Development of a manually operated fertilizer broadcaster

Abstract

A manually operated fertilizer broadcaster was designed, constructed and tested. Design considerations were low initial cost, ease of construction and operation as well as three different application rates (low, medium and high). At average walking speeds of 0.7 and 0.9 m/s, the hand-cranked broadcaster spreads between 4.23 and 18.7 gm^-2 for 7 m swath of of urea fertilizer and 6.24 and 28.2 gm^-2  for 9 m swath of compound fertilizer respectively.