Grants both in the UK and Ireland have encouraged growers to invest in no-till drills, with Horsch reckoning it has hit the market at an opportune time with the disc coulter Avatar. We caught up with a 4.0m unit to see how it sets about placing seed with minimal disturbance
Although the Avatar drill was only launched three years ago, it is already accounting for nearly a third of Horsch’s seeder business in the UK and Ireland, the other two thirds being equally split between the Pronto disc coulter cultivator drill and the tine coulter equipped Sprinter. But even now, with many of the grants having come to an end, there is still a reassuring amount of interest in the no-till drill range, as farmers look to minimise establishment costs for cover crops and then drill into this with the following cash crop. The majority of the sales have been with the Avatar 16cm row width models. These units comprise a traditional hopper sited over a frame to carry the two rows of coulters on a 167mm spacing. This line-up stretches from a 3.0m rigid model to the hydraulic-folding version up to 8.0m.
