John Deere offers See & Spray upgrade kit

John Deere is now offering a See & Spray Premium performance upgrade kit for the company's line of self-propelled sprayers.

"Farmers continue to face rising input costs," says Jordan Lang, marketing manager for John Deere. "Once a See & Spray Premium performance upgrade kit is installed on their sprayer, farmers can cover more acres than before on a single tank — while using targeted spray — making fewer stops to fill and using less chemical. Only weeds are sprayed, so less chemical is used, making it possible to decrease input costs. When activated, See & Spray generates an as-applied map that shows exactly where product was applied in the field."

Upgrade kits use a vision system powered by artificial intelligence for precise application, only targeting weeds — not spraying the entire field — while working at speeds of up to 12 mph. The system is designed to help farmers reduce input usage and cost, and increase yields.

The system is designed to target weeds with non-residual herbicides in corn, cotton, soybean, and fallow fields, but is also still capable of broadcast application all season long.

The See & Spray kit balances the sprayer with John Deere's BoomTrac Pro 2.0, stabilizing the boom arms as cameras mounted to the boom capture images of the field. The system's machine learning model uses multiple images captured by the cameras to differentiate weeds from crops. Once a weed is detected, a command is sent to the nozzle to spray it. The kit can also generate a weed pressure map for the field in John Deere Operations Center.

The performance kit uses a single tank system, and is not dual-product capable.

The kits are available for select John Deere model year 2018 and newer 400- and 600-Series sprayers, as well as R-Series models. For compatibility with the Premium upgrade kit, sprayers need to have a factory-installed ExactApply system, or ExactApply Performance Upgrade kit with 15- or 20-inch spacing, and a 120-foot steel boom.

For more information on availability and compatibility, visit JohnDeere.com.