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Design and Preliminary Testing of a Garlic Planter

 Arnold F. Dumaoal1 and Pepito M. Bato2

 ABSTRACT

The design of an inexpensive, simple and efficient locally fabricated planter is necessary to reduce the amount of man-hours required and avoid delay in planting garlic.

The study was conducted to design, evaluate the performance, and analyze economic feasibility of a machine for planting garlic. Made of locally-available materials, the machine is simple, compact, andportable. Its laboratory performance was evaluated in terms of bulblet delivery rate, delivery accuracy, and the amount of damaged cloves on three garlic varieties namely, Ilocos White, Tan Bolter and Taiwan.

Results of test revealed that the average delivery rate of the prototype using cloves of Ilocos White, Tan Bolter, and Taiwan varieties were 283.86, 155.20, and 416.10 kg/ha, respectively with accuracies of 91.57 %, 95.30%, and 74.76 %. The amount of damaged cloves caused by the metering mechanism of the prototype was 1.92% for Ilocos White variety, 2.06% Tan Bolter variety, and 11.75 % for Taiwan variety.

Results of the economic analysis of the PhP15,000 prototype garlic planter showed break-even periods of 0.20 year and 0.63 year to plant Ilocos White, and Tan Bolter varieties, respectively. Planting Taiwan variety using the machine is not economically feasible because of high rate of damaged cloves caused by the metering mechanism of the machine.

It is recommended that field testing and evaluation be undertaken to determine the actual field performance of the machine and to determine the different factors that will affect its performance.

 Keywords: garlic planter, design of garlic planter

1Associate Professor, Mariano Marcos State University (MMSU), Batac, Ilocos Norte, Philippines; 2Associate Professor, Agricultural Machinery Division, Institute of Agricultural Engineering, College of Engineering & Agro-Industrial Technology, University of the Philippines Los Baños, 4031 College, Laguna, Philippines.