Strategic Farming 2025: Targeted Spray Technology

Strategic Farming 2025: Targeted Spray Technology

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[Ryan] Welcome, everybody. Back to another session here, the Strategic Farming Let's Talk Crops. I'm Ryan Miller. I'll be moderating today's session. Today, we have for you a hour long program. We've got about a 45 minute presentation addressing targeted spray technology.

And so for that, we've got our special guest here today from Wisconsin, Rodrigo Werle, thanks, Rodrigo for joining us today. I also do want to kind of call out here thanks for support from Extension, as well as our Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council, as well as the Minnesota Corn Research and Promotion Council. They helped get things done here. So thanks to those folks. The reason we kind of invited Rodrigo in is that a few weeks ago, you were hosting a panel forum on the GROW Network, I'll call it, and GROW is an acronym for Get Rid of Weeds.

I'd encourage folks to check that out because they've got a lot of great resources. But anyways, Rodrigo had hosted a panel discussion with some farmers on this very topic, and so he thought it would be a good thing here to kind of carry over into some of our audience here in Minnesota with our Strategic Farming Program. And so, with that, Rodrigo, I'm going to welcome you. [Rodrigo] Thank you, Ryan. Yeah, I appreciate the invite. Good morning. Everyone, thanks for joining the call today. And that's the catch.

You host a webinar in kind of a novel topic. You become the expert. So I just want to say, I've been doing some research with targeted herbicide spray technologies here over the past couple of years, had the honor of hosting that webinar a lot of good information coming down the pipeline, but a lot of questions, right, Ryan, so it's a very novel technology that's coming our way. It's a technology that come with its expenses, but it can also generate a lot of savings and new opportunities within our cropping system. So that's what I'm going to be discussing here today. So thank you all again for the opportunity.

What I'm going to do here, I'm just going to pull up my slides. So here we just have our website. So if folks are interested in some of our information, www. WiscWeed.info, or we use Twitter quite actively or X now. So @WicsWeeds is where we post a lot of our information.

So if you're interested in our work, check those resources. So just to set the stage here. You know, when we talk about targeted spray technologies, I think, you know, the John Deere and See and Spray Technology comes to mind. And that's more of a recent development. But I think one thing that's important to acknowledge is that this type of technology has been around for a while.

So on the left here, I have pictures of what we call, you know, a green-on-brown technology. So let's use the Weed Seeker as an example. And the Weed Seeker has been around since the 90s. The catch with for the technology such as the Weed Seeker is that it only does, what I'm saying here, green-on-brown, only you know, if it sees green sprays. So it wouldn't allow you to do a selective post-emergence application. So this green-on-brown type of technologies, they're well suited for areas that have extended fallow period.

So let's think about the Great Plains. You know, let's think about western Nebraska, parts of Kansas, where they have the wheat rotation, and then they don't have a crop until the following year. You have that extended fallow where you need to control the weeds.

So technology like this is very well suited for that type of cropping system. However, for us here in the upper Midwest, I think this becomes quite appealing. And this is what we're dealing with right now. So this is a picture here of the Green Eye Technology.

And these technologies now they allow for what we call green-on-green. So they can also do green on brown, but they also do green on green. In other words, the way they operate with the advancements in technology, here, they have the cameras. So I have three pictures here of the Green Eye Technology. So let me just use my pointer here so you can better see it. So this top two pictures and this bottom one here on the left are the Green Eye Technology.

And then I have a picture of the See and Spray Ultimate here in the bottom right. But in a nutshell, the way they work is they have these cameras. And as your sprayer is traveling the field, the cameras are taking images.

And then through computer units that we now have in this spraying systems, artificial intelligence and machine learning, the systems can detect, where is my crop row? And then anything that's green in between is considered a weed. And then once it detects a weed, it triggers the nozzles, as you can see here. So this is fascinating how fast these technologies are evolving and are now becoming available to our growers.

Out there. And the one thing that I want to see, you know, I mentioned the Green Eye Technology, and I mentioned John Deeree See and Spray. This is the latest update that I've seen. You know, there are multiple entities trying to, you know, enter this market, if you would. So it's not only true technologies.

