Weedit / Weedseeker / Spot Spraying technology

[Farmer Roy]

hey, this stuff is getting huge over here, the concept has been played around with since the early WASP & various camera sprays in the late 80's / early 90's, but has only really taken off commercially in the last few years. Biggest bonus is the ability to massively reduce overall chemical use ( especially glyphosate ), but also the ability to target hard to control weeds with higher rates / more expensive chemistry, without "blanket" spraying the whole field.
Really suited to "swarm" or smaller robot sprayers as well, as they can get away with carrying a lot less water
Havent ever seen any mention of them on TFF though. Is this tech in the UK ?

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1552895408181313

 

[Farmer Roy]

 

[Farmer Roy]

Spot spraying saves $90K

VIDEO: ROB Kitto has slashed his chemical bill from $100,000 to $10,000 a summer - and reduced his...

www.farmonline.com.au

 

[B'o'B]

I looked at it a little while ago, but the cost just wasn’t even close to being justifiable on our area. Also worried about damaging the boom mounted sensors on in-field trees and poles. But I love the concept.

 

[Farmer Roy]

I looked at it a little while ago, but the cost just wasn’t even close to being justifiable on our area. Also worried about damaging the boom mounted sensors on in-field trees and poles. But I love the concept.

it’s only large arable farms who really run them here as a farm only machine, but a LOT of spraying contractors are getting into them - not hard for them to justify if it opens up more opportunities for them

 

[Muddyroads]

It’s got to be the way things are going. I can see an easy transfer to weed control in field scale veg, particularly with lasers instead of pesticides. Just needs to be affordable, which will come in time.

 

[Brisel]

The main reason we haven't adopted this is that our target plants are much closer together so the savings are far lower.
These sprayers have been knocking around research stations for decades.
Also, identifying small fine leafed grass weeds is much harder than it is for the big fibrous broad leafed plants you have in Oz.
Smaller paddocks means you're not really saving any labour, so a big manually driven tractor or self propelled machine has a far higher work rate for the same cost. IMO you'd be more likely to see the Weed Seeker tech here than the robots.

IMO once these can be made smaller they will be used far more. They will come, but I have yet to see the economics stack up so far, even on the big vegetable grower scale.

I used a GD rig in NSW with a hooded boom in 2000 for running twin spray lines for treating a blanket dose of glyphosate then camera based ID for spot treating triclopyr for big fireweed plants. It was a huge heavy machine that broke constantly but was a good idea & for a big area of the Garlon would have paid for itself in a couple of seasons.

 

[Farmer Roy]

Oh yeah, the first I saw was the WASP developed by the NSW Dept of Ag in the late 80’s

 

[Farmer Roy]

The main reason we haven't adopted this is that our target plants are much closer together so the savings are far lower.
These sprayers have been knocking around research stations for decades.
Also, identifying small fine leafed grass weeds is much harder than it is for the big fibrous broad leafed plants you have in Oz.
Smaller paddocks means you're not really saving any labour, so a big manually driven tractor or self propelled machine has a far higher work rate for the same cost. IMO you'd be more likely to see the Weed Seeker tech here than the robots.

IMO once these can be made smaller they will be used far more. They will come, but I have yet to see the economics stack up so far, even on the big vegetable grower scale.

I used a GD rig in NSW with a hooded boom in 2000 for running twin spray lines for treating a blanket dose of glyphosate then camera based ID for spot treating triclopyr for big fireweed plants. It was a huge heavy machine that broke constantly but was a good idea & for a big area of the Garlon would have paid for itself in a couple of seasons.

the current tech will detect green plants the size of your finger nail
the tech can be retrofitted onto ANY boom, from 4 m behind a quad bike, to the biggest self propelled machines. In fact, one of the greatest potential for it is on small autonomous "swarm" robots

yeah, I know the rig in NSW that you mention - at one point I did think about buying one for the contracting opportunities . . .

the tech has come a long way since then

 

[Wheatseeker]

hey, this stuff is getting huge over here, the concept has been played around with since the early WASP & various camera sprays in the late 80's / early 90's, but has only really taken off commercially in the last few years. Biggest bonus is the ability to massively reduce overall chemical use ( especially glyphosate ), but also the ability to target hard to control weeds with higher rates / more expensive chemistry, without "blanket" spraying the whole field.
Really suited to "swarm" or smaller robot sprayers as well, as they can get away with carrying a lot less water
Havent ever seen any mention of them on TFF though. Is this tech in the UK ?

It will take off when we get green on green sensors. Not a big enough use of green on brown to justify it.

 

[Farmer Roy]

WeedSeeker 2 - Get ready to weed out the competition