Author : Vivek P 1
Date of Publication :29th November 2017
Abstract: Most of the vegetables like tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), chilli (capsicum annuum l.) and eggplant (solanum melongena) are first sown in nursery beds and later transplanted manually either on ridges or on a well-prepared seedbed. Moreover, there are several activities involved in the vegetable transplanting operation. Particularly transplanting of vegetable seedlings are labour intensive. In India, labour requirement for manual transplanting of vegetables varies from 240 to 320 man-h ha-1. Keeping the above facts in view, the research was conducted on development and performance evaluation of an automatic gripping type transplanting mechanism for plug type vegetable seedlings. Tomato, chilli and brinjal seedlings were considered as the transplanting object which is local and major plug type protray vegetable seedlings of Tamil Nadu. 40 and 25 days old chilli, brinjal and tomato seedlings were used for the study. Well decomposed coco-pith was used as media for raising the vegetable seedlings. Moisture content of the growth media was found that 68.46%. The tray contains 98 cells in which the arrangement of cells is 14 x 7. The growth characteristics of vegetable plug type protray seedlings were recorded. Development of an automatic transplanting mechanism consisted of pneumatic actuated gripper for grasping and releasing the plug type seedling, pneumatic cylinder for remove the seedling from the protray cell and linear rail used for transplant the seedlings in linear motion which moves on linear guide way. The entire operations of transplanting mechanism were programmed in microcontroller which is controlled by Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) unit. Pneumatic air was supplied from compressor to the pneumatic actuated gripper and cylinder through Filter Regulator Lubricator (FRL) unit. The transplanting rate of developed mechanism was set as 20 - 25 seedlings per minute. The success ratios of automatic transplanting of seedlings were 87.22%, 91.72% and 89.85% for 25 days old tomato seedlings, 40 days old chilli and brinjal seedlings respectively. In terms of success ratio of transplanting, the average for the three kinds of seedlings was 89.59%. The pick-up device satisfactorily grasped and removed each seedling from the protray, and transported the seedling to the place where they would be precisely transplanted into the ground
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