John Deere has introduced See & Spray Select, the company’s first commercially available John Deere machine factory-equipped with this advanced spraying technology.
Deere says farmers can use See & Spray Select, installed on a John Deere Sprayer, to minimize input costs and only spray weeds when they are detected. This technology makes it possible for farmers to use more expensive and complex tank mixes more efficiently than what they can broadcast, reducing their costs, improving their ability to control herbicide-resistant weeds at a lower cost, the company says.
Deere says See & Spray Select uses camera technology to detect color differentiation in the field and is ideal for small-grains farmers who manage weed pressure on fallow acres. As the sprayer moves through the field, its cameras rapidly detect only green plants within fallow ground and triggers an application to those plants. According to Deere, See & Spray Select has a similar hit rate to broadcast spraying while applying 77 percent less herbicide on average. This opens the opportunity for farmers to save 77 percent on average of their non-residual, pre-emerge herbicide in these applications, the company states.
“Farmers battling herbicide resistance in their fields, can now utilize more expensive and complex tank mixes and achieve a more effective weed kill at a lower cost than they could have in the past, thanks to the cost savings realized from only applying products onto the targeted weeds versus spraying the entire field,” says Joel Basinger, marketing manager, John Deere. “Research has shown that weeds sprayed with complex tank mixes with more than two modes of action are 83 times less likely to develop herbicide resistance.”
