Development of saffron mechanization with a special planter for corm production farms

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Associate Professor, Agricultural Engineering Research Department, Khorasan Razavi Agricultural and Natural Resources Research and Education Center, AREEO, Mashhad, Iran.

2 Agricultural Engineering Research Department, Khorasan Razavi agricultural and natural resources research and education center, AREEO, Mashhad. Iran.

10.22092/mpt.2025.367606.1173

Abstract

In saffron production farms, it is recommended to grow corms to the desired weight by growing small corms for one year and then plant them in the field. The various saffron corm planters that have been built in the country so far have been used to cultivate saffron corms for several years and corms are planted in rows with densities of 7 to 10 tons per hectare. In this research, a device was designed and built that has the capability of strip and corms dense cultivation (up to 20 tons per hectare). The width of each planting strip is 1100 mm, and for the passage of tractor wheels (narrow wheel), 40 cm of uncultivated space was considered in the distance between the planting strips. In order to evaluation of corm planter, the effects of planting speed at two levels (3 and 5 km/h) and plant density at three levels (10, 15 and 20 tons per hectare) on performance, percentage of injury’s corms and distribution uniformity of corms were investigated. The results showed that by increasing the planting speed from 3 to 5 km/h, the damage to the corms increased by 11.4%. By increasing the planting density from 10 to 20 tons/ha, the field capacity also decreased from 0.62 to 0.38 ha/h and the damage to the corms increased. Also, the distribution of the corms was appropriate compared to the selected density and the work distribution uniformity system had a good performance.

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