Development and First Results of a No-Till Pneumatic Seeder for Maize Precise Sowing in Huang-Huai-Hai Plain of China

Abstract

In Huang-Huai-Hai plain of China, farmers collect the maize straw for livestock during maize harvest to increase their revenue. To maintain the sustainable productivity of the soil, all straw after the wheat harvest is returned to the field. This straw brings difficulties in the no-till seeding for maize after wheat harvest, and thus it is necessary to develop efficient no-till seeders that can cope with heavy residue and improve sowing quality. In this work, we designed a wide-strip-till no-till pneumatic maize (WNPM) seeder to satisfy the need in this plain. The key parameters of the opposite-placed anti-blocking mechanism of the WNPM seeder were determined via the discrete element method (DEM) technology, while the parameters of the pneumatic maize seed meter were specified using the coupled simulation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and DEM. We also carried out field experiment to test the performance of our machine. Under the operating speed of 8 km/h, the soil disturbance was 38.2%. Moreover, the straw cleaning rate achieved 94.4% in the seeding belt while the residue cover index of the seed plot was over 58%, and the seeding performance was improved significantly. The qualified seed spacing index, uniformity variation coefficient, qualified index of sowing depth and variation coefficient of sowing depth were 96.6%, 19.1%, 95.1% and 3.2%, respectively. In general, the WNPM seeder improves the working efficiency of maize sowing because both the reliable working speed and the sowing quality were increased. These results are of considerable importance for crop production in Huang-Huai-Hai plain of China.