A 36m version of Amazone’s trailed UX5201 SmartSprayer is being put through its paces for the first time on a German arable farm this season. In tests, the technology has cut herbicide use by as much as 90%.
Previewed at the 2019 Agritechnica, the concept brings together the target identification system from Bosch (cameras detect weeds at an early growth stage in milliseconds for real-time applications), and BASF’s xarvio data interpretation technology.
Integrated into the newly-developed sprayer boom, managing director Simon Brown of Amazone Ltd says the goal is to hit the target with the right dose in the right place in real time as oppose to working from a pre-planned map.
Parameters such as crop, weed spectrum and weather conditions, are automatically processed and the information transferred to the SmartSpraying system. Accuracy is assisted by the ContourControl active boom guidance system and SwingStop active vibration damping system.
The combination of individually switched pulse width frequency modulation valves and specially coordinated Agrotop spot fan nozzles (25cm intervals) is said to provide a high level of precision at speeds of up to 12km/hr.
LED modules integrated into the boom are useful in low light conditions and allow the sprayer to work at night and an additional tank allows full-field application of ground applied herbicides during the same pass with a twin line system.
Extensive field trials will be carried out this season in sugar beet, maize and oilseed rape. Expected to be commercially available within the next few years, Mr Brown describes the SmartSprayer technology as an exciting development that opens up a new world of potentially targeting chemical control of weeds in a site-specific application.
“We keep trying to find environmentally-friendly solutions to chemical resistance problems, reducing levels of control available where we can offer sustainable systems that will hopefully keep farming viable in these changing times of public feeling.”
