DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF A PUNCH PLANTER FOR NO-TILL SYSTEMS

A punch planter for corn was designed, prototyped, and evaluated for n o-till conditions using a commercial seed metering unit The seed meter was evaluated for seed spacing performance at the vertical position w ith 2.5 kPa of vacuum, as specified by the manufacturer and at a 22 de grees incline with 4.0 kPa of vacuum. The prototype punch planter was evaluated at a 22 degrees incline with 4.0 kPa of vacuum. Only small c hanges occurred in the seed meter performance when speed varied from 1 to 3 m/s. The precision of seed spacing decreased approximately 6.0% when compared with the seed meter results. Field tests were conducted with several residue covers for testing the residue effect at a speed of 2.0 m/s. No significant difference was observed in the planter perf ormance. The multiples index (more than one seed in one space) increas ed up to 5.0% when compared to laboratory results. Emergence may have been affected by environmental conditions, but the precision during fi eld tests was better than in the laboratory tests.