Showmen rally as spud dive cloud hovers above
Showmen rally as spud dive cloud hovers above
Roots 2000, held at the Newark Showground last week, presented visitors with an array of
planting, harvesting and handling machinery. Andy Collings and Andy Moore report
WITH potatoes fetching about half the price they were last year it was perhaps no surprise that Roots 2000 had a somewhat subdued air about it.
Even so, manufacturers rallied their spirits and presented their latest wares to the visiting public with more than a few developments making their debut appearances.
On the Hydro site, a joint venture with Kverneland resulted in the first public showing of a novel granular fertiliser application system. The pneumatic solid fertiliser placement system working in conjunction with a potato planter is claimed to be capable of placing granules 15cm-20cm below the seed and 10cm-12cm to the side of it.
This, explains Hydros James East, avoids any risk of damage to the seed from scorch.
"The scorch problem is one of the reasons why many growers prefer to use liquid fertiliser at planting time," he says. "This new system applies liquid technology to solids."
Fertiliser – it needs to be a compound and not a blend – is held in a front mounted hopper and metered into an airflow which transports it to the rear of the tractor where the injectors and planter are.
A distribution head splits the flow of fertiliser into eight pipes with two feeding each of the four tines. The tines are attached to a tool bar immediately in front of the planter and can be lowered to a set delivery depth.
"With application rates as high as 2t/ha and the requirement to deliver fertiliser to a precise soil position via a narrow opening in the tine, using air is the only viable way," says Mr East. "It is very difficult to achieve this with a gravity system."
Mr East also points out that having the planter and the fertiliser delivery tines toolbar locked together ensures that the critical fertiliser to seed distance cannot change – as happens, he says, when a front mounted gravity fertiliser placement system is combined with a rear mounted planter.
Successful trial results this year could see the Hydro development available for commercial use.
Precise solid fertiliser placement when planting potatoes is the latest development from Hydro, which also draws on Kvernelands pneumatic expertise.