Dalby farmer Kim Bremner has greatly reduced his cropping country herbicide use due to the utilisation of Infrared weed spot spray technology.
For the first time, Mr Bremner is employing the use of a chemical boom spray fitted with a row of Infrared cameras that talk to a specifically designed computer program, which identifies green weeds in his paddocks and only releases a chemical spray directly over the weed.
The new technology has resulted in the Bremer family’s cropping operation reducing their herbicide usage by 98 per cent.
“It identifies the green in a weed while the spray boom passes along a paddock that is being prepared for planting and then through a series of calculations sets off a spray that will target only the weed,” Mr Bremner said.
“It’s very accurate, it’s highly sensitive to the weeds and will go on and off quickly only hitting that weed with chemical, instead of spraying the entire paddock with herbicide.”
The Bremner family decided to start using the new technology because of concern about weed resistance to herbicides and increasing chemical costs.
“A mixed cropping operation like ours can require large chemical application to the paddocks to control weeds before planting,” Mr Bremner said.
“Our farming operation relies on these herbicides for weed control and it’s important to manage the resistance of the weeds to herbicides.”
To prepare a paddock for planting Mr Bremner would normally apply a herbicide across the entire paddock at 2 litres of herbicide to 60 litres of water, plus a wetting agent.
“Since we started using the infrared weed target boom spray, our herbicide usage is about one or two per cent of the normal amount of chemical that would be applied to our paddocks,” he said.
“A thousand litre tank of herbicide will do 170 hectare as opposed to 20 to 30 hectares, so it’s a great step forward.”
After the successful trial of infrared spot spray technology, Mr Bremner attend a prototype demonstration in his area of a camera that can identify weeds and choose to eradicate them with either herbicide or cultivation techniques.
“The Queensland University of Technology has come up with a prototype that actually identifies what type of weeds pass under the boom spray,” he said.
“QUT came out here and gave us a demonstration of the prototype and the new technology has cameras that identify different weed species, and through a computer system works out if that weed is best killed by a chemical spray or cultivation with a tyne.
“The specially designed spray boom is equipped with computer operated spring-loaded tynes and chemical spray jets.
“The machine has a cultivator on it with spring-loaded tynes that would drop down on the weed and then pull back up,” he said.
Mr Bremner added that the new technology will allow his farm to continue with a zero-till cropping practice, while only using targeted cultivation of weeds.
“It’s a cultivation alternative method to herbicide control, which is a big factor in trying to prevent weed resistance,” he said.
“This new technology is going one step further than the current colour and spray option that we are currently using with the infrared weed spot spray.”
“Weeds never become resistant to steel, but ploughing up all our farming country to often can cause soil problems and moisture loss.
Mr Bremner said to have a technology that is just picking out the weeds and targeting them with specific cultivation or herbicide spray is the next step forward in terms of minimum till farming.