COMPARATIVE PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF SOME SELECTED SEED PLANTERS FOR ENHANCED COWPEA PRODUCTION INKANO, NIGERIA

Reducing the drudgery, time and cost of operation associated with cowpea production will significantly enhanced its production in Nigeria. This study evaluates the performance of some selected hand pushed precision planters andanimal drawn planters in Kano state. Field experiments were conducted in two` seasons on the sandy/loamy soil at the experimental field of the Department of Agricultural and Environmental Engineering, Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria during the 2016 and 2017 cropping seasons. A splitplot experimental design was arranged in a 5×2 experiment with four planters (two hand pushed), and (two animal drawn) and also a control treatment (hand-sowing) as the sub plotstreatment and two tillage systems (ridged and harrowed) as the main plottreatments. The treatments were replicated three times and subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results revealed that all the four planters demonstrated had better performance with higher efficiency, with N2green planter having field efficiency of 78% followed by N2red with 71% while thecontrol(manual sowing)was 44% efficient accounting for the lowest. Similarly, the performance of all planters on the two tillage practices used was better in 2017 due to the variation in annual rain fall which favors the performance of cowpea crop in 2017 than 2016.There was significant (P<0.05) higher grain yield of  2352kgha -1 and 1582 kgha -1 recorded for N2red and N2green planters when operated on flat harrowed soil in 2017, while the performance of the same planters in 2017 was 1508 (kgha -1 ) and 1841 (kgha -1 ) respectively on ridge tillage systems. Similarly, the grain yield recorded for N2red and N2green planters on flat tillage and ridge system in 2016 was 1277 (kgha -1 ), 1281 (kgha -1 ) and 1259 (kgha -1 ), 1175 (kgha -1 ) respectively.The results obtained however revealed the performance of the two planters (N2red and N2green) as outstanding on both flat harrowed and ridged soil in both season compared to the other planters and control (hand sowing) on all other crop response parameters across all treatment combinations.