My program, as you're going to hear in a little bit, we've been working over the past few years with the BASF Bosch Venture, which is now called the One Smart Spray Technology. So there are several entities that are playing in this market. And I just want to quote my Purdue colleague, Dr. Brian Young, in one of his presentations, Dr. Brian Young said that, you know, ten years from now, this technology is going to be, you know, like power windows in our vehicles. You know, ten years ago, you know, if you wanted to have a power window, you had to, you know, pay extra money for it.

That's what's happening. But I think, ten years from now, I think this is going to be available in most of the new sprayers out there. So this technology is coming. There are a lot of benefits. However, there are some challenges as well that we're going to be hopefully discussing some today. So here is the small plot unit that we used.

This is the One Smart Spray. Technology is not commercially available in North America quite yet. My understanding is that it may become available later this year. However, this technology is already available in South America, more specifically in Brazil.

So here you see the One Smart Spray. I think the biggest difference between the One Smart spray and the John Deere See and Spray is the presence of light units. So the John Deere spray does not have the light units. The One Smart Spray has the light units, and that extra lighting helps with better weed detection if you have a cloudy day or if you're spraying later in the day like you see here in this picture.

That's not something we want to see you doing. We don't want to see you spraying at night, but here is just some of the testing work that we were doing. I think this picture here speaks volumes where you see the system, here, the lights, the cameras, detecting the weeds and only triggering the nozzles where the weeds are seen or detected by the system. Here I'm just going to play a video from some of our trials, and hopefully you can see, you know, kind of nozzles going on and off as the system detects the weeds here in our soybean crop.

Yeah, so right there, spot spray mode, and then you see nozzles going on and off as we run across weeds. The one thing that we're not discussing a whole lot about these technologies yet, but I think adds a lot of value is the generation of maps. So as the sprayers are going through our fields with these cameras and computers, they're collecting a lot of image.

So here I have two scenarios from commercial fields in Illinois where our colleagues with the BASF team were testing the Once Smart Spray Technology. So the scenario here on the left, the field was 153 acres. And at the end of the application, this map was generated. This is what we call the as applied map.

So what's blue in this map are the areas that were treated where the nozzles were on. So in this particular field here that I'm pointing out, 153 acres total 74 acres were sprayed, so that equates to savings of 51%. Whereas on this field on the right, this is a different commercial field, 124 acre field, you see a lot less blue. So this field has had lower weed infestation.

Therefore, the savings was higher here. So they ended up with a savings of their foliar herbicide product of about 85%. So these technologies are generating maps. But once they generate these as applied maps, they also generate this weed distribution maps.

So now we have access. For the first time here in weed science, we have access to where our weeds are located. Once our sprayer travels through, we have access to this information that can help us plan for future years. What I find very exciting, perhaps, at some point, we can combine soil maps with weed distribution maps where we can also then deliver variable rates of our pre-emergence herbicides. So if we know the likelihood of where weeds are. If we know our soil types, we can adjust our rates of our PRE herbicides and apply more where it's truly needed.

So I think this is fascinating, and I think this for now is kind of a hidden benefit of these technologies that we may not be accounting for quite yet, but I think there's tremendous potential here with these maps that will be generated. What excites folks the most is the savings piece. So I took snapshots of this, you know, two pieces of information here from the manufacturers. So two different manufacturers, if you go to the website, you're going to hear about savings. So in one, we see here up to 90% savings.

The other one is an average of 77% herbicide savings. There is a caveat here. We're only going to get this level of savings in areas where we have low weed infestation. So we need to do a really good job with managing our weed seed bank starting well with our weed management program so we can capture this level of savings. Because if you have weedy fields there, it does not make sense to deploy these technologies because then they kind of trigger back to broadcast mode.

The other thing that I want to say here is when we're talking about savings, we're talking about savings of foliar herbicides that are being applied post-emergence. So savings of foliar herbicides is not your overall weed control program here. So keep that in mind as you're making those calculations to see if this technology makes sense in your operation or not from a financial standpoint. So from the work that we've done over the past couple of years here, I'm going to have my presentation kind of split in two different parts.

