Development and Testing Mounted Multi-use Agricultural Seedbed Preparation Machine for Egyptian Soils

Abstract

The main purpose of this present study is to develop and to test mounted multi-use seedbed preparation machine to limit soil disturbances by decreasing the number of field passes by performing one operation or more from three different operations (ploughing, surface leveling, and soil finishing/smoothing). Manufactured machine consisted of a frame with three installed units. Developed multi-use seedbed preparation machine was evaluated against its ability to increase soil clods less than 100 mm with calculating the fuel consumed, effective field capacity, power requirement, energy requirement per unit area, and draft force. Maximum recorded value of percentages of clod mean weight diameter less than 100 mm was 79.8 % and it was recorded when all the three different parts separately and in sequence (A)+(B)+(C) were operated with forward speed of 2.6 km/h at 14.50 % soil moisture content. Fuel consumption increased with increasing the tractor forward speeds, and at lower soil moisture content and when adding more units to be operated with the chisel unit in one travelling pass. Maximum effective field capacity was 1 fed/h and it was achieved by using the developed machine either with chesil unit alone A or operating the machine with two units, chisel plough and the soil leveler A+C achieved by using at 6.9 km/h and after harvesting soybean with soil moisture content of 15.5 %. Operating the seedbed preparation machine with different combination parts gave higher values of powered required in corn harvested soil than soybean harvested soil