Evaluation of different prototypes of tef row planter for their sowing effectiveness at Adet red soil and Bichena black soil during 2015/2016 cropping season. By.
Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute (ARARI)
Adet Agricultural Research Center, Ethipoa
Evaluation of different prototypes of tef row planter for their sowing effectiveness at Adet red soil and Bichena black soil during 2015/2016 cropping season
By Bitwoded Derebe Gobezie Chaklie
1. Background and Justification Teff is believed to have been cultivated from 4000BC and originally grown in Ethiopia. It is an indigenous cereal crop. Teff differs from other crops in that it can be grown in a very wide range of soil and climatic conditions. It has also high nutritional value. When teff is compared to other cereals, it has more value than others cost wise as well as cultural values. But it is the lowest in yield of all the cereals grown in the country (CSA, 2014). Since teff is the staple food of most Ethiopian people, the present production system cannot satisfy the consumers’ demand. This is because the farming system that farmers use is unadvanced. This means the local people use broadcasting planting system rather than using row planting (Berhe et al. 2011). This method requires high seed rate and spreads seed too densely onto the field. Traditionally, farmers thought that the more seed rate that is planted, the more teff yield and straw produced – but this is not true when the population is dense over and unevenly distributed, the competition will be high with between tef plants for nutrients, water, and sunlight; and makes weeding more difficult once the plants have matured and plants perform poorly as a result the yield become low (Fufa et al. 2011). As a solution, it is recommended to reduce the seed rates and to plant in rows or, alternatively, to transplant seedlings from a nursery plot. Reducing the seed rate to 2.5–3.0 kg per hectare reduces competition between seedlings and allows for optimal tillering or branching out of the plants. By row planting or transplanting, land management and especially weeding can be done more easily. The incidence of lodging is also found to be reduced, as the stem of row planted teff is better able to support the weight of the filled head of grain (Berhe et al. 2011, Chanyalew and Assefa 2013).
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Currently tef row planting become in the attention of governments, nongovernmental organizations, different stalk holders and farmers in Ethiopia due to its yield advantage over broadcasting. But the system cannot expand due to its difficult to practicability in easily. It demands high labour in hand drilling in row. To avoid this difficulties different row planer prototype materials emerge in Ethiopia by responsible organizations for tef improvement. The newly developed tef row planter assumes that save time (labour
cost), put proper fertilizer and seed rate in a recommended spacing. But the row planter materials in practically affected by soil type, soil moisture content, land preparation, time of sowing and others. So due to that reason the current activity proposed to the objective of: •
Evaluating different tef row planter prototypes on their agronomic efficiency in terms of time saving, convenient for all types of soils and easily manageable to adapt by farmers
2. Material and Methods
The experiment was conducted during 2015/2016 main cropping season at Adet and Bichena experimental station and farmers’ field. In terms of soil, the trial was under taken on nitosol at Adet and vertisoil at Bichena. Four row planter prototypes namely Ben 2(manually held seeder which uses a highland bottle attached to a long tube with a free-flow metering to allow seed to flow freely onto soil surface, metering is controlled by speed of travel while seeding and fertilizer application and furrowing activities done manually), ATA (human-powered planter dispenses tef seed and fertilizer, 4 rows at a time, with the wheel rotation and the internal metering unit maintains a constant rate independent of the human’s walking speed), ARARI(a hand pulled rolling mechanical planter delivering seed and fertilizer to the soil surface via a rotating drum and metering is controlled by wheel rotation) and Ben1(a manually held seeder that uses a highland bottle attached to a long tube to deliver seeds to the soil surface via a salt shaker-like metering plate that releases seed as the device is shaken and metering is controlled by rate of shaking. Fertilizer application and furrowing activities done manually) row planter were tested in a simple plot design and replicated across sites. At Adet both on-farm and onstation the first three (Ben 2, ATA and ARARI) prototypes only tested but at Bichena Ben1 planter was added. The recommended fertilizer rate 40/60 and 80/40kg/ha N/P 2O5 for Adet and Bichena were used respectively for the materials called Ben 1 and 2. All P2O5 and half N were applied at planting time; the remaining half N was applied at tillerring stage of the test crop. The test crop was Quencho for Adet and Etsub at Bichena. The plot size for each plot was
10m length x 10m width with 2m between plots. All the necessary data were taken from the net plot. Biomass and grain yield was converted to hectare from the samples.