The first part of my presentation, I'm going to be discussing the importance of soil residual herbicides. And maybe if you're considering using this technology, focusing more in areas where you have fields with low weed infestations. I think this is where the technologies can be incredibly successful, So that's where we're going to start. So here is just summary from research that has been conducted by a PhD student in our program, Zaim Ugljic. So he's leading the One Smart Spray Research, has been working with us for the past three years. And I think I just put like a summary of a lot of years of work here that Zaim has done.

So Zaim had plots in Seymour, Illinois for, you know, 24 and 2023, 2024, he had two separate fields in Illinois. And then we also did here in Janesville, Wisconsin, southern part of Wisconsin. All the sites had waterhemp as our target weed species. We put a pre-emergence herbicide down, and then we came back with the technology post-emergence at two different times, whether it was V2, or we had a later application, which was V4.

In a nutshell here, what you're seeing here in this color coded, in order to capture high savings, so we could get up to 76% savings. But we were only capturing that level of savings in areas where we had low to intermediate weed pressure. So again, this technology works very well if you have a robust pre-emergence herbicide program, and you are trying to use it in areas with lower weed infestation. However, at our Janesville site where we have a waterhemp train wreck, it just did not make sense.

So if I have a scenario of a few that's too weedy, deploying the targeted application system does not make sense. In that scenario, I highly encourage you to just trigger the broadcast mode on and go on. If it's the field that's too weedy, just go broadcast. Don't even bother using the targeted system. So in conclusions, briefly, here from Zaim's research, use of residual herbicides, fields with low weed pressure and being timely with the post-emergence application are going to be key factors for achieving both effective weed control and maximizing herbicide savings with targeted application technologies. So here I want to use, you know, like real world scenario.

So I think this information not only is relevant to targeted spray, but also to overall weed control. And then I was discussing with Ryan at the beginning of this. So this is Wisconsin based information, and I hope most of it will be relevant to Minnesota. I know a bunch of it will. But for instance, here, I'm going to use metribuzin in my slide as an example. And I was a couple of years back, Dave Nicolai invited me to give a presentation in Minnesota, and I used the word metribuzin in the conference and I almost got kicked out of the room.

I know there's a lot of concerns about metribuzin use because of high pH. But anyways, metribuzin is a good option for pigweed control. So we've been promoting the use of metribuzin quite extensively here in the state of Wisconsin with the caveat that if you want to get good residual control out of metribuzin for, you know, pigweeds waterhemp particular you need a decent rate of the herbicide. The very low rates that a lot of my farmers here are using are not strong enough. And when I'm saying low rates, I'm talking about less than 6 ounces per acre.

But enough of that. So here is just a scenario. This is, I think what we should all be doing if we're dealing with waterhemp, starting off our growing season with a very robust pre-emergence herbicide. So on the left here, this is actually a commercial field where my team does a lot of our work. Our farm supervisors don't want to have waterhemp in our research farms because of the other research, so I have to go on farm with my work. So we do a lot of our waterhemp work at the O'Brien Family Farm about 20 miles south of Madison. So this is just what they're dealing with in their operation.

So on the left side here, no pre-emergence herbicide. And then I have three pictures here with three different pres, and these pictures were taken 34 days after herbicide application. So here is just Metribuzin by itself at a 7 ounce rate. And then here's Boundary.

Boundary is a quite popular herbicide program here in the state of Wisconsin is quite cost effective if you would. However, what I've been telling my growers, my agronomists out there, is that the Boundary rate that we've been using is a little too light. So a quart and, you know, a pint and 3 quarts what our commercial folks are using. And at this rate, here we're delivering 6 ounces of Tricor a little less than that. So here's what 7 does.

So if we're delivering a little less, metribuzin is not doing a whole lot. And then for Dual we're delivering about 19 fluid ounces, which I think is low, especially when you have grasses. So my big message is, let's take a look. Just put in effective modes of action is not enough. We need to put two effective modes of action at decent rates in order to get the control that we're seeing here with Fierce. And I want to use Fierce as my example here because even in a weedy location, when we put a very robust pre-emergence herbicide, we have 95% control 34 days.

