ASHS 2024 Conference

Onions are a key crop in the United States. In 2023, 138,000 acres were cultivated in the country with onions. Georgia harvested 11,700 acres in 2023, reaching an average production of 129,000 tons. The onion transplanting process is crucial to the crop cycle and is directly linked to the production potential and quality of the bulbs. Every year, thousands of workers are employed to transplant onion seedlings, which results in a wide variation in operational performance and quality of execution between them. These factors are influenced by the experience and conditions in which the workers operate, which can lead to failures in the process, such as double plants, partially transplanted and plants that have fallen to the ground. Furthermore, manual work is slow and requires many workers, increasing the cost of the operation. Therefore, we aimed with this study to assess the time required to manually transplant onions, the quality of manual transplanting, and the impact of inadequate transplanting on crop development. To assess how much time it takes to transplant an acre of onions, and the quality of transplanting, twenty-five people were observed during their work at a commercial field in Glennville-GA. To assess the impact of poor-quality transplanting, an experiment was carried out in four 10ft replications (10x4ft beds) in Reidsville-GA, simulating four situations observed in the commercial field. Treatments were: T1: 25% of the plants in the plot laying on the ground, T2: 25% partially transplanted, T3: 100% properly transplanted, T4: 25% multiple transplanted, T5: 100% laying on the ground. The difference in operational efficiency between workers exceeded ~20 hours per acre. Results indicated that, in average, one person transplanted 1 acre in approximately 30 hours. The fastest person in the crew transplanted in 22 hours, while the slowest took around 40 hours to transplant 1 acre. Poor-quality transplanting of seedlings exceeded up to 11%. The average number of multiple seedlings was 1%, partially transplanted seedlings was 6%, and laying on the ground was 5.5%. Plant development was assessed based on the number of leaves. Properly transplanted seedlings generated a greater number of leaves compared to the other treatments. Higher leaf number was observed in treatment 3 with an average of 7.33 leaves per plant. All the treatments differed from treatment 5, which had an average of 4.6 leaves per plant. Results indicate that good practices on transplanting can increase onion yield.