Operational manual for multi-crop zero till planter

Abstract

Multiple challenges associated with plough based conventional production practices that include deteriorating natural resources, declining factor productivity, shortages of water & labor and escalating costs of production inputs coupled with challenges of climate change both in irrigated intensive systems as well as low intensity rainfed ecologies are the major threat to food security of South Asia (Jat et al., 2009; Ladha et al., 2009; Chauhan et al., 2012). Water and labor scarcity and timeliness of farming operations specially planting under the emerging uncertainties are becoming major concerns of farming all across farmer typology, production systems and ecologies in the region (Chauhan et al., 2012). In many parts of Asia, over-exploitation and poor management of groundwater has led to declining table and negative environmental impacts. Conventional flooded rice receiving the largest amount of fresh water compared to any other crop is the major contributor to the problems of declining groundwater table ranging from 0.1–1.0 m year–1 and increasing energy use. The problem has further been intensified with the unavailability of labor in time, and multi-fold increase in labor costs. Fragmented land holdings and nucleus farm families further exacerbates the problem of availability of farm labour. Potential solutions to address these issues include a shift from intensive tillage based practices to conservation agriculture (reduced or no tillage) based crop establishment techniques (Saharawat et al., 2010; Jat et al., 2012; Gathala et al., 2011). Direct drilling (seeding/planting with zero tillage technology) is one such practice that potentialy addresses the issues of labor, energy, water, soil health etc (Malik et al., 2005; Gupta and Sayre, 2007; Jat et al., 2009; Ladha et al., 2009; Gathala et al., 2011). However, due to fragmented and small land holdings it is not affordable to purchase many machines for the sowing of different crops. Therefore, multi-crop planter have been invented and are being used by many farmers across South Asia. The same multi-crop planter available in the region can be used for direct drilling of several crops including wheat, rice, maize, moongbean, mustard, barley etc without any preparatory tillage and also under reduced tillage situations. One of the major constraints in large scale adoption of this technology as well as sub-optimal use of planters is the lack of skills/knowledge on operation and calibration of the machinery for multiple uses. There are different field/crop/situation specific adjustments needed before the use of the machine in the field. These adjustments include proper seeding depth, fertilizer rate and the seed rate etc as per the crop and field conditions to realize the potential benefits of the technology. There are several machinery manufacturers who supply these planters but the operational manuals are not available for making adjustments, calibrations for multiple purposes, multiple crops under local conditions. In absence of the manual guidelines/protocols for efficient use of these planters by the farmers, service providers, extension agents for different purposes and variable field conditions, many a times the desirable results are not achieved and even contradictory results are observed. This results in slowing down the adoption rates of the technology. Also, in absence of simple guidelines for maintenance of these planters, the farmers/service providers need to make huge investments on repairing at the start of the season. In this manual, we attempted to provide simple guidelines for calibration, operation, maintenance and troubleshooting for efficient use of multi-crop zero till planters by the range of stakeholders including farmers, service providers, extension agents and researchers.