An Electro-Mechanical Pro-Tray Seeder for Sowing Vegetable Seeds

Developing technology to pick and place singulated vegetable seeds into pro-trays is a felt need amidst the nursery growing entrepreneurs. A simple electro-mechanical machine was developed which does not require sophisticated controls and a separate source of vacuum. The unit can fill in the growth media in the pro-trays, level it off, compact the media in the cells, pick and place singulated vegetable seeds in the compacted cells and finally re-top the pro-tray for watering and germination. The whole process is done on a flat belt conveyor moving in steps of inter-cellular distance of the pro-tray, thus doing the sequence of operations in each row of the pro-tray. The machine on being tested provided about 60 per cent of singulation in flat seeds, but 100 per cent in round seeds. Flat seeds, if pelleted, provided 100 per cent singulation. The machine has a through-put of 80 trays per hour of operation