Review of precision rice hill-drop drilling technology and machine for paddy

Mechanized rice direct seeding is a cost-effective and efficient approach for rice cultivation.Recently,the use of rice direct seeding has been increasing rapidly owing to rural labour shortages and continuous increases in agricultural production costs.This article reviews the research and application progress of mechanized rice direct seeding including direct seeding technologies,precision rice seeding,precision rice seed-metering devices,key supporting agronomy technologies for mechanized rice direct seeding.South China Agricultural University developed precision rice hill-drop drilling(PRHDD)with synchronous furrowing and ridging technology and series machines for paddy that affords remarkable advantages in terms of saving time and labour,higher yield,and higher efficiency.In this approach,pre-germinated seeds are uniformly hill-dropped in the expected positions in puddled soil.It significantly improved the crop growth population and effectively solved the problems of high frequency of disease and pests caused by the irregular distribution of rice seeds with manual broadcasting,and generally reduces seed usage and increases the yield.Therefore,this technology has broad application prospects and great potential for promoting the development of mechanized rice direct seeding in China.

Design and field evaluation of hill-drop pneumatic central cylinder direct-seeding machine for hybrid rice

To meet the requirement of the precision direct-seeding for hybrid rice,this study aimed to design a hill-drop pneumatic central cylinder direct-seeding machine to sow ten rows at a time.A series of orthogonal experiments were conducted to investigate the performance of the cylinder seeder.The influences of the hole diameters,degree of vacuum,and rotational speed of the cylinder were tested on JPS-12 computer-vision seeding test platform,and the rotational speed of 10-50 r/min,diameter of 135 mm and a negative pressure of 1.0-2.0 kPa were employed.Test results showed that the optimal parameter combination was a vacuum of 2.0 kPa and a hole diameter of 2.0 mm(straight hole),with a rotational speed of 30 r/min.The probability of(2±1)seeds in each hole was 95.3%,while the probability of seed-missing hole was 2.0%.A series of field experiments were then conducted to test the seeder performance according to China National Standard Test Methods,and the field test results showed that for the hill-drop pneumatic central cylinder direct-seeding machine,the probability of(2±1)seeds in each hill was 91.6%,while the probability of seed-missing hill was 2.7%.The yield data showed that the average effective panicle had 231.25 ears,the average seed setting rate was 9.92%,the average 1000-grain weight was 22.45 g,and the average yield was 7107.9 kg/hm^(2) that was 26.14%higher than the average yield of rice(5634.9 kg/hm^(2))of Guangdong Province in 2016.The results showed that the hill-drop pneumatic central cylinder direct-seeding machine for hybrid rice could be applied in practical precision rice seeding.