Development of embedded automatic transplanting system in seedling transplanters for precision agriculture

Hand transplanting of vegetable seedlings is always been a time consuming and labourious activity which often leads to muscular fatigue. Use of hitech instrumentation increased to achieve precision and automation in agricultural operations. At present the transplanting is done manually which accounts for large amount of hand labour and time. To ensure precision and timeliness in operation, an automatic transplanting based on embedded system for use in seedling transplanters was developed. The developed system consists of feed roller, pro-tray belt, a pair of L-shaped rotating fingers, embedded system, DC and stepper motor. The plug seedlings were released into the furrow with use of developed embedded system by actuating DC as well as stepper motor. The performances of the developed system was tested rigorously at four different operating speeds (1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and 2.5 km/h) and three angles of pro-tray feed roller (00, 300, 450) for attaining optimum plant to plant spacing in soil bin. The result indicated that percent transplanting and plant to plant spacing was found optimum at 2.0 km/h forward speed and 300 angle of pro-tray feed roller. The average plant spacing, transplanting efficiency, furrow closer, angle of inclination and miss planting were 600 mm, 91.7%, 90.3%, 18.30 and 2.1%, respectively. The developed system ensures the precision by sigulating the placement of seedlings at optimum spacing for sustainable agriculture production. It also enabled the optimum transplanting rate, the ability to transplant at higher speeds and maintaining proper plant to plant spacing