The weeds that are breaking through at this point are still small, and there aren't very many of them. And that's what we want to see out there when we're deploying our post-emergent herbicide programs. And if you're thinking about a See and Spray Technology, this is the perfect scenario. I have very few weeds for my systems to be trying to identify and spray.

So this is how you capture good savings, a very robust pre-emergent herbicide. So again, it's good strategy, regardless of whether you're going to be using herbicide targeted application technologies, but even more if you will. So now let's think about I talked about pres. Pres are important. Let's think about managing the weeds post-emergence, keeping waterhemp in the spotlight here because waterhemp year after year, according to our stakeholders, is the worst weed for us here in Wisconsin, followed by giant ragweed and from talking with Dr. Sarangi and

then other colleagues at University of Minnesota Extension, I know our scenarios here are very similar. But this is what's happening here in Wisconsin. So I started at the University of Wisconsin back in 2018. That was my first year. At the end of that year,

I asked our stakeholders to send in waterhemp samples. We just redid this exercise in 2023. So five years later, I asked my stakeholders to send waterhemp samples, again, and we wanted to see how is the waterhemp response, your common foliar your herbicides changing.

So, you know, kind of bad news here. For most herbicides, control is getting worse. So waterhemp continues to build resistance, whether that is 2, 4-D, whether that's atrazine, whether that's dicamba, whether that's fomesafen or Flaxstar or mesotrione or Callisto , we're seeing an uptick, or in other words, we're seeing less control with these herbicides. The good news that I have because I always like to bring good news as well. I'm not a pessimist. I'm an optimist.

Glufosinate is working quite well in our greenhouse screenings. So glufosinate from a resistance standpoint, we're not seeing resistance yet here in the state of Wisconsin. I know when you take glufosinate or Liberty out on the field, if you don't spray under the right conditions, you end up with a scenario like this, right, where we have regrowth. So again, from a resistance standpoint, we're not seeing problems in our screenings.

But when we're making the applications out there, we got to be paying attention to the conditions. We need sunlight, we need heat. We need good spray coverage for this herbicide to work in good AMS. So on top of that, this is kind of questions that I've been getting from our growers. Here in Wisconsin, we're primarily Enlist E3 Systems. So the vast majority of our soybean acres are planted with Enlist E3.

So we did some trials looking at spraying 2,4-D alone, spraying Liberty alone and mixing, 2,4-D and Liberty. And we're seeing a tremendous benefit of putting these two herbicides together, helping us enhance post-emergence foliar control. So we foresee a lot of our acres this year being treated with this two way mix. So putting Enlist One and Liberty together working quite well. From post-emergence standpoint. And that's what my program is focusing on right now.

We're looking at ways we can mix foliar herbicides and enhance post-emergence control. So that's a resistance management tactic there, but also trying to make our post emergence control more effective. So that's going to be a big focus of my research program moving forward.

And here I want to kind of do a little bit of recapping because I'm going to tie back this information to targeted applications and some of the decisions that our growers are having to make when deciding whether they should purchase these technologies or not. So over the past multiple years, I think we scientists have been recommending the use of layered residual herbicide programs. So what is that real quick? You put a residual herbicide at planting, and then you come back with your post program, and you add more residual herbicide. So oftentimes a group 15 herbicide, Warrant residual, Outlook or Dual. Okay, so that has been a standard recommendation. However, we've been taking a really close look at our data.

And according to our Wisconsin findings here, we are not seeing the benefit of adding a group 15 herbicide to our post-emergence applications. And there's a lot of discussions we could spend a full hour talking about this. This layered residual approach works well when you do a PRE, and then you come about 21 days with your post application with a residual herbicide. But most of my farmers, what they're doing, they're waiting for the 3 inch waterhemp to be present to then trigger the post application. And that's usually happening about 42 days, 35 to 42 days after that pre-emergence application.

