## 2 Materials and Methods  
In the experiments, a micro-granule applicator equipped with a conveyor belt seed-metering unit was used for seeding sage seeds. The micro-granule applicator is offered as optional equipment on precision seeders. The metering unit has such a mechanism that it can be easily adjusted to the desired seed rate values. There are two different seed outlets to provide seed flow in the applicator as depicted in Figure 1. The seed hopper had a 25 L capacity. Some physical properties of the sage seeds used in the experiments are displayed in Table 1.  
In the experiments, the conveyor belt was driven by a computer-controlled stepper motor. The stepper motor control unit consists of Arduino Uno R3, Arduino CNC Shield, DRV8825 stepper motor driver, DC power supply (19 V, 4.74 A), data cable, and Nema \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Physical Property** & **Average** & **Standard Error** \\ \hline Length (l), mm & 2.68 & 0.20 \\ Width (w), mm & 2.45 & 0.14 \\ Thickness (l), mm & 2.19 & 0.13 \\ Sphericity (\(\Phi\)), \% & 90.81 & 3.14 \\ Thousand-seed mass, (m1000), g & 8.95 & 0.01 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Some physical properties of the sage seeds. Figure 1: Micro-granule applicator equipped with a conveyor belt seed-metering unit. 23 stepper motor (0.55 Nm). The micro-granule applicator was placed on a frame specially designed for this study, the connection height of which can be steplessly adjusted. The performance of the micro-granular applicator was investigated under laboratory conditions in terms of seed rate, flow uniformity, and in-row seed distribution uniformity [18; 19]. In the study, weighing tests were used to determine the seed rate and seed flow characteristics, while sticky belt tests were used to determine in-row seed distribution uniformity. The procedures for maintaining precise weight measurements and the sticky belt test stand, which ensures uniformity in in-row seed distribution, are effectively demonstrated in Figure 2.  
The weighing experiments were conducted at various levels and positions of the micro-granule applicator seed-metering unit with age seeds to determine the seed rate values. The metering unit had 20 different scale values between 0 and 9.5 (by horizontal scale) at each position from 0 to 3 (by vertical scale) (Figure 3). The seed rate-setting mechanism had a precise position control device. When the horizontal roller rotates, the vertical roller rotates and the device adjusts the desired scale values, precisely (Figure 3). While the horizontal roller had 20 notches that were numbered from 0 to 9 with a step value of 0.5, the vertical roller had 3 notches. When the horizontal roller rotates one turn, the vertical roller rotates from a 0 to 1 scale position. Containers were placed under the seed pipes of the micro-granule applicator equipped with a conveyor belt seed-metering unit in order to determine the seed flow characteristics (seed rate and flow uniformity). Seed flow was provided for 1 min in each experiment using a weighing test stand (Figure 2). The experiments were carried out with 3 replications. Figure 3: Seed rate-setting mechanism. Figure 2: Experimental test stands. Seed weights obtained from seed pipes were measured by a digital scale with a precision of 0.01 g and were recorded in Microsoft Excel. For the determination of seed rate values, the seed-metering unit was set to a forward speed of 1.0 ms\({}^{-1}\) and tested at different seed rate positions. For flow uniformity evaluation, the seed-metering unit was tested based on the experimental design parameters. The data were evaluated as the coefficient of variation (CV, %) values based on [18], as shown in Table 2.  
While the evaluations of flow uniformity were carried out depending on the coefficients of variation values (CV), in-row seed distribution uniformity evaluations were carried out on the values of variation factor (V\({}_{\text{f}}\)) and goodness criterion (\(\lambda\)).