Precision Planting moved into the sprayer market with a series of new product announcements at its annual Winter Conference in January 2022.

The company revealed a vision-based camera system that has multiple applications, including targeted spraying of weeds. 

It uses the Precision Planting 20|20 monitor architecture, machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify weeds and spot spray them.

Those cameras can also be mounted above the sprayer tires to autosteer the sprayer and keep it from running over crops. Precision Planting says the economic savings from the technology depend on the operator’s skillset and the number of passes the grower does, but the vision system provides a significant reduction in operator fatigue and crop damage.

The reveal comes about a month after John Deere said its See & Spray targeted spraying technology would be taken into a commercial application with select customers in 2022. 

At the winter conference, Precision Planting product manager Tristan Herrman said See & Spray’s focus seems to be on fallow ground spot spraying, while Precision Planting is introducing a product that can do targeted spot spraying among crops. 

“As we are continuing to develop Symphony and Vision technology, we have in the forefront of our minds, that growers really depend on that residual herbicide in their program. That’s not something that’s going away, so we are laser-focused on developing this product in a way that allows growers to continue that residual program, alongside targeted contact herbicide spraying…”

Precision Planting also introduced the Symphony Nozzle Control System, which can be paired with the camera system. The nozzles allow the sprayer to maintain constant pressure when changing rates or speed, allowing for swath control and turn compensation.

And finally, the company presented the ReClaim boom priming and recirculation, a retrofit kit that works with electric or standard sprayer nozzles. It uses a single rocker switch to circulate chemicals in the booms back into the tank, so farmers don’t have to spray the chemicals onto the ground to prime the boom. 

The company says these products are in the early stages of development and did not have a timeline for when they’d be commercially available. 

The alpha and beta versions of the sprayer technology will undergo testing this spring on corn, soybeans, cotton and sugarbeets.