Study of Physical Properties of Groundnut Seeds Relevant to Design of Planter

Abstract

Groundnut is one of the important crop grown by farmers in many parts of the country. The existing methods and equipments used for planting of groundnut are facing many challenges such as poor seed spacing performance, inaccurate seed rate, inefficient and labor intensive etc. Therefore, design and development of improved equipment for planting of groundnut seeds is necessary. To design and develop new equipment for planting, investigation of the physical properties of groundnut seeds is essential. In this study, some physical properties of groundnut (Chandra variety) seeds, such as length, width, thickness, sphericity, bulk density, angle of repose, geometric mean diameter, coefficient of friction, moisture content, and thousand seed weight were investigated at the Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, SHUATS-Prayagraj. The average length, width and thickness of the groundnut seeds were 12.6, 6.83 and 5.40 mm, respectively. Sphericity, bulk density and angle of repose were recorded as 0.58, 0.522 g/cm³ and 27.65° respectively. The coefficient of friction was found to be 0.41. Moisture content (db%) and thousand seeds weight were also determined and found to be 8.23% and 560.40 g respectively.