METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ENCAPSULATION OF SEEDS Russian patent published in 2005 - IPC

FIELD: agriculture, in particular, plant growing, may be used for encapsulation of farm crop seeds, and also of vegetable, medicinal and decorative plant seeds before planting or sowing processes.

SUBSTANCE: method involves preliminarily introducing first nutritive mixture into matrix and introducing second nutritive mixture; providing recess in matrix for seed to be inserted therein by means of profiled punch having convex working surface; introducing seed into resultant recess; pressing in second nutritive mixture by means of profiled punch having concave working surface for forming capsule enclosure; before introducing second nutritive mixture, providing recess in first nutritive mixture preliminarily introduced into matrix by means of profiled punch having convex working surface; after pressing in of second nutritive mixture, pressing in first nutritive mixture by means of punch having concave working surface so as to form double-layer capsule. Seed encapsulation apparatus comprises capsule pressing rotor device with matrices fixed therein, hopper-feeder arranged above matrices and adapted for single feeding of seeds, hoppers-feeders for feeding of first and second nutritive mixtures, punches with convex working surface for forming in nutritive mixtures of recesses, and punches with concave working surface for forming of capsule enclosures. Rotor device is made in the form of table with vertical axis of rotation, said table being mounted for displacement of matrices and ejection of ready capsules from matrices. Ejector and/or punch with concave working surface adapted for forming of second enclosure comprises channel forming member for forming of channel in second enclosure.

EFFECT: wider range of novel kinds of capsules providing increased yield of farm crops and improved ecology control in growing zone.

6 cl, 3 dwg