The groundnut seed composed of approximately equal weight of
fatty and non-fatty oil. The groundnut cake (kulikuli- Hausa
name in Nigeria) contains concentrated protein, minerals, and
vitamins in addition research finding revealed that no part of the
nut is a waste. The kernel without the nuts can be used as hay
to feed animals like, horse or ash manure. Planting machine or
planter that is normally required to produce more food is beyond
the buying capacity of smallholder’s farmers, which result in low
productivity especially in the production of grains. An improved
manual two-row groundnut planter was developed and
evaluated for its performance using locally sourced materials
which can be adapted for gardens and smallholder farmers. The
machine has the following parts which are furrow opener,
handle, frame, hopper, discharge tube, metering unit, and roller
housing. The machine was evaluated for field capacity and
metering efficiency (3 hole metering devices) at different forward
speeds. It was observed that the machine field capacity efficiency
of was 82%. Using standard error bars the highest metering
efficiency of 92% was observed at 0.7 m s -1 machine speed.
The ANOVA (analysis of variance) shows that speed
as significant effect on metering efficiency with a p-value of 5.44E-18. The
planter could plant an average of five seeds per point. It is
simple, cheap and the ergonomics of the machine was considered
which makes it easy to operate.
Development of a Low Cost Two-Row Groundnut Planter