Design, Fabrication, and Performance Evaluation of Manually Operated Two-Row Fertilizer Applicator

This paper was conducted to design, fabricate, and evaluate the performance of a two-row fertilizer applicator for maize in terms of field capacity, delivery efficiency, and delivery rate. The device has a dimension of 20.35cm x 10.15cm x 112cm. The device's major components are: a fertilizer applicator bag, flexible tube, handle, actuator, height adjustment, fertilizer tube, fertilizer metering device, discharge chute, and hole opening device. The result of the study shows that the two-row fertilizer applicator has a field capacity of 0.031 ha/hr. The delivery field efficiency of the fertilizer applicator using complete fertilizer was 78% while the delivery rate was 390 kg/ha. Using a two-row fertilizer applicator, users can save 7.74 hours (1 man-day/ha) for applying fertilizer for a one-hectare corn plantation. The machine entailed an investment cost of ₱3071.00. The breakeven area was 2.23 ha at utilizing the fertilizer applicator for 288 hours per year, generating an income of ₱2,569.25. The projected time to recover the device cost based on 0.031ha/hr fertilizing capacity was 43 days. Meanwhile, the return on investment of the device was 83.66%. The result suggests that this two-row fertilizer applicator is useful to farmers as it decreases the laborious operation and saves time. The researcher recommends further modification of the design and the use of lighter materials to lessen the device’s overall weight.