Development and Performance Evaluation of Tractor Operated Sugarcane Transplanter

Presently, the sugarcane transplanting operation is adopted by the farmers. They use nursery raised sugarcane seedlings of 45 to 50 days old for transplanting. Sugarcane seedling transplanting is presently done manually which is a labour intensive operation. In view of this, need is felt by the sugarcane growers to develop tractor operated sugarcane transplanter which will be useful for sugarcane seedling transplanting mechanically. Accordingly the project was carried out to design and fabricate sugarcane planting machine for sugarcane plantation to reduce farmer’s effort and to increase production of agricultural products. The field trials were conducted at various places including Central Sugarcane Research Center, Padegaon, Satara. The field trials indicated satisfactory performance of the machine. The application of transplanting technique to replace traditional planting of sugarcane saves up two months of the crop production season. The field trials revealed that the average effective field capacity of the machine was 0.20 ha h-1 with 85.15% field efficiency. Net saving over conventional method was worked out to be Rs 1892.00 ha-1.