IPB Students Develop a Sophisticated Seeding Machine
Seeding is a determining process for the quality of harvested agricultural products. The seeding of vegetables in agribusiness corporations is still done manually by putting seed one by one to the seedling tray. This puts the risk of scattered seeds that can cause loss.
Five students of Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) develop a technology to support the increase of vegetable productivity. Those five are Nur Khasan Fatoni, Yudha Putra Arisandy, Al Hadiitya Armi, Matan Azzami, and Hari Wisesa.
"We saw the performance of agribusiness corporations, especially those that cultivated hydroponic and aeroponic vegetables. The cultivation had not been followed by a decent technology in seeding. Thus, we tried to create this seed rationing machine for the seedling tray with vacuum mechanism, and we named it Smart Seeder," said Nur Khasan, the team leader.
Smart Seeder is a vacuum type vegetable seeding machine that is composed of three systems; seed rationing system, movement rationing system, and control system.
"This machine works by this mechanism; Arduino will give a digital signal to the motor driver to give power to the stepper motor. Stepper motor will move forward or backward on the rail and stop exactly above the seedling hole. Next, Arduino will control the servo to move the pneumatic pump so the seed will drop precisely into the seedling hole," said Nur Khasan.
Smart Seeder became one of the Student Creativity Program of Technology Implementation (PKM-T). Under the supervision of Dr. Ir. I Dewa Made Subrata, M.Agr, teaching staff of Department of Mechanical and Biosystem Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Technology IPB, the five students successfully implemented Smart Seeder in PT Momenta Agrikultura (Amazing Farm).
Deddy, Manager of PT Momenta Agrikultura stated that Smart Seeder was a great tool to be implemented because foreign agriculture had already become so sophisticated. "We have to follow the technology development in order to be competitive," he added.
Nur Khasan and friends hoped that Smart Seeder could increase the productivity and efficiency of seeding to keep up with high demand. They also hoped to be able to publish Smart Seeder as a scientific article and to sell this machine to various corporations that are related to seeding.
"And more importantly, we hope to achieve a gold medal for IPB in PIMNAS 2018 and that our machine can be utilized to improve Indonesia's agriculture," he said. (CN)
