The present work was accomplished to develop a punch planter to sow corn seeds in no-tillage system, and also to evaluate the performance of its seed metering and delivery systems. First of all, a requirement list was established, that the machine would have to attend. Next, the conceptual and the embodiment designs of the machine was made. Then, the detailed design of all machine parts was made and a prototype was constructed. In a testing bench the performance of the seed metering unit and its seed delivery system was assessed in relation to the punch wheel speed and the quantity of punches on the wheel. The statistical design was in random blocks arranged in sub-divided plots with the main plot made of 6, 9 and 12 punches and the sub-plot made of four rotational speeds of the punch wheel, corresponding to the travel speeds of 4, 6, 8 and 10 km h-1. Generally, the increase in velocity and the increase in the number of punches in the punch wheel decreased the number of doubles and increased the number of missing seeds; however the decrease in number of doubles was not significant compared to the increase in the number of errors. The punch planter had a satisfactory performance, with a global mean of 91% for normal seed selection and delivery.
plant; seed spacing; machine design
