The Agricultural industry is no stranger to competing with weeds. When it comes to spraying them, growers are faced with a multitude of other challenges. Whether it be the rising chemical costs, restrictions on their availability, chemical resistant weeds and MRL considerations tacked on with a rising cost of living. How do you fight it?
Well, it’s these reasons why Rometron Australia, proud provider of the WEED-IT, has recently developed the Optispot 7, an orchard sprayer that brings the famed spraying technology to nut and fruit growers. Why wouldn’t they? It’s not just broadacre farmers that deal with the same concerns, now horticultural primary producers can expect to achieve the same savings of up to 90%.
So how does it all work? Easy! First, we must look at the current technology. Regular spot sprayers use an RGB-camera system to capture everything they see in three different colours, such as the soil, crops, dead crops and weeds. All this needs to be analysed and then decisions need to be made on what plants are actually weeds, all before the nozzle passes the target. As expected, success rates are much lower than desired, trailing between 70 and 95%, which doesn’t exactly stop weed seed banks from developing.
WEED-IT functions differently, relying on fluorescence technology to detect chlorophyll instead. Using the best available, it significantly reduces the amount of data processing which results in a higher speed of spraying. This way, farmers can drive at speeds of up to 25 km/h and still get hit rates between 95-98%. The amount saved this means farmers can try the more expensive and better efficiency crop protection products.
Designed and manufactured in the Netherlands, WEED-IT Technology is well established having been in Australia since 2008. Unsurprisingly it is the market leader in spot spraying technology worldwide. It is currently responsible for reducing the use of glyphosate by 2 million litres per annum Australia wide.
Now back to the Optispot.
The standard Optispot 7 features 12 WEED-IT Sensors that are customised to allow operation at low heights, with a maximum boom height under trees of 600mm. This is alongside a detecting and spraying capacity across the whole row at widths up to 7.3m and wider to meet growers needs.
Rometron Australia thrive’s on farmer feedback, fueling their research and development process.
If you wish to know more about the Optispot 7, you can check out the website at Weedit.com.au, or their contact page to talk to the wizards themselves.