EVALUATION OF A SIMPLE MANUALY OPERATED PLANTING UNIT SUITABLE FOR SLOPING LANDS

Khater, M. M. I.

doi:10.21608/mjae.2016.98018

EVALUATION OF A SIMPLE MANUALY OPERATED PLANTING UNIT SUITABLE FOR SLOPING LANDS

Document Type : Original Article

Author

M. M. I. Khater

Soil Conservation Department, Desert Research Center, Cairo, Egypt.

10.21608/mjae.2016.98018

Abstract

The idea to cultivate the grass seeds into the soil by trenches and conserve rain water was identified by using a simple manually operated planting unit to be easy using four sloping lands which were 4.8, 6.6, 8.6 and 10.4 % under experimented area in arid conditions to cultivate Rhodes grass. The laboratory investigation included determination of the rate of seed discharge, uniformity of seed spacing and seed damage during operation. The obtained data revealed that soil moisture content measured from the manually operated planting unit had the highest values during growth season and can be ranked as 4.8% > 6.6% > 8.6% > 10.4% land slopes. Also, the soil moisture content values after 40 days of planting date were higher than that obtained after 3 days. The highest values of soil moisture content were 25.53 and 36.26 % for manually operated planting unit under 4.8% land slope treatment after 3 and 40 days of planting date respectively. On the other hand, the yield values revealed that the manually operated planting unit had the highest record. The highest biological yield value was 92.447 Mg/ha by using manually operated planting unit with land slope of 4.8%. The lowest biological yield value was 48.059 Mg/ha by using of hand labor planting method with land slope of 10.4% treatment.

Keywords

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