TEELT EN TECHNIEK High-tech field crop sprayer, an excellent piece of equipment for new-style strain development During the nineties, this Austrian potato firm was looking for ways of breeding clean and virus-free material and, via Agrico they found the Claassen family. Since that time, the Claassens have been the most important supplier of S material for the Austrians. Three generations All the planting stock at the farm is purchased as mini tubers: 150,000 every year. A few years ago, Claassen intentionally decided to limit multiplication to three generations, for which he had several reasons. ‘One of them was, of course, to minimise disease. But the biggest problem for us is hybridisation. We’re growing twenty different varieties and however securely you work, it’s always difficult to keep all the lots completely clean. We already adjusted the grading system some time ago. We now work with a small grader and keep the lines short. The other machines are also as open and convenientlyarranged as possible. And yet, it’s not entirely possible to keep the tubers apart’, the seed potato grower explains. In his opinion, growing high-performance strains on a large scale is a matter of working in a neat and structured way and being very careful with the soil. Claassen is taking good care of that by using various precision techniques. Precise spraying One of these precision techniques is a brand new Agrifac Condor spraying machine. This machine boasts a spray boom with a track width of 45 metres and a tank content of 4,000 litres. This is a step forward in capacity compared to the old self-prOpelled machine, which had a width of 33 metres and a tank capacity of 3,400 litres. It went without saying that the new machine had to be self-prOpelled again: such machines are always at the ready, making spraying much more flexible and pleasant than a drawn or carried one. Claassen was able to buy the machine on favourable terms, because he had been awarded a subsidy for precision technology, of which the machine boasts several examples. The spray boom has crop scans made by AgLeader, which enables biomass mapping. These scans can also be used real-time for varying nitrogen applications or location-specific dosage of haulm killers. Moreover, the sprayer is fitted with automatic section steering, which sprays on the basis of plot maps and helps prevent overlapping. Droplet control According to Claassen, the precision of the machine is also found in the stable boom, the effective level metre with automatic injection, and the small amounts of remaining fluid. ‘The tank can be emptied almost completely. I think there’s no more than 15 litres of fluid left. If you then dilute that with 150 litres of water, you’ve also quickly cleaned the tank. As with the earlier sprayer, the Condor is equipped with HighTechAir spray nozzle holders. With a turning knob in the cabin, Claassen can seamlessly adjust the desired droplet size, which he can see on the cabin display. With the droplet control, the on-board computer then automatically adjusts the air pressure for raising or lowering the water quantity. As a result, Claassen has the correct droplet size, which guarantees optimal haulm coverage and as little drift as possible. Further limitation of drift comes from the small inter-nozzle distance of 25 centimetres, which means the spray boom can be closer to the crop. 3.20 metre track width Claassen thinks the biggest advantage of the machine is the adjustable track width. With one push on the knob, while driving, he can adjust wheels at distances to 2.45 and 3.20 metres. At its widest distance, four ridges can be covered between the wheels and that offers several advantages, according to the seed potato grower. ‘Firstly, I lose less cropping surface. Normally speaking, two ridges are necessary to make space for the sprayer wheels, which means two-times 75 centimetres on each spraying width, or 4 percent of your acreage. In this case, with the help of the RTK-GPS, we skip 20 centimetres on the end row and the same again the next time so, in real terms we only lose 40 centimetres. Another advantage is that we can just lift the spraying lanes with our four-row potato digger. Claassen had the machine equipped with 380/105 R50 tyres. Not only are these tyres, with their 205-centimetre height, relatively wide for ‘We’re growing twenty different varieties and, however securely you work, it’s always difficult to keep all the lots completely clean’ Anselm Claassen tells us. agricultural wheels, but they also have a good contact surface. The bigger footprint limits the tracking and soil pressure of the combination. The seed potato grower keeps a tyre pressure of 1.5 bars. ‘That’s in fact not quite enough. But I prefer a bit of damage to my tyres than to my soil’, Claassen reasons. The four-wheel steering makes the turning radius so small that he 18 Potato World 2013 • number 4 Pagina 17
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