Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci (2018) 7(5): 715-722 715 Original Research Article https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2018.705.086 Low Cost Maize Planting Unit for Conventional Plough K.L. Dabhi*, R.C. Salunkhe and R.S. Godhani Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Anand Agricultural University, Godhra, Gujarat, India *Corresponding author ABSTRACT Introduction In India, the agricultural lands are decreasing as population increases. In other word, the land holdings of farmers are decreasing day by day. In middle Gujarat the majority of farmers are small and marginal so that they cannot afford fully mechanized farming due to their economical condition and field sizes, too. The main food crop of the region is maize and International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 7 Number 05 (2018) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com Maize crop is an important food crop of the world. To fulfill the requirement of maize over increasing population researchers have to develop and promote technologies which can meet the requirement with reduced cost of cultivation. Sowing of maize is being carried out by different methods all over the world depending upon the soil and availability of sowing implements. Delay in sowing because of shortage of labour during season causes progressive decrease in yield. The area under maize crop may increase if sowing is mechanized. The availability of labours for different farm operations is a serious issue for farmers. The mechanization in various farm operations will help the farmers to get relief from labour requirement. The use of planter for various crops will improve the quality of planting in addition to removal of human drudgery during planting. As maize is the main food crop of the region, a planting unit is so designed as it can be easily attached to the conventional wooden plough and also cheap enough so that poor farmers can purchase and use it. To get desired results by this practice, an inclined plate type seed metering mechanism for the maize planting unit was developed and the unit was tested in the laboratory and its performance for maize sowing was compared with dropping seeds into funnel type seeding device connected to plough and dibbling method. The evaluation results found that the unit gives the nearly recommended seed rate (22.26 kg/ha) with negligible damage of seeds. It also obtained uniform seed to seed spacing (19.84cm) in the field. The field capacity of the planter was found to be (0.1086 ha/h) which was higher than dropping seeds into funnel type seeding device connected to plough (0.0674 ha/hr) and dibbling method (0.007926 ha/hr).The field efficiency of the planting unit was found (77.90%) which was the highest followed by 73.51 % and 67.08% in case of dropping seeds into funnel type seeding device connected to plough and dibbling method, respectively. The cost of planting with the developed planting unit per ha was obtained 920 whereas it was estimated in another dropping seeds into funnel type seeding device connected to plough and dibbling method is 2314 and 3158, respectively. Keywords Maize planting unit, Dibbling method, Conventional plough, Field efficiency Accepted: 07 April 2018 Available Online: 10 May 2018 Article Info