Claas and Amazone have combined to develop Weed Detector, which enables effective, pinpoint dock control on grassland-based infestation maps.
Until now, selective treatment of dock – the only measure permitted in some regions following the ban on area spraying – was only possible mechanically or with a complex and expensive spot application technique specialising in dock in working widths of up to nine metres.
As the extent of the infestation and the exact location of the target areas are not known with these methods, it is not possible to calculate the required application rate in advance or plan an efficient treatment route. In addition, the entire area must be travelled over, although often only partial areas are affected. A preliminary estimate of the resources required is possible by means of an additional, impractical work step using a drone assessment.
Weed Detector is a practical solution for detecting and localising harmful plants in grassland directly during mowing. AI-supported software recognises dock plants using two Claas Culti Cam cameras on the front mower. The detected dock leaves are immediately transmitted to Claas Connect as geo-referenced target areas and created there as an infestation map. Data from several cutting edges can be taken into account and merged.
In the next step, this infestation map is transferred to myAMAZONE operations via the AgIN interface (AEF). Depending on the existing spraying technology, the required application rates for the control measure are calculated in advance. Finally, the spot application map is transferred to the crop sprayer and the dock is selectively controlled with maximum efficiency.
