: a) 70% more food for an additional 2.3 billion people by 2050; b)struggle with

poverty and hunger; and c) adaption towards climate change. Legumes are economically

important crops and rich source of nutritious food (for human), feed (for livestock), and raw

materials (for industries). Additionally, legumes have symbiotic association with the nitrogen

fixing rhizobium present in the nodules hence; the plants do not require external nitrogen

sources such as nitrogen fertilizers. However, legumes are highly salt-sensitive crops where

overall plant growth and agricultural productivity is severely affected by salinity; one of

themostatrocious environmental factors that create water-scarcity around the root zone due to

high concentration of toxic ions (Na+ and Cl-) and also limit their geographical allocation in

arid and semiarid regions where evapo-transpiration rate exceeds the annual precipitation

rate. Therefore, it necessitate to enhance the productivity of the agronomically valuable food

grain legumes to meet the nutritious food demand of the geometrically increasing population

by exploiting scarce natural resources more efficiently.

Mungbean

Mungbean is an important short duration (65-90 days) legume crop of high nutritive

values and nitrogen fixing ability. It is a self-pollinated diploid crop with 2n = 2x = 22

chromosomes and a genome size of 579 Mb. Although wild, weedy and cultivated

germplasm or populations of mungbean are available, very little is known regarding diversity,

population structure, and gene flow and/or introgression. In addition, taxonomy of mungbean

at variety or subspecies level is still arguable, and in some cases, this species is

mischaracterized as other related Vigna species (Tomookaetal.,2006). Salinity stress is a

major constraint in the production of this crop where 50 mM NaCl can cause yield losses up

to 70% (Saha et al., 2010). The increased salinity of arable land is expected to have

devastating global effects, resultinginupto50%landloss by the middle of the twenty-first

century (Mahajan and Tuteja, 2005; Hasanuzzaman et al., 2013). Literature reported that the

greater accumulation of salt decreased the osmotic potential of soil solution eliciting water

stress in plants and further interactions of the salts with mineral nutrition caused nutrient

imbalance and deficiencies, oxidative stress or even pathology ultimately lead to plant death

as a consequence of growth arrest and metabolic damage(McCue and Hanson, 1990;Maathuis

and Amtmann, 1999;Zhu,2000; Tavakkoli et al., 2010; Hasanuzzaman et al., 2012a). Due to

the complex nature of salinity stress and lack of appropriate techniques for introgression little

progress has been made in developing salt to lerant mungbean varieties (Singhetal.,2011).

Protein malnutrition remains a major nutrition problem in Asia and affects children

most severely (WHO, 2000; UNSCN, 2010). About 150 million children worldwide are

underweight and 182 million are stunted. At least 70% of these children are in Asia. Meat is a

good protein source, but is either excluded from vegetarian diets or unaffordable for poor

households where protein and micronutrient deficiencies are most prevalent. However,

mungbean is cheap source of protein, and an important nutritious dietary component of

vegetarians in Asian countries especially in South-east Asia (Keatinge et al., 2011). If global

food production is to be maintained it seems reasonable to predict that enhancement of the

salt tolerance of crops will be an increasingly important aspect within a widening number of

plant breeding programs. Future progress in mungbean breeding requires urgent action to

identify accessions with favourable agronomic traits and to provide tools to exploit the allelic

diversity of mungbean for crop improvement. Worldwide, a total of 43,027 mungbean

accessions are held ex situ. Institutes with major collections are: (1)The Institute of Plant

Breeding, University of the Philippines, Los Baños, Philippines (6889 accessions); AVRDC –

The World Vegetable Center, Taiwan (6358 accessions (AVGRIS, 2012a); the University of

Georgia, Griffin, USDA-ARS, USA (3900 accessions); the National Bureau of Plant Genetic

Resources (NBPGR), New Delhi, India (3147 accessions); the Regional Station Jodhpur of

NBPGR in Rajasthan, India (2466 accessions); the Field Crops Research Institute of the

Department of Agriculture, Bangkhen, Thailand (2250 accessions); and the National Institute

of Agrobiological Sciences, Tsukuba-shi, Japan (1579 accessions) (WIEWS, 2012).

Mungbean improved varieties

Due to the importance of mungbean in Asian countries, the genetic improvement of

mungbean is being carried out at the Word Vegetable Center (formerly the Asian Vegetable

Research and Development Center, AVRDC). To date, over 110 mungbean cultivars have

been released by AVRDC in South and Southeast Asia and around the world. AVRDChas

developed several mungbean with superior lines for production in the tropics and subtropics.

