Exploring the Possibilities of Sowing Sugarcane Bud and Potato Tuber with a Single Equipment –A Review

Abstract

Planting of any crop is very much important as far as the crop growth and yield is concerned. Sugarcane and potato planting is a very labour intensive job and involves considerable human drudgery. India stands second in sugarcane production in the world next to Brazil. In case of potato, India is the third largest potato producing country in the world. There are many factors which affect the seed germination and crop yield. In this article, reviews of different planting methods of potato and sugarcane crop are discussed. It was found that the rotary and cylindrical cutting mechanism for sett cutting of sugarcane seed was used in most of the mechanical planters. In most of the potato planting machines, the cup-belt type metering mechanism was used. A new technique of sugarcane bud-chip planting has been introduced for sugarcane planting. Seed rate in case of sugarcane bud-chip planting was found to be 1-1.5 t/ha which was very less as compared to mechanical planting by sett cutter planter in which seed rate of approximately 9.7 t/ha was required. It was found that 75% of labour cost was saved with semi-automatic and 87.50% labour costs were saved with automatic planter as compared to conventional manual planting.