Garden pea is one of the most important vegetable cash crops of Himachal Pradesh which ranks among top ten states in pea production. Pea has enormous potential in domestic and export market. The state Government is also stressing for development of machines and tools for pea cultivation for small and medium level farmers in view of emerging labour problem. In hilly areas, most of the farmers are using traditional methods of pea sowing. So, keeping this in view, the present study was planned for adoptive

trials of pea planter for mechanized intervention of pea sowing and to compare and assess the economic cost and the rate of drudgery involved. The planter had length of 95cm, width of 30cm and height 110cm. It included a 2.5 kg capacity seed box and had one vertical disc with 12 spoons on the plate for seeding mechanism. Two persons are required for operating the machine in push and pull mode. After 20 days of sowing, the germination percentage for planter was 93.8% and 98.6% in manual planting respectively. Total cardiac cost of work for pea planter was 595.83 and for traditional sowing was 867.88.

Highlights

• Garden pea is an important commercial vegetable crop of Himachal Pradesh.
• Replacing traditional pea sowing with manual pea planter can enhance the production by timely farm operations, reducing losses, as well as drudgery involved in farm operations.