الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Potato is a major strategic crop in Egypt after cotton. It represents about 25% of the total Egyptian agricultural exports, while cotton represents about 40% of these exports. In order to increase potato production quantity and quality, the Egyptian government has realized the need to develop and use modern and improved potato machinery technology. As a result of this policy several projects have been executed with the cooperation between foreign governments and international organizations. In general many planting machinery are not available in Egypt to suit most crop seeds. That requires expensive and complicated operations during and after seeding and leads to low yields and high costs .Hence, the development of a reliable potato planter to suit the prevailing Egyptian conditions still needs more attention, since there is shortage of the suitable machinery design, specially for planting potato tubers with growing buds. In fact, the recent traditional potato planting system in Egypt is accomplished by manual planting (85%), some limited number of small size semi automatic planters (10%), and a few types of foreign made automatic planters (5%). Although the rates of labor efforts for potato planting operations were reduced when the automatic planters were used. Consequently, it should be noted that, introducing or developing a new planting system in Egyptian potato fields must be adapted technically, and economically for both Egyptian farmer<U+2019>s, using the available local materials and the presence of experienced workshops. There is trend towards planting potato tuber with previously grown buds (Sprouts). Increasing productivity of potato in shorter period is the main goal. This increase can be achieved by using suitable technology. Sprouts should be 515 mm long, tough and coloured, and attached firmly to seed tubers. Losses of up to 20% of sprouts will not reduce yield. . |