These cultivars are early and uniformly maturing (55-65 days), high yielding, and disease

resistant. AVRDC mungbean lines are; Chainat 60 -Thailand, BPIMg7-Philippines, and

Merpati-Indonesia (Somtaetal.,2009). 2.3Salinitystressanditseffects Salinity is the

concentration of dissolved mineral salts (electrolytes of cations and anions) present in the soil

and water. The major cations in saline soil solutions consist of Na+, Ca2+, Mg2+ and K+ and

the major anions are Cl-, SO42-, HCO3-, CO32-and NO3-. Plants in saline soils not only

suffer from high sodium level, but also affected by some degree of hypoxia by the action of

Na+ ions because when they occupy the cation exchange complex of clay particles, makes

the soil more compact, thereby hampering soil aeration. According to the USDA Salinity

Laboratory, saline soils have the ECe is ≥4 dS m-1. Kingburg and Epstein, (1984) reported

that various strategies have been adopted by plant scientists in overcoming salinity where one

important component is the evaluation of genetic variability of the cultivated species or its

wild relatives to identify a tolerant genotype that may sustain a reasonable yield on salt

affected soils. Magda and Kramany, (2005) compared growth, yield, yield components and

chemical composition in seeds of four mungbean varieties under three salinity levels and

observed significant variations for all these traits. Recently, Sunil et al., (2012) also observed

that salt stress adversely affected the biometric, morpho-physiological, biochemical and

biophysical characters of mungbean. Salinity tolerance is influenced by many plant, soil, and

environmental factors and their interrelationships. Characters such as yield, survival, vigor,

leaf damage, plant height, and accumulation of specific ions in shoots, roots, or leaves have

been the most commonly used criteria for identifying salinity tolerance (Mass and Hoffman,

1977; Noble and Shannon, 1988). Salt tolerance is a developmentally regulated, stage-

specific phenomenon, so that tolerance at one stage of development may not be correlated

with tolerance at other developmental stages (Shannon, 1984). Evaluation of salt tolerance in

legumes has been attempted by a variety of cultural techniques with plant material ranging

from germinating seeds to seedlings to mature plants (Chauba, 1997; Raza Hafeezetal.,2002).
METHODOLOGY

Description of Components, Design Analysis and Material Selection

The mungbean seed planter is designed to serve as an intermediate technology

mainly for the small holder farmers. The design and material selection also ensured that the

machine will be easy to construct affordable to the target users, with most of the components

parts are locally available materials, and low technology requiring little or no training for

operation and maintenance. This is intended for time wasting, hand method of seed metering,

furrow opening and closing and fatigue that generally characterize traditional seed planting

by most of the farmers.

a. Main frame is the skeletal structure of the seed planter on which all

component are mounted. The material was selected based on the achieving

reasonable weight and required strength and reliability and also readily

available material.

b. Drive wheel is located at the end of the main frame. The spokes are arrange in

such a way that it braced the wheel circular circumference and also gives it

necessary radial support. The wheel provides the metering mechanism.

c. Furrow it is used to open the soil where seed metered out and falling through

the conveyor and will be dropped into and covered.

d. Conveyor this was the channel through which seed are conveyed to the furrow

e. Handle is used to provide the push force from a human operator to move the

planter from point to point during planting operation.

f. Bearing selection is based on their load carrying capacity life expectancy and

reliability.

g. Seed metering mechanism is to distribute seeds uniformly at the desired

application rates. It control the row spacing of the seed. The seed metering

device may be obtained from the expression

𝝅×𝒅𝒊𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓′ 𝒔𝒈𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒆𝒍

Number of cells = 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒂−𝒓𝒐𝒘 𝒔𝒑𝒂𝒄𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒐𝒇 𝒔𝒆𝒆𝒅

h. Shaft diamerter determination is to ensure satisfactory strength and rigidity

when the shaft is transmitting power under various operating and loading

condition. The diameter maybe obtained using the ASME code

𝟏𝟔
d3=𝝅𝑺𝒂 √(𝑲𝒃𝑴𝒃)𝟐 + (𝑲𝒕𝑴𝒕)𝟐

i. Determination of seed cell. The diameter of seed plate was designed using the

circumference of a circle : Cc=2πr

j. Determination of field efficiency it is determined as :
𝑇𝑎
ᶇf = × 100
𝑇𝑡

WHERE :Ta is the actual planting operation and Tt:

A𝑐
ᶇf = 𝑇𝑡

k. Fabrication and testing of the machine is all working, the wheels, bearings,

sprockets and roller chains (its rotating smoothly), the conveyor that controls

the number of the seed to be planted is also working.

l. The performance in the field is working, the furrow at the back can adjust

depend on the soil if it is too low or high and the furrow at the front is also

adjustable depends on the level of furrow at the back and to make sure it cover

the tilled soil. The size of the spacing in the wheel is also the size spacing of

the mungbean planted and it is 15cm. The conveyor controls the mungbean to

planted and it is 2-3 mungbean. The handle that you should pull in able for the

machine to work. All in all the, performance of the mungbean seed planter is

good.
CONCLUSION

The mungbean seed planter is cheap and it very usefull to farmers because it can

lessen the time consuming in planting. If we talk about our physical body, well this

mungbean seed planter wont let you bow down that can cause most of the farmer a back ache

and the owner of the field wont hire a lot of people to plant a mungbean because the work of

the machine is much fatser than the work of two people where the one farmer dig and the

other one put the beans and cover it. The machine can do it both in just a pull of a one farmer.

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