Development and validation of unpuddled riding-type rice transplanter for wet land rice establishment

Abstract

Manual transplanting is tedious and time consuming which often the causes of delayed planting resulting yield loss of rice in Bangladesh. Mechanized rice transplanting is seen as a solution of labor problems. Likewise, using mechanized rice transplanting ensures uniform plant spacing as well as fast and efficient planting that contributes to high productivity (Manjunatha et al., 2009). Transplanters have been developed for rice seedling planting into puddled soils to alleviate labour shortages and reduce costs of rice establishment (Adhikari et al., 2006). Although, tillage for rice establishment has significantly mechanized in Bangladesh, 16-18 % of total production cost are involved in tillage and land leveling (BRRI, 2013). Development of a rice transplanter suitable for unpuddled transplanting under minimum tillage conditions could further minimize the land preparation cost, which will be of interest to the farmers. No significant work to date has been conducted in Bangladesh to develop a rice transplanter for minimum tillage unpuddled soil conditions. Therefore, the following development and validation study was conducted during 2013-15 with modifying and evaluating a riding-type, 6-row mechanical rice transplanter for unpuddled soil conditions.