So the more robust, the better that program is the longer, we can wait to trigger that post. And then by the time we're triggering that post, usually we get some dry spells here in Wisconsin and our canopy starts taking off. So at that point, we are not seeing the benefit of a group 15 herbicide. So this is very important information because of this.

I'm going to use John Deere here as my example. I think John Deere is ahead of the curve. My understanding here from their webinar that they had in December is that this year, they had 1 million acres here in the United States treating with their technology. Here in Wisconsin in the past couple weeks, I've been getting a lot of calls from growers that are considering purchasing the systems.

But here's the big catch. On the left here, I have the John Deere See and Spray Ultimate. If you want to have this on the farm, you got to buy a new sprayer, because the Ultimate is a dual tank system.

So you have one tank, boom, doing a broadcast application, and then you have the second tank linked to the targeted boom. So that's only doing the spot spraying. So this is beautiful system here, but it's very expensive and it's complex.

It's complicated because you have two sprayers pretty much in one, one doing a broadcast, the other one doing a spot spraying. However, this more recently here, John Deere is now offering the precision upgrade, the See and Spray Premium Precision upgrade. So if a farmer already has a John Deere sprayer that's 18, 2018 or newer with the Exact Applied system, they can add this.

They can retrofit and add this technology to their sprayer. Or if they're purchasing a new John Deere sprayer, don't quote me on this, but my understanding is that as of now, for an additional $25,000, they can add this technology to the sprayer. And to me, that's fascinating. But the big thing is that, especially my farmers who are being discouraged from growing this route because if you only have a single tank, you can only spot spray.

You cannot broadcast spray a herbicide at that time, like the Ultimate does. But wait a second here. I just told you that based on our research, if we put a very strong pre-emergence herbicide, we don't need to broadcast a later residual. Perhaps you can just foliar apply our two way mix of Liberty and Enlist. So what I'm telling my growers is don't necessarily walk away from this because I do think there is potential tremendous potential for this technology at relatively lower cost. So let's keep that in mind because I think there's a lot of potential here, again, for a lower potential cost.

Okay. So here I'm just using an example of our article that I wrote earlier this year. What happened here, this grower, my grower here in Wisconsin, Southern Wisconsin purchased a new John Deere sprayer, and then he was offered this upgrade. And then he called and said, Rodrigo, I just got this. What do I do? How do we work through this? So this was his original plan. So he has waterhemp in the operation, but also has ragweed.

So the original two pass program with a broadcast sprayer would have been a pre-emergence of Authority First. And then he was going to follow up with a post-emergence application of Liberty and Enlist. He was going to add clethodim if volunteer corn was present in the field, and he was going to add Zidua as the layered residual approach.

But remember what I just said about layered residual. Maybe we don't need that. So then after he got the system, here's the program he ended up using. So a pre-emergence of Authority First. But I'm not telling him to take the Zidua away from the program.

What I'm telling him is instead of using as a layered approach, invest that as part of your preprogram, and that's what the grower did. So what he did, he used Authority First, plus Zidua. And then he deployed the See and Spray Technology as part of the post with Liberty plus Enlist and ended up adding clethodim in the field where volunteer corn was present. So this is just fascinating to me. What were the results from this first year? It was a steep learning curve from the grower, right, a lot of moving pieces in there.

But at the end of the year, he was quite happy. His overall savings in the foliar program was 59% in his 30 inch soybean. And he did something similar where he put all the residual herbicides upfront in his corn, and then he came back post-emergence with Roundup and Status at a higher rate of Status because he was going to be on spot spraying, so he could afford that. And the foliar savings in corn was 65%. So that's quite interesting, right there. And keep this 59% in soybean in mind because I'm going to bring that back during my presentation.

[Ryan] Rodrigo, I was kind of wondering does this grower deal with both giant ragweed and waterhemp? Just looking at his herbicide program, is it kind of a dual problem is waterhemp his driver? [Rodrigo] So waterhemp is his driver, but he does he does have some giant ragweed in that operation, as well. Ryan, so that's a good question. And that's the reason why he wants you to stick with that Authority First. Authority First or Sonic is a really good product for giant ragweed residual control this season. But the driver there is the waterhemp. Good question. Okay. Excellent. So this is an example here.

