Soil Movement in the Seed Slot Created by a New No-tillage Furrow Opener

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Abstract

        No-tillage is a new approach to increase efficiency of activity inputs and conserving of natural resources. The role of driller and their furrow openers in this system is very important. Amount of soil translocation depends to opener shape which affects some characteristics of furrow such as moisture content in the slot. In this research magnitude of soil translocation and direction of movement for the soil located in the front of new opener were investigated. The new opener which was suitable for no-tillage system fabricated by adding two horizontal disks to traditional double-disk opener. The experiments were conducted with three levels of traveling speed (3, 6, 8 km/hr) and two bulk densities of soil (1.1, 1.4 Mg/m).The experimental design was arranged in a (3×2) complete randomized factorial design with three replications for each test. Few specified colored balls were used to trace direction of movement of soil particles. Results showed amount of soil translocation increased as traveling speed increased. Also movement in the less compacted soil was greater. In a specified condition lateral movement of the particles located in the shallower depth was higher. Although the particles which located deeper moved farther in the direction of traveling but their lateral scattering was smaller. Also, it was found that the direction of soil movement in the seed slot for the novel opener was upward. This can solve the problem of pushing drier soil of surface into seed slot due to using of double-disk opener.

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