Abstract

                                Rice is grown by transplanting under wetland conditions or by direct sowing depending upon the availability of water. In India, the total area under irrigated rice is about 22.00 million hectares, which accounts for about 49.5 per cent of the total area under rice crop in the country. Upland rice fields are generally dry and directly seeded. In India, the total area under upland rainfed rice is about 6.00 million hectares, which accounts13.5 per cent of the total area under rice crop in the country. Wet seeding of rice is practiced when there is insufficient time to prepare the nursery for transplanting or when the cost of transplanting of rice is too high. Sowing is done either by broadcasting or with equipment like drum seeder. Manually operated drum seeder has drawbacks like a scattering of seeds, dislocation of seeds due to surface water or rain and seeds being picked up by pests, etc. Asystem for accurately placing multiple seeds in hills will eliminate the above problems. Hence a method of sowing pelletized rice was developed. The seed pellets will be sown by a seeder in a wet rice field.In this present study, a projected seed cell vertical rotor device of 120 mm diameter with 12 cells on the rotor periphery was evaluated. The parameter used to evaluate the sowing performance were rotor speeds of 8, 11, 14, 16 and 20 rpm, seed sizes of 8 to 9 mm, 9 to 10 mm and 10 to 11mm diameter, cell sizes of 10, 11, 12 mm and three depths of seeds in hopper as 10, 20 and 30 mm above the disc center line. Due to the non singulation of seeds, 60 mm rotor was dropped. Hence 120 mm vertical rotor seed metering mechanism was selected for sowing in field condition.

Key words : Direct sowing, multiple seed pellet, Rice, projected seed cell vertical rotor.