Abstract:Due to the differences of soil, climate, varieties in different regions and different planting habits, the rice planting agronomic requirements are different. In order to meet the seeding requirement of conventional rice and hybrid rice simultaneously and to adjust the seeding rate quickly, a combined holetype metering device was designed based on a simple holetype metering device which was developed by South China Agricultural University. The device included holetype shell, holetype roller and adjusting mechanism. A complete holetype was comprised by the label through holes which were uniformly distributed on the holetype shell and the small/big holetype which were uniformly distributed on holetype roller. The shape, size and style of the holetype and the adjusting mechanism were designed and optimized. The reliability experiments of the adjusting mechanism were carried out and the result showed that its structure was reasonable and the seeding rate adjusting process could be completed in 5 s. According to the existed model and theory, the outline dimensions of the holetype were calculated and the results confirmed that the number of the holetype was 8, the big radius was 5mm, the small radius was 4.5mm and the length was 11mm. To further study on the main impact factors of the seeding performance of the metering device, the length and the chamfering angle of the guiding groove and the type of the holetype were selected as the factors of the performance experiment while the conventional rice pregerminated seed Yuxiangyouzhan was selected as the experimental material. The results indicated that the optimal combination parameters were the length of the guiding groove of 6.5mm, the chamfering angle of 60°, the big holetype on the holetype roller with 6.5mm cylindrical hole and the small holetype with 4mm spoonshaped hole. The test results with rotational speed of 50r/min showed that the qualified rate of the seed number per hole of the small holetype was 87%, the seeding qualified rate of the big holetype was 8767%, and the seeding variable coefficients of these towed holetype were 2260% and 2046% which could meet the rice seeding requirement. The correlation analysis showed that the main effect on the qualified rate was the type of the holetype, and the length and the chamfering angle of the guiding groove had effects on the seeding variable coefficients as well. Furthermore, the adaptability experiment was designed by 4 varieties pregerminated rice seeds and 4 rotational speeds (30r/min, 40r/min, 50r/min and 60r/min). The results showed that the combined holetype metering device had good adaptability of seeding conventional rice seeds such as Xiushui 134 and Yuxiangyouzhan, and hybrid rice seeds such as Huayou 14 and Peizataifeng.