Making fertility applications at planting as well as in season makes sense in order to feed the crop exactly what it needs. The problem is that putting together a good system to get the correct visibility of rate, and actually apply the correct rate, is pretty confusing. Many growers have made the decision not to make the jump into one of these systems, or have made the jump, but are frustrated with the one they do have.
As Precision Planting engineers spent countless hours on planters and sidedress bars looking at application equipment, it became apparent that even the best systems still had variability of rate based on speed, as well as row to row variability. FlowSense is a Precision Planting tool that measures flow rate on a section or row and illuminated these problems.
This map, with the rate being measured with FlowSense, shows a definite change in rate on the east portion of the field. When placed beside the speed map of the same field, it is easy to see that the control system on this planter was sensitive to speed, applying 37 gpa at 3.5 mph and 30 gpa at 5 mph
This map shows that this 24 row planter has 27% variability from the lowest to highest rate being applied, even when there was only one target rate across the entire field. Unexpected things, like whether the roll of hose was laying vertically or horizontally on the planter toolbar can affect the rate on that row, and may not even be seen.
While FlowSense illuminated many of the problems above, we knew that only seeing an issue and not fixing it is frustrating. vApplyHD is that fix. Instead of many components to meter, swath, measure, balance, and divide, the vApplyHD system uses a pump control module and then control modules on the toolbar. The modules on the toolbar control flow, measure flow, and swath all in a single device. These same modules can be configured in either section control or row by row control. Whichever way you decide to go, the result is your liquid fertilizer is applied at the correct rate and the 20|20 display in the cab gives you knowledge of how that application is occuring.
Flow measurement, flow control, turn compensation, variable rate prescriptions. All of this done by the on row vApplyHD module.
The same vApplyHD module that controls 5 gpa of in-furrow starter or 20 gpa of 2x2 nitrogen on the planter can be moved to the sprayer or the sidress bar to control the 70 gpa application of nitrogen. Make the investment of each module pay in multiple ways by moving the module and the 20|20 display from the planter to the sidedress bar or sprayer. A simple way to get the accuracy that you want without investing in multiple control systems.
