DEVELOPMENT OF A GARLIC CLOVE PLANTER

Positioning garlic cloves in upright standing in garlic field has been regarded as a very important job because it affects clove rooting, growing and, eventually, quality and yield in garlic production, Because of the geometrical uniqueness and irregularity of garlic cloves in shape, the planting operation has been conducted by manual work that needs a tremendous human labors and increases garlic production cost. The overall objective of this research was to develop garlic planting machine through investigating physical properties of garlic and designing clove upright positioning device after figuring out the factors affecting metering device and upright clove positioning mechanism. With the outcomes of the metering and posture positioning experiment, a garlic clove planter having twelve planting rows was developed for 37kW type tractor and feasibility test was carried out in the field. And, According to the performance test and cost analysis, the planter could accomplish planting operation of one hectare plot in 6.3 hours giving 48 times better efficiency, 6.3hrs/ha, and 74.2% of production cost reduction effect, 1,092,546won/ha, than the manual works of 299hrs/ha and 282,258won/ha. And, break-even point ofthe planter was calculated as of 2.71 hectares.