Islamabad: Chairman PARC Dr. Muhammad Azeem Khan has launched the tractor operated onion seed bed planter machine, manufactured by PARC Agricultural Engineering Institute (AEI) on Friday 19, 2021 at Multan.

Use of onion in daily food is a common household practice since ages. The farmers generally plant onion seeds by manual method, which is labour intensive and time consuming. The poor yield is recorded due to non-uniform spacing and depth of seeds that affect the size of the onion bulbs. Because of high requirement and shortage of labour, the area under onion cultivation is low and can be increased by mechanization of this crop.

Considering these issues development of the tractor operated onion seed bed planter was carried out in the workshop of PARC Agricultural Engineering Institute (AEI), NARC. Tractor operated onion seed bed planter was developed based on the crop and machine parameters.

According to Chairman PARC Dr. Muhammad Azeem Khan, this planter was tested for its performance at PARC Horticulture Research Institute HRI, NARC, which worked satisfactorily for sowing onion and also reduced the labour requirement in both seeding as well as seed bed preparation. With the help of this machine onion can be grown by direct sowing and bulb/set production methods. With 3-4 liter/acre oil consumption, it takes 1 hour for planting onion at one acre area. 

To meet the food demands of burgeoning population, increase in the production of crops and vegetables is highly needed. Agricultural mechanization and use of farm machinery can bring high yield with minimizing labour cost, however our farmers are still lagging behind in this sector.