www.IndianJournals.com Members Copy, Not for Commercial Sale Downloaded From IP - 14.139.210.242 on dated 31-Aug-2015 Vol. 37(4), 2013 1 INTRODUCTION Groundnut ( Arachis hypogea) is the 13 th most important food crop of the world. It is the world’s 4 th most important source of edible oil and 3 rd most important source of vegetable protein. It is a common oilseed crop in Odisha. During 2009-10 total area under groundnut in Odisha was 87.71 thousand hectares with an average productivity of 1311 kg/ha in Kharif season and 115.01 thousand hectare with an average productivity of 1824 kg/ ha in Rabi season. The leading districts for Kharif groundnut cultivation are Baragarh, Nawrangpur, Dhenkanal and Angul. General practice for sowing of groundnut in Odisha is sowing manually behind the bullock drawn plough, which is time consuming and requires more labour. It takes three days to cover one hectare of land for two ploughmen with six labourers to put groundnut seeds in the furrow opened by the plough. Hiring cost of bullock drawn plough with plough man varies from Rs. 300 to Rs. 500 per day. During 1951 total number of agricultural workers in Odisha was 97.2 million out of a total Mechanized Groundnut Cultivation in Dry Land of Odisha P K Rout, P L Pradhan (LM-9502) and S K Nanda (LM-658) CAET, OUAT, Bhubaneswar – 751003 (Odisha) E-mail: plp_ouat@yahoo.co.in Date of Receipt: 21.12.2012 Date of Publication: July 2013 ABSTRACT Planters have not been used in large scale for planting of oil seed crops in Odisha. Generally farmers plant groundnut seeds behind a narrow country plough drawn by a pair of bullocks. A ield experiment was conducted during Kharif season of 2011 in the farmers’ ield of Dhenkanal district to conduct a comparative study on line sowing of groundnut by tractor operated multi-crop seed cum fertilizer planter and sowing behind the plough with different tillage methods. Inputs like seed variety and fertiliser remained same for both the planting methods. The average plant spacing in the ield was 23 cm row to row and 13.1 cm plant to plant. The depth of placement of seed was 5-6 cm and 8-10 cm in case multi crop planter and behind the plough respectively. The seed rate was same in all the methods @ 120 kg ha -1 whereas average plant population was 28 m -2 and 26 m -2 in case multi crop planter and behind the plough respectively. The ield capacity was maximum 0.68 ha/h with ield eficiency of 76.4 % for larger plots. The yield of groundnut crop was maximum upto1.4 t ha -1 in case of land prepared by power tiller and sown by the planter. Key Words: Groundnut, Germination, Multi crop seed cum fertiliser planter, Beneit-cost ratio population of 361.1 million as compared to 234.1 million agricultural workers out of 1028.7 million of total population in 2001. That shows a decreasing trend of agricultural workers from 26.92 % to 22.76 % of total population indicating scarcity of agricultural workers. Over the years the contribution of animate source of power especially that of draught animals has been going down drastically, where as the total number of tractors sold in Odisha is increasing steadily and between the years 2000- 01 to 2009-10 the total number of tractors sold has been 50,456 in this state (Singh, et al. 2011). These tractors are mainly used for transportation by trailer and tillage by nine tyne cultivator. The use of line planting/ sowing of seeds of ield crops particularly by tractor/ power tiller drawn seed cum fertiliser drill is not popular amongst the farmers in Odisha. Fertilizer is generally applied by broadcasting before sowing or in the furrow while planting, due to which the fertiliser use eficiency decreases and weed infestation increases. Moreover, to avoid these problems tractor drawn multi-crop planter was