So with the 2025, you know, tight margins, I'm getting a lot of this questions. Here, Rodrigo, I have this herbicide program. I want to have a robust program, but I want to see if I can trim some of the costs. So a particular grower here from southern Wisconsin sent me this. He told me I have some waterhemp. I have some common ragweed.

I also have some grasses. So walk me through this. Help me, you know, adjust rates where needed and eliminate where we can. So I'm going to walk you through this example here. Sulfentrazone is going to be the pre or Sonic they're using a 4 ounce rate here.

So I'm going to call my what I call here, the worldly adjustments here. So I want to see at least 5 ounces. There are 4. I think it's low, 6 is ideal, but I understand the cost limitations. So I want to see 5 ounces of Authority First or Sonic pre.

It's hard for me to do this here, but since it's not only waterhemp, I have other weeds that I want to take care of, I'm going to eliminate metribuzin from my program, because I'm looking at this metolachlor and this metolachlor rate for me is low, the growers saying I'm seeing a lot of grasses in season, so I want to do a better job early season. Just presented to you the Wisconsin information we're not seeing a whole lot of value from low rates of metolachlor as part of the post program. So instead of eliminating the metolachlor, what I'm going to do, I'm going to shuffle that upfront. I want to see a more robust Metolachlor rate to help me with those grasses and also waterhemp. So here I have my Authority First, two modes of action there plus my group 15, metolachlor . So I have three modes of action pre is a no-till field, so glyphosate has to stay in there.

So I end up the original cost was $22. We're now at $19 to acre for my pre-emergence. program. Now let's move to the post program. So the grower was doing kind of what we're telling them, you know, do a 2 way mix, having glyphosate for grasses and clethodim for volunteer corn. So what I'm doing here, I'm going to take that glyphosate out, and I know that's a risky move. So if you have a lot of grasses, don't do that, but if you have a few small grasses at the time of post application, if you have some volunteer corn, clethodim can help.

Because what I'm going to do here, I'm going to focus my Enlist One plus Liberty for my waterhemp control and any giant ragweed that may have escaped. And then the one thing I want to say, there's a lot of discussion about the need for COC with Enlist One. That's not making a whole lot of sense to us.

We have not seen evidence that COC helps enhance waterhemp control with Enlist. However, if you have clethodim in the tank, clethodim requires COC. So you do need COC for clethodim but not for the Liberty or Enlist one. So here we go from $27 down to $20.56 for my post program.

And I want you to keep this value in mind because I'm going to use it again. So here's what I think is a robust program. I have a strong residual upfront, and I have an effective post program. So we go from $49 down to $39. So I was able to hopefully be able to help this grower maintain an effective two pass herbicide program, yet save some dollars, you know, with knowing that we're going to have a tight crop margin here in 2025. So now let's tie this pack now to the See and Spray Technology.

So let's use an example of a farm that has 1,000 acres of soybean to be sprayed. So if I'm using that example that I just gave you $20.56 for my post program, that's what I'm going to be focusing on here. The one caveat, if you're deploying the John Deere See and Spray System is what they call now the application saving guarantee. So this past year here, 2024, I believe they had a $3 to $4 per acre fee.

So every single acre every pass, you were charged $3 to $4 in your corn and soybeans. John Deere is changing that model now. And earlier here this year they advertised as $5 fee. But the way this $5 fee goes is it only kicks in when the nozzles are off. So when the John Deere See and Spray System is working for you, the nozzles are off, the fee kicks in. The moment is spraying, that fee goes out.

So John Deere is only charging you for the acres that are not treated because the technology is helping you save. So this is an important point because if your herbicide program, your foliar herbicide program costs less than 5 bucks to the acre, then it doesn't make sense. But if your herbicide program costs way more than $5 to the acre, then there is a return on the investment here, then it does make a lot of sense. So let's walk through our example here. 1,000 acre field, I'm going to do a broadcast application of the program that I just discussed in the previous slide.

