Quality of placing sown seeds on the field area. Part 1. Task setting

Ensuring the comparability of experimental research results is an important part of the development of new agricultural machinery and their working bodies. The development of seeding machine designs depends on the evaluation of the process of uniform distribution of seeds (plants) over the field area by various working bodies. Attempts to create methods for assessing plant distributions are driven by the persistent desire to find the optimal placement of seeds (plants) and to create appropriate designs of sowing machines. Most of the methods used in the framework of such an assessment are imperfect and can be attributed to private methods. The purpose of this study was to identify the main prerequisites for the development of a methodology that allows assessing the quality of seed (plant) placement over the field area, regardless of the seeding rate, the design of the sowing machine, the purpose of sowing, agroclimatic conditions, and characteristics of crops. The objective of the research is to identify the prerequisites for developing a method that meets the requirements of universality of its application. The basis for developing the method is to establish a «measure» allowing to obtain a standard of ideal distribution of the seeding rate. The measure, which serves as the basis for creating the standard, is taken as the value of the elementary feeding area of one plant. We also consider the specified value to be agronomically appropriate and justified by the specified seeding rate. In this case, the standard will be an ordered mutual arrangement of elementary feeding areas. The standard, in this case, will be an ordered mutual arrangement of elementary feeding areas. The quality of seed (plant) placement is the result of comparing the standard with the result of the experiment. The article also provides the assumptions made and their consequences.