Application uniformity assessment of deep fertilizer placement machine for urea briquettes

Abstract

Deep placement of fertilizer has not only a positive agronomic and socioeconomic impact, but also an environmental benefit. A Deep Fertilizer Placement Machine was evaluated for uniformity of fertilizer application at different level of urea briquette in fertilizer box. Various physical and engineering properties of urea briquette viz. size, shape, bulk density, briquette weight, angle of repose and coefficient of friction were measured for design and selection of machine components. The calibration of machine was done at three peripheral speed of ground wheel (3.5, 4.5 and 5.5 km h-1) and four different level of fill (full, 3/4th, half and 1/4th) of fertilizer box. The performance of machine was best at 4.5 km h-1 peripheral speed of ground wheel and fertilizer box filled up to 3/4th level. The field evaluation data revel that approximately 51 number of urea briquette per row were dropped in 15 m distance with average spacing of 301.4 mm with standard deviation of 90 mm among the spacing of dropped urea briquette. The observed miss index, multiple index, quality feed index and precision index of machine was 0.06, 0.06, 0.89 and 0.11 respectively. The effective field capacity of machine was 0.71 ha h-1 with average working width of 1.94 m. The fertilizer application rate, average draft requirement, field efficiency and fuel consumption during field evaluation of machine was observed as 186 kg ha-1, 656 kg, 80.75 % and 2.9 l h-1 respectively.