Any Horsch Leeb sprayer with AutoSelect, the automatic nozzle control system, can spot-spray with data fed from a drone sweep of the field. This removes the need to have a camera system mounted to the sprayer or tractor.
“Horsch has been offering this system for the past two years, but it should be noted this is really ‘patch-spraying’ as opposed to true spot-spraying, which targets individual weeds. We are working hard on that too, but nobody can truly offer green-on-green spot spraying yet despite the term becoming more encompassing,” says Stephen Burcham, general manager at Horsch UK.
“AutoSelect has been available to customers since we started selling sprayers, so the vast majority of our customers can take advantage of our proven selective spraying technology. Working with application maps, it offers a significant reduction in chemical use without incurring further prohibitive costs,” adds Mr Burcham.
Using drones to map the weed population ahead of spraying ensures the operator can mix the correct amount of chemical in the sprayer’s tank for the chosen application.
Horsch has been working with Agrovista as a supplier of drone mapping and precision services. Richard Dulake, precision services technical manager at Agrovista, explains the process. “During the summer months, our soil sampling team can turn their hand to drone operation. We have 10 sophisticated drones that can map our customers’ fields and create green-on-green data maps highlighting the areas of weed growth.
“Some manual input is required in identifying the weed areas, but once two or three areas have been highlighted, our artificial intelligence software takes over and identifies all areas with either multiple or single plants. The spraying area is reduced to as small as possible , but we usually use a minimum of 1m grids.”
Application maps instruct sprayers with nozzle and section control to apply chemical only where necessary. Two types of application maps are available: point-and-radius and polygon. The more sophisticated point-and-radius type marks the centre of a weed population and draws a circle to create a map of overlapping circular spray areas.
The polygon data map creates a more rigid set of shapes that highlight weed growth areas. They have fewer data points, but are more compatible with older control terminals.