Commercial mechanical rice transplanting under public private partnership in Bangladesh
This research work was done under public private partnership approach to reduce the tray consumption, increase the field capacity of mechanical transplanter and provide suggestion for wide scale adoption of mechanical transplanting. A 6 row ride on transplanter was used to carry out this research at Hatgobindapur, Chandpur in Natore district during aman 2014 season. This machine has ten seedling density setting, four depth controls and four space setting options. Data were collected from 149 plots covering 10.64 ha. It was observed that field capacity of the transplanter depended on plot to plot distance, plot size, seedling tray supply and number of plots under transplanting activity. Fuel consumption was obtained 19.28 litre per hectare. Results revealed that almost 92% trays were required in mechanical tansplanting, 2% for gap filling and 6% in pocket area filling by manual labour due to irregular shape of the plot. Throughout the operations, 52% time was spent in plot to plot movement and as idle time. One extra skilled labour was needed to load and unload the tray in the machine. Among the transplanting plots, 70% were uniform, 25% were irregular and 5% were mostly irregular. Irregular and mostly irregular plots should be avoided to increase effective field capacity of the transplanter. During study period, 25% trays were saved after providing technical support. Effectiveness of the transplanter was proposed to improve the business opportunity of mechanical transplanter in the fragmented land holding system. Calibration should be done on space and seedling density setting based on soil condition, soil type, seedling height, seedling density before operation in each plot to get optimum plant spacing and number of seedling dispensed in each stroke. Operator should keep the record of tray requirement in each plot and close contact with the help of a monitoring officer. Seedling tray requirement in each plot can be reduced by adjusting plant to plant spacing and seedling density setting. Smaller plot should be avoided to increase the daily area coverage of the transplanter.