As spot-spraying technology continues to develop, more solutions arrive on the market.

Two ‘spot sprayers’ were on show at Cereals. The 3m-wide ‘Farm-Ing’ unit from Austria, and displayed by Autonomous Agri Solutions (AAS), is a hooded unit with bright LED lighting helping the multiple multi-spec cameras get high resolution images of individual weeds (seen on left of image).

Via an AI system, weeds are identified and this triggers the herbicide application from a bank of individually controlled sprayer nozzles, which can be as close as 25mm (seen on right of image).

Currently these expensive units would be confined to high-value crops with particular herbicide challenges.

A lower-spec ‘Weed Wizard’ unit was also shown by Techneat.

This has just three ‘cameras’, which will find green growth on bare soil or weedy areas in veg production on beds, where it can reduce the amount of herbicide used.

The system is set up to work at a lesser resolution, with less pin-point accuracy, but at a lower price point than the hooded type spot sprayers.