Development of a Four-Row Tractor Mounted Soybean Planter

The traditional method of planting soybean in Nigeria does not result in obtaining maximum yield of the crop per hectare. This is due to either incorrect number of plants per stand, incorrect plant to plant spacing or incorrect row to row spacing. This research work was embarked upon to develop a Four-Row Tractor Mounted Soybean Planter. The planter was designed, fabricated and evaluated in Agricultural and Bio-Resources Engineering Department, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, during 2021 raining session. The planter has the functional units of four hoppers, four seed metering units, four delivery chutes, four furrow openers, and four soil covering devices. The developed planter was evaluated in both laboratory and in the field in terms of planting speed, seedling emergence, plant-to-plant spacing, seed delivery rate, number of seeds per hole and percent seed damage. The laboratory test of the planter shows that it delivered one (1) single seed per hole of TGX 1951-3F variety of soybeans and two (2) seeds per hole of TGX1448-2F varieties of soybeans respectively. The plant to plant spacing average was 5.7 cm within row, and 50 between rows. The results obtained also showed that the seed delivery rate was 48.2kg/ha, field efficiency of 75.5%, effective field capacity of 0.792 ha/ha while the tractor was powered with 50 hp tractor (EICHER 5660). We conclude that the planter was able to satisfy the agronomic requirements for soybean planting, and thus will relieve medium scale farmers of the rigors involved in soybean planting.