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John Deere See and Spray

In a bid to be the market leader in smart spraying technology, John Deere has announced a commitment to continue the role out of its See and Spray technology. With the brand's first European showing of the technology at the Sima show in 2022 you would be excused for wondering why the product has not been seen on UK farms yet.

However, with extensive testing and development over the last twelve months, the brand is now looking to deliver a soft roll-out of the product between now and 2025.

The smart spraying technology stems from John Deere's significant $305 million investment in purchasing technology business Blue River in 2017.

With growing policy pressure on agriculture to reduce its chemical inputs, spot spraying technology is seen as one part of a bigger picture for the industry to reduce its environmental impact.

The targeted application system uses a series of cameras mounted along the sprayer boom to detect weeds against the soil surface, termed green on brown application.

The system making its way to the shores of the UK does have limitations with its benefits only seen in herbicide application pre-crop canopy closure. Currently, systems will only be offered on new John Deere R900i sprayers, which can be specified with 36 and 39-metre boom widths. The system requires the sprayer's split spray system of two centrifugal pumps to react and operate sufficiently to switch individual nozzles on and off working at speed in the field. 

The system has the potential to operate between 0.25 and one metre row widths targeting weeds within the row itself. Due to drift control and its proximity working between establishing crop, the system only has the benefit working in conjunction with selective weed control.  The use of broad-spectrum herbicides in conjunction with the system will continue to only be effective in clear field situations. Although the technology does offer potential in situations such as secondary potato desiccation.  

John Deere recommends that the targeted spraying system is operated through its G5 plus display terminal with the manufacturer claiming alternative systems do not offer the capability to run the technology. The manufacturer showcased the technology operating the system in line with a tractor-mounted Starfire 7000 receiver and a secondary sprayer-mounted Starfire 6000 receiver to improve tracking accuracy. This also aided operating forward speeds, with the manufacturer saying the trailed variant can work with accurate green-on-brown application with speeds up to 12 km/h.

When operating, cameras along the length of the boom view an individual width of 0.8 metres, taking 30 frames per second. This equates to a new image being processed every 100mm with the machine travelling at 12 kph. Currently, this select variant of the system is not capable of detecting between crop and weed. Although the ultimate, artificial intelligence-aided variant operational in the USA can detect crops of cotton, maize and soya. As the manufacturer builds its crop database to cover many European crops it is a matter of time before the next generation of See and Spray systems will make it to the UK.