Development of a Row Type Variable Rate Fertilizer Machine and Performance Assessment

Year 2019, Volume: 36 Issue: 1, 36 - 44, 30.04.2019

Ufuk Türker Babak Talepbour Mehmet Metin Özgüven

https://doi.org/10.13002/jafag4575

Abstract

Increasing profitability associated with reduction of environmental pollution and production costs made variable rate application unavoidable. Therefore, fertilizing according to the field demand and ability to vary fertilizer rates on-the-go is regarded as one of the site-specific management tools. Variable rate application machines tend to be more complicated and thus farmers must take into account how reliable the extra components and systems. This study introduces a frugal variable rate granular fertilizer with features of and simplicity that was modified on a row fertilizer machine. Interpolation accuracy, coefficient of variation and response time as parameters to achieve a reliable variable rate fertilizing system were considered in order to evaluate the fertilizer applicator performance. According to the results, when interpolation accuracy was determined as R2, 0,94 the response times of low to high and high to low transition rate orders were estimated as 4,44s and 4,63s taking into account operation speed at 1 ms-1, respectively. Coefficient of variation of fertilizer rates ranged from 6,44 to 26,25% and 10,45 to 81,3 for application rate from 0 to 150 kg/ha. Variation of fertilizer rate among the metering units in terms of coefficient of variation (CV) resulted from 10,11 to 36,15% and 11,15 to 117,89% in increasing and decreasing transition order, respectively.

Keywords

Variable rate fertilizer application, Control system, İnterpolation, Response time

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