Development and utilization of a new application system for precise fertilizer placement in corn

摘要

Increasing fertilizer efficiency in corn requires revising established methods and developing new solutions. As a part of the research project PUDAMA, which was funded by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL), an application system for precise fertilizer placement in corn was developed and verified in laboratory and field tests. This development was accompanied by field trials to investigate the influence of the fertilizer placement and to define the technical requirements. These trials demonstrated the potential for improving the efficiency by using precise fertilizer placement in corn and requirements for the technical realization could be defined. Based on a systematic development process, favorable concepts were defined, and tested and improved under reproducible laboratory conditions. A new test method for the stationary simulation of the fertilizer placement in soil enabled the efficient optimization of these favorable concepts. The result of this development is a pneumatic system that produces a highly precise application quality of the fertilizer with exact controllability. This system was implemented in a four-row Optima HD (Kverneland Co.) precision drill and tested under field conditions in the seeding period 2019. The results of the laboratory tests were also confirmed in field tests at working speeds up to 12 km/h. In addition, the system showed a high operating performance and easy usage. These final results provide an optimal basis for further development of the system towards a serial application.