Drills to meet farming challenges

When purchasing a drill, growers are looking for maximum flexibility to cope with multiple crop types and the numerous methods of crop establishment. Amazone says it has developed a range of drills that can fulfil the challenges currently facing arable farmers in Britain.

TineTec coulter

Since the late 1970s, Amazone has utilised the TineTeC coulter across a wide variety of models, now including the Cayena tine drill, the Condor direct tine drill and the Primera DMC multi-purpose tine drill.

The slim design of the chisel opener gives excellent penetration for perfect depth control, even at shallow sowing depths, yet with minimal soil disturbance to reduce the risk of drying out the seedbed or generating a secondary germination of weed seeds and volunteers in the area around the seed row.

The chisel action of the tine forms a clean seed slot into which the seed is placed without any seed/straw contact, thus increasing germination rates and avoiding any detrimental effects caused by the breakdown of last year’s crop residues. Long spaces between coulter banks mean that the row spacing can be kept relatively narrow, down to 16.6cm, and yet any surface organic matter will pass through the drill.

Additionally, the Cayena has a row of vertical front cutting discs that line up exactly with the TineTec coulters. This improves the passage of crop residues by slicing and opening a path for the coulter to go through unimpeded. A further advantage of using a chisel opener is it’s an easy pull, meaning less horsepower upfront, therefore lower fuel consumption.

Also, the downward action of the tine removes the need for substantial weight in the drill, so a tine drill can be lighter, meaning again less pulling force, less fuel and thus can be a wider machine when using the same horsepower as a disc drill.

MultiBin system

With these models of drills having the ability to establish a cover crop straight into stubble – or into a stale seedbed, sow a cash crop following last year’s cash crop or to sow a cash crop into a cover crop, the Amazone tine drills are equipped with the MultiBin system with a divided hopper along with additional seeder boxes.

Using the divided main tank, available with either two or three chambers, the drill can be used to sow a multitude of seed varieties as well as undersowing crops, companion crop planting, or mix of seed and fertiliser to target phosphate in the seeding zone.

Additionally, the MultiBin system can be used for a mix of seed and slug pellets, or seed and a micro-granular herbicide. Each hopper within the MultiBin system is controlled via Isobus individually and can run off three or four variable rate application maps for site-specific, part area application where seed populations are matched with soil type and topography to maintain an even crop density.

TwinTerminal

Farms tending towards a greater variety of crop rotation has resulted in more regular changing of the type of seed or seed mixes in the tank, meaning seed calibration has become a much more regular task.

TwinTerminal involves a secondary terminal mounted on the drill near the metering units, allowing for easy calibration and pre-metering for all seed hoppers and metering units without having to jump in and out of the cab. Simply hold the calibration button and then enter the weight of the metered seed.

Consolidation after sowing is often a fine line between good soil to seed contact without causing overly fine soil surface finish. We’re all far too aware of the issues – a capped soil structure can inhibit soil drainage as well as impacting on crop establishment. Across the entire Amazone drill range, the company says all its packers and rollers implement strip-wise reconsolidation, where it applies reconsolidation only in line with the seed row and leaves the area between seed rows loose.

Matrix profile tyre

This system vastly increases drainage and minimises weed seed germination. Additionally in very dry conditions the reconsolidation strips work in a capillary action to effectively pump water towards the strips. With the Cayena drill this is achieved by Amazone’s Matrix profile tyre with ribs spaced in such a way to cover rows at 16.6cm spacing. With the Condor, consolidation is achieved by the depth and consolidation roller attached to each coulter individually.

A drill capable of direct drilling, sowing into a min-till seedbed or even working as a conventional seeder on a clean seedbed, results in huge amounts of flexibility from just a single Amazone drill. Setting up the drill is simple and straight-forward and the wearing costs are very low due to the lack of moving parts, making the drills extremely cost-effective and user-friendly, Amazone concludes. Working widths are from 6–15m depending on the model.

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