Camera guided mechanical weeding in arable crops
Farmers are facing serious problems with weed competition in cereal crops. Grassy weeds and perennial weed species are becoming more common in Europe, mainly due to high proportions of cereal crops in cropping systems and reduced tillage combined with continuous application of herbicides with the same mode of action. Precision weed chopping can help solve the problems of herbicide-resistant weed populations. Until now, weeding in cereals has been limited to cultivation practices with row spacing of more than 250 mm. However, weeding in cereals with conventional 125 mm row spacing is now possible thanks to the development of a new automatic inter-row hoeing control system with camera-based row detection and automatic lateral shifting. To be economically feasible, it is also important that the working speed can be kept relatively high and that the conditions under which the work is sufficiently effective are known. If conditions are too wet, the results may not be satisfactory.
Garford hoes for mechanical hoeing
Garford's camera-controlled row hoe can be used for row hoeing in grain at row distances down to 125 mm, among other functions. The equipment can handle many different soil types.If the soil type varies within a field, it is recommended to use parallelograms that can be pressurised with hydraulics. Accuracy is 8 mm at the camera, offering the ability to get really close to the rows with the tillage coulters. Speeds of up to 12 km/h are usually possible. They are very flexible in terms of working width: the row hoe adapts to the width of the seed drill. Models are available from only 2 rows up to 18 m width, and also 24 m as a trailed machine. The wheel chopper can be mounted front or rear and it is possible to adjust the working width using the section lifter for fields with narrow headlands, obstacles in the field, or fields with varying shapes.
Additional information
Camera assisted hoeing between rows is possible in arable crops as well as in horticultural crops. In arable crops it is possible to hoe at normal speed, 12 km/ha and Garford hoes are effective in many different soil types and is equipped with a tine raiser that can be used to raise individual sections of the machinery. The technique as such has been described by Gerhards et.al., in a scientific paper, see details above.
Contact: https://garford.com/products/robocrop-guided-hoes/ Contact person in Sweden: Håkan Brolin, Dataväxt, hb@datavaxt.se
European Thematic Network for unlocking the full potential of Operational Groups on alternative weed Control
Completed | 2022-2025
- Main funding source
- Horizon Europe (EU Research and Innovation Programme)
- Geographical location
- Greece, Italy, Spain, Latvia, France, Sweden, United Kingdom