Conservation tillage is said to be the best solution for control of soil erosion. A new idea for precision planting in conservation tillage is the use of punch planters which can plant through residue covers, slopes and in gravelly soils. These planters not only provide precision depth and space between plants, but also set a suitable bed necessary for good seed emergence. Furthermore, these planters eliminate thinning costs and reduce amount of seed needed per hectare. In the present research a dibble punch planter with pneumatic seed metering device was designed and fabricated. These planters punch holes at equal distances and depths in soil and then place a single seed in each hole and cover it. The laboratory and field tests were conducted to find the effects of forward speed and soil surface conditions on: multiple index, quality of feed index, miss index, precision, percent of holes with seed in them and planting depth means. The laboratory test was conducted in a completely randomized design with six levels of speed in eight replications. The field test was conducted in a 3×5 factorial completely randomized block design with five forward speed levels (1.7, 2.8, 4, 5.5 and 7 km/h) and three soil surface conditions: (tilled, wheat residue covered and notill) with five replications in a gravelly loam soil. According to the results of these experiments the increase of forward speeds resulted in increasing of multiple index, decreasing of quality of feed index, increase of precision, increase of miss index and decreasing the percent of holes with seed in them and somewhat reducing the planting depth means. The experiments indicated that soil surface conditions was not any effect on all parameters and this planter can plant in three soil surface conditions well. Furthermore 5.5 km/h speed was recummended as the best forward speed at the three soil surface conditions.
)