Abstract

LOPEZ GOMEZ, Jesús Antonio  and  VAN LOON, Jelle. Agrotechnical evaluation of manual implements for corn planting. Rev. Mex. Cienc. Agríc [online]. 2018, vol.9, n.spe21, pp.4258-4269. ISSN 2007-0934.  https://doi.org/10.29312/remexca.v0i21.1524.

Planting is a critical activity in the production of corn and the crucial step to obtain good yields. Traditional hand tools are mostly hand-made and manual sowing demands a high investment of labor and time. On several occasions, efforts of more than 50 hours of work are reported to carry out the manual planting of one hectare. Modernizing these tools allows small producers to optimize their resources, perform their tasks on time and make them less fatiguing (Aikins et al., 2010). With the objective of determining parameters that allow the analysis of the most useful tools for the manual sowing of corn, six seeders were evaluated determining their effective capacity in the field, with values obtained between 0.020 and 0.055 ha/h. When analyzing the time used to select a bed with different operators, significant differences were found between the operators for the Boshima, Fitarelli planters and the paddle (p-value = 0.017, 0.037 and 0.028 respectively). The emergence of the crop was characterized by the functionality of the tools, reaching values of 71.1% with handspike and only 10.5% with the Fitarelli. Contributing to the methodologies of conventional agrotechnical evaluations, a weighting was made considering the ease of use, accuracy and efficiency in the field. In its entirety, the most recent tools are better results compared to modern tools, probably due to its simplicity and low maintenance demand. However, some modern tools stand out strongly in the specific areas of performance.

Keywords : agrotechnical evaluation; agricultural tools; effective capacity; small producers; sowing manual.