Development of a Machine for Planting Faba Bean

Abstract

Faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is an important legume crop and is mainly grown for human and animal consumption as food. The aim of this research is to develop and evaluate a faba bean seeder. The developed seeder machine consists of the main frame with three hitching points, seed box, fertilizer box, six vertical rollers with round cells metering device, six plastic seed tubes, six plastic fertilize tubes, six shovel furrow openers ,six chain covering device and three diggers. Laboratory experiments were carried out as a function of change in metering device speed and cells size (1 seed/cell and 2seed/cell). While, field experiments were conducted to optimize machine forward speed and planting depth. The machine performance was studied in terms of seed damage, plant scattering, emergence, crop yield, specific energy and planting cost. The experimental results revealed that the developed faba bean planter is recommended to be used under the following conditions: forward speed of 3.5 km/h and cells size of 2seed/cell at planting depth of 50 mm. The obtained results at optimum conditions were: plant emergence of 97.70%, seed yield 3.99 ton/ha, ground wheel slip of 3.9 %, required power of 4.04 kW, specific energy of 8.66 kW h/ha, field capacity of 0.47 ha/h, operational cost of 9.54$/ha.