الفهرس 
1. INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
On the Egyptian newly reclaimed areas, the organic and chemical fertilizers are often applied manually in furrows under soil surface when preparing sandy soil to cultivate vegetable crops, causing a great increasing in costs and non-uniformity fertilizers distribution. A local machine was manufactured to apply compost and chemical fertilizers for vegetable cultivation in all soil especially in sandy soils and evaluate its performance with the traditional method under different operational conditions. The manufactured machine consists mainly of ridger, compost fertilizers applicator, chemical fertilizers applicator and a covering unit.
The experiments of this study were divided into two main parts. The first part (laboratory experiments) was conducted at Compost El-Bostan Company at Belbies in El-Sharkia governorate, Egypt, to optimize some operating parameters affecting the application rate and the fertilizers distribution efficiency The second part (field experiments) were carried out through two successful agricultural winter seasons of 2011/2012 and 2012/2013 at South of Qantara, Ismaillia governorate, Egypt, to evaluate and optimize some operating parameters affecting the proposed machine performance during seed bed preparation for planting snap bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) under conditions of sandy soil of north Sinai. Performance of the manufactured machine was studied as a function of change in machine forward speed, feed shaft rotating speed and furrow depth. The machine performance was evaluated in terms of field capacity, efficiency, uniformity of fertilizers distribution, crop productivity, power and energy requirements. The experimental results revealed that the manufactured machine increased both the uniformity of fertilizer distribution and crop productivity and decreases energy requirements for both organic manure and chemical fertilizers under the conditions of 3.3 km/h, machine forward speed, 120 rpm feed shaft rotating speed and 20 cm furrow depth.