3. Result and Discussion
The result indicated that row planter called Ben 2 gave higher biomass and grain yield at both locations (Table 1-4). This was might be due to population difference but the efficiency of planter also considered. Lodging index in tef crop correlates with the population stands and the current result showed treatments with high population had high lodging score; that was Ben 2 planter (Table 1- 4). The reason was that Ben 2 planter drill high seed rate within row. At Adet area both on-station and on-farm sites the proposed row planters worked well while keeping their own agronomic efficiency. Whereas in Bichena districts the soil is vertisol and the soil moisture was more enough and workability of black soil is difficult by its nature. Due to these ARARI row planter completely could not work at Bichena districts rather it sank in mud. The two mechanical planters (Ben 1 & 2) were effective in both locations as well in all sites. In fact Ben 1 and 2 planters were hand held and shaken - poured the materials by hand without the contacts of planter at surface soil. Table 1.Effect of different row planter on mean of grain yield and related main parameters of tef at Adet, 2015/2016 growing season
Table2. Effect of different row planter on grain yield and related main parameters of tef at Bichena on-station, 2015/2016 main season
Table3. Effect of different row planter on grain yield and related main parameters of tef at Bichena on-farm Mahiberebirhan site1, 2015/2016 cropping season
Table4. Effect of different row planter on grain yield and related main parameters of tef at Bichena on-farm Mahiberebirhan site2, 2015/2016 cropping season
Not only biological data but also agronomic efficiency of the planters was evaluated at both locations. Regarding simplicity to use during planting and seed distribution efficiency within rows the mechanical planter of Ben 2 was effective in both districts (Table 5-9). ATA planter was good followed Ben2 at Adet area in seed distribution efficiency and easiest to use with some requirements of skill to operate. Row making efficiency of ATA and ARARI planter were highly affected by soil type, soil moisture and land leveling; in value lower and higher than 20cm the former and the latter respectively. But both planters were in line with the recommendation of tef row spacing (20cm). At Bichena areas both ATA and ARARI row planter were not effective
except ATA planter at one site (Table 8). This was due to ARARI planter rolling mechanism was narrow that sank down and did not rolled while the ATA planter relatively the rolling mechanism was good but the side drum easily broken during planting. In general the nature of vertisol is sticky when it got moist that made difficult to roll the mechanical planter as a result the planter’s seed and fertilizer distributer hole closed by mud. The other most important parameters regarding row planter were time saving during planting and decreasing amount of seed rate by far from the hand drilling row planting and the broadcast system. In this aspect to plant one hectare of farm land by ATA planter 1.14 day per man was needed. Similarly to plant one hectare of farm land by ARARI and Ben 2 planter 1.73 and 11.69 day per man were needed respectively at Adet areas of nitosol
( Table 5 and 6).
Whereas in Bichena areas of vertisol to plant a hectare of land by ATA (one site) row planter, it took 2.22 labour-days. Ben 2 planter was effective in all sites and the consumed labour greatly varied across sites (Table 7-9), the minimum and maximum labour used per hectare were 13.05 and 25.5 labour-days respectively at Mahiberbirhan site 1 and 2. These were happened due to human speed variation that the materials governed. Materials called Ben 1 took 20.7 labourdays per hectare. Planters namely Ben 1 and 2 needed furrow making fertilizer application manually that was what used high labour but it simplified the cost of labour for seed placement in row manually compared to ATA and ARARI which were used multifunctional at a time.
The other scenario of row planting by mechanical planter was by reduction of seed rate productivity could be increased. ATA and ARARI planters were aligned with this principle in terms of using lower seed rate but the productivity could not achieved by one year preliminary results of this experiment. Whereas Ben 1 and 2 row planter were used high seed rate more than the recommendation. Even if this Ben planter used high seed rate, the grain and biomass yield also high.
Table5. Mean of different mechanical row planter prototype efficiencies on row making, seed distribution and related parameters at Adet research station, 2015
Table6. Different mechanical row planter prototype efficiencies for row making, seed distribution and related parameters at Adet on-farm fields, 2015 /2016 season
Table7. Comparison of Ben 1 and 2 row planter prototypes on their efficiencies of simplicity, seed distribution and related parameters at Bichena research station, 2015/2016 season
Table8. Comparison of ATA and Ben2 row planter prototypes on their efficiencies of simplicity, seed distribution and related parameters at Bichena Mahiberebirhan site1, 2015/2016 cropping season
Table9. Comparison of Ben 1 and 2 row planter prototypes on their efficiencies of simplicity, seed distribution and related parameters at Bichena Mahiberebirhan site2, 2015/2016
4. Conclusion The highest mean grain yield was 1234.2 and 2200.6 kg/ha recorded from Ben 2 row planter at Adet and Bichena respectively followed by Ben 1. But the labour demand for these materials were relatively higher than ATA and ARARI prototypes while keeping over the advantage of hand sowing in row and broadcast planting methods of tef. To plant a hectare of farm land in row the lower labour number recorded from ATA row planter in both locations. Lower labour demand for a hectare of land was also observed from ARARI planter in Adet areas. In general Ben planter’s prototypes had a promising result in the current study year but they need some modification if possible at the part of the free flow of tef to use the right recommended seed rate. In parallel the availability of the prototypes also should be under considered. This was one year result so final conclusion and recommendation could draw after repeated one year and economic analysis will be done.
Future plan: It should be repeated in the coming cropping season with the addition of recommended seed rate by hand drilling in row for the comparison purpose and newly developed prototypes.
