Efficiency of Two-Row Chinese Rice Transplanter Experimented at Royal University of Agriculture

Abstract

As a number of agricultural labors have shifted to urban industry, rice production is now experiencing labor shortages. Thus making transplanting is deeply unpopular. Despite producing higher yields, transplanting has dramatically been replaced by direct seeding. Therefore, this research paper aims to introduce the rice transplanter model TMRT 2 and to determine its working performance and efficiency by conducting an on-station experiment, starting from June to August, 2015, at the Royal University of Agriculture (RUA), Cambodia. The experiment was divided into 9 treatments with the size of 2 m x 7 m, and two main factors—plant age and water level—were studied and analyzed on different periods of 12 days, 18 days, and 25 days in age; an water depths of 2 cm, 5 cm, and 10 cm for water level. The findings indicate that in the treatment (25 days and + 2 cm), the hills contained a density of 4-5 plants and suffered low damage during planting operation. Though transplanted at various water depths, old rice seedlings tended to stand upright at the average of 650 to 750 degrees, whereas slow transplanting speed might greatly reduce seedling losses to 1-2 plants per hill. Additionally, hill-to-hill spacing varied from 21 to 23 cm when the rice seedlings age 18 and 25 days were mechanically transplanted. However, transplanting of younger seedlings produced many missing hills that ranged from 3 to 7 hills in the 2 m x 7 m plot, and this might substantially decrease the future yields. Planting depths varied from 4 to 5 cm when transplanting of seedlings age 18 and 25 days was performed at a water level of 2 cm. It might be concluded that rice seedlings, age 18 and 25 days, should be transplanted at 2 cm water level, in combination with slow enough operational speed, while transplanting of 12-day seedlings at varied water depths produced greater damage and losses.