Planter speed and plant establishment in corn hybrids seeding

Abstract

Corn (Zea mays L.) crop productivity is directly related to the plants establishment which results from the planting operation in the field.   The objective of this study was to evaluate two displacement speeds of the tractor seeder set when used to sow seeds of three corn hybrids. The completely ran­domized design with three repetitions per treatment was used.  The following variables were evaluated: power requirement in the drawbar, operational field capacity, fuel consumption, mean number of days for seedling emergence, initial plant stand, and seedling longitudinal distribution.  The resulting data were submitted to the analysis of variance and the means compared by the test of Tukey (5%).  The results showed that the three hybrids performance was not influenced by the speeds of displacement.  Drawbar power and fuel consumption increased with speed of displacement whereas gain in opera­tional field capacity was little.