Development and Evaluation of a Combined Cultivator and Band Sprayer with a Row-Centering RTK-GPS Guidance System
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Author
Pérez Ruiz, Manuel
Carballido del Rey, Jacob
Rodríguez Lizana, Antonio
Agüera Vega, Juan
Publisher
MDPIDate
2013Subject
Weed controlAutomation
GPS
Sugar beet
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Show full item recordAbstract
Typically, low-pressure sprayers are used to uniformly apply pre- and
post-emergent herbicides to control weeds in crop rows. An innovative machine for weed
control in inter-row and intra-row areas, with a unique combination of inter-row cultivation
tooling and intra-row band spraying for six rows and an electro-hydraulic side-shift frame
controlled by a GPS system, was developed and evaluated. Two weed management
strategies were tested in the field trials: broadcast spraying (the conventional method) and
band spraying with mechanical weed control using RTK-GPS (the experimental method).
This approach enabled the comparison between treatments from the perspective of cost
savings and efficacy in weed control for a sugar beet crop. During the 2010–2011 season,
the herbicide application rate (112 L ha−1) of the experimental method was approximately
50% of the conventional method, and thus a significant reduction in the operating costs of
weed management was achieved. A comparison of the 0.2-trimmed means of weed
population post-treatment showed that the treatments achieved similar weed control rates at
each weed survey date. Sugar beet yields were similar with both methods (p = 0.92). The
use of the experimental equipment is cost-effective on ≥20 ha of crops. These initial results
show good potential for reducing herbicide application in the Spanish beet industry.