John Deere offers See & Spray upgrade

John Deere has introduced a new See & Spray Premium performance upgrade kit for John Deere self-propelled sprayers in the US, the next addition in the See & Spray lineup. The kit uses a vision system powered by artificial intelligence that can help farmers gain cost efficiency and combat herbicide resistance with precise application by only spraying the weeds and not the entire field.

With See & Spray Premium farmers gain access to advanced See & Spray technology that targets weeds with non-residual herbicides in corn, cotton, soybeans and fallow fields. In addition, they can still use their sprayer all season long to make broadcast applications at standard operating speeds.

“Farmers continue to face rising input costs,” said Jordan Lang, marketing manager for John Deere. “Once a See & Spray Premium performance upgrade kit is installed on their sprayer, farmers can cover more acres than before on a single tank – while using targeted spray – making fewer stops to fill and using less chemical. Only weeds are sprayed, so less chemical is used, making it possible to decrease input costs. When activated, See & Spray generates an as-applied map that shows exactly where product was applied in the field.”

See & Spray Premium is a single tank system that simplifies tendering for the operator. While See & Spray Premium is not dual-product capable it offers many of the same benefits of sprayers equipped with dual-tank capable See & Spray Ultimate technology.

As the sprayer moves through the field, See & Spray Premium utilizes advanced stability provided by John Deere BoomTrac Pro 2.0. This technology stabilizes the sprayer boom as cameras mounted to the boom capture clear images of the field. Within milliseconds, a machine learning model uses multiple images captured by the cameras to differentiate weed from crop. Once a weed is detected, a command is sent to the John Deere ExactApply nozzle to spray it. In addition, See & Spray Premium can be used to generate a weed pressure map for the field that was sprayed in the John Deere Operations Center™.

“See & Spray Premium provides farmers who are happy with their current sprayer, or who recently traded into a sprayer, a way to take advantage of the latest John Deere technology that can help them reduce chemical use and lower their input costs,” Lang said. “See & Spray Premium makes it possible to use less herbicide and water to treat a field and greatly reduces the potential for product drift.” Currently, See & Spray Premium is offered for model year 2018 and newer John Deere sprayers in the U.S., and requires the machine to have a factory-installed ExactApply system or ExactApply Performance Upgrade Kit with 15- or 20-inch spacing and a 120-foot steel boom.