Design and experiment of blades-combined no and minimum-till wheat planter under controlled traffic farming system

Abstract: During the operation of agricultural machinery, farmland soil compaction caused by the combination weight of tractor and implements resulted in reduction of soil porosity and increase of soil bulk density, which have a negative effect on soil tilth. The controlled traffic conservation tillage is the combination of controlled traffic tillage and conservation tillage, a tillage system takes measures as follows: straw mulching, seeding in no-till or minimum-till field, and separating the crop growth zone from the tractor track. To reduce soil compaction, improve the environmental conditions for plant growth and strengthen the technology convergence of agricultural machinery and agronomy, a no and minimum-till wheat planter for controlled traffic tillage was developed based on the requirements of mechanized conservation tillage technology. This individual profiling planter consists of a frame, straw chopping devices for anti-blocking, wedge-shaped openers for fertilization, double-disk openers for seeding, and seed & fertilizer boxes. The anti-blocking straw chopping devices was combined by a wedge shaped opener with Y and L type blades. The opener's blade front edge embedded into Y type blades' front fork (overlap depth is about 10 mm). But the two edges are non-interference. Y type blades crushed straw while kicking out the straw and stubble from opener shanks. L type blades are equipped on both sides of the opener's front edge, the included angle α of Y-type blade was set to 120° and L-type blade Φ was designed to 120°. Each opener has three sets of blades (three Y type blades and six L type blades). While the planter is working, the tractor would pull the planter with a forward speed of 3-5 km/h. The tractor tires and land wheels of planter would roll on the tractor track. Power from the tractor PTO shaft is transmitted to the driver cutter shaft trough the gearbox and power transmission system. The rotating cutter shaft would lead to the high-speed rotation of flails which chop the straws to help the wedge-shaped openers with furrowing and fertilizing. Subsequently, a double-disk opener would do the second-furrowing to accomplish seeding，pressing and soil-covering. A field experiment was conducted on June, 2011 in the conservation tillage experimental field located in Zhuozhou city, Hebei province. During the experiment, the planter showed stable working performance and good passing ability. The results also indicated that this planter could plant effectively under no and minimum-till, and all the indicators met the design requirements for no-till planter. According to the comparison experiments on two treatments, the controlled traffic tillage and uncontrolled traffic tillage, it was concluded that all the performance indicators under the controlled traffic tillage system were slightly superior to the ones under uncontrolled traffic tillage system, although the no and minimum till planter designed for controlled traffic tillage could also meet the seeding requirements under uncontrolled traffic tillage system. For controlled traffic tillage system, the average seeding depth was 3.6 cm with a qualified rate of 87.9%, and the average fertilizer application depth was 8.2 cm with a qualified rate of 84.8%, which met the design requirements.The two-year experiment results indicated that, compared with the uncontrolled traffic tillage, the controlled traffic tillage could save fuel consumption by 22.49% because of better tire adhesion. It might proved that the controlled traffic conservation tillage technology could improve the soil structure and reduce the costs significantly. Controlled traffic no and minimum-till seeding technique is a technology which not only improve the seeding quality, but also save the fuel, and finally realize the energy conservation and emission reduction. With the promotion of land circulation policy, this research result could be of value for the scale cultivation and efficient management of land.