My total cost here with my folier herbicide program is $20,560. Now, let's talk about See and Spray So from the farmer in Wisconsin, he was able to obtain 59% foliar savings. So 59% of the time the sprayer was traveling, the nozzles were off. 41% of the time they were on.

So with that in mind, so out of my 1,000 acres, 41% of my area was treated. So my herbicide cost was $8,429. Now, the John Deere fee kicks in because I had 59% of my area not being treated. So in 59% of my area, I'm paying the $5 per acre to John Deere. So at the end of this, you know, at the end of the year here, this 10,000 acres, the farmer had to pay John Deere $2,950. So the total cost for the See and Spray, including herbicide and technology fee here was $11,379.

So that's a difference of $9,000, give or take. So there's overall savings of $9,000 here in this 1,000 acre soybean farm. And this is going to, you know, change the way we do business, and, you know, it's going to impact us differently. Are you a farmer in this call? Are you a sales representative? Are you a commercial applicator? How do we incorporate all this? And this is kind of the unknown.

A lot has to happen, for us to figure out how we go about this, But this is coming. I think this is going to rock the boat a little bit. It's going to change the way we do business. So either we adapt and move forward, or left behind, assuming these technologies become common practice here in the next decade or so. So I just wanted to share that as an example here, Ryan, for some of the numbers that I thought would be important.

So right here, I'm happy to stop a little bit and see if there are any pressing questions here. Ryan, before I keep going with the second part of my presentation, the second part here it promises, it's a lot shorter. The second part will focus.

Okay, you have this technology now. These are some of the things that I want you to keep in mind in order to be successfull, so I'm going to stop for just a little bit here, Ryan, see if there's anything we need to discuss. [Ryan] Well, we do have let's see here. We've got a couple of questions. One, you know, in regards to the cost of some of this equipment, like, the initial kind of investment, I think you covered that.

But they had questions both about the John Deere and then also the system you were using from BASF Bosch, but you said that was not available yet. [Rodrigo] Yeah, so the BASF Bosch, just to add a little bit One Smart Spray, they are working closely with a sprayer manufacturer. So my understanding is that at the end of this year, there will be some announcements on that front what that's going to look like and the potential cost. So stay tuned because that's going to be coming online here later this year. And then the John Deere See and Spray System, I cannot speak on, you know, the actual cost of the Dual System.

I understand it's a lot more expensive than the single tank. The piece of information that I have, if a farm already has, you know, a John Deere spray on the farm that's 18 or near or $25,000 upgrade, you can get the See and Spray Unit. And then my understanding as well is that John Deere is also going to be offering the premium upgrade to the Hagie System. So that's news here very recent. So the folks that have a Hagie sprayer, that might be an option for you as well, you know, retrofitting the See and Spray unit to a Hagie sprayer.

So that's quite exciting. [Ryan ] Okay, and so there was another question more along the same lines here with other systems, and do they charge a fee? But as far as the green on green kind of systems, the current technology available is the See and Spray Technology, is that correct? [Rodrigo] Yeah, thank you for the question. So the See and Spray is available and also the GreenEye spray is also. So GreenEye is a company out of Israel. One of the resources I shared with you, there's webinar that there that we recorded in 2023.

And our colleague from Green Eye, he explained the technology and then, you know, the contact information is there. My understanding as of now, they have a strong presence in Nebraska, so they have a couple of units going there. And if I'm not mistaken, the GreenEye system, they would have kind of an annual fee, but they don't have a per acre fee structure. So right now, commercially available, being deployed and adopted by farmers here in the Midwest will be the John Deere See and Spray and the GreenEye Technology. Thanks for the question.

[Ryan] Okay. Excellent. So another one in regards to the technology, does it have an impact on the ground rig, the ground speed of the rig? [Rodrigo] Yeah, that is a really good question. That's what I'm going to try to tackle on my next portion of the presentation here, Ryan. So the caveat there. No, no, I think it's a very good question. It's timely.

Because as is our ground rigs can travel fast, and it's all about efficiency. But if you think about this a little closely now, you know, now on the rigs here, we have cameras. That are activating.

So if we can slow down a little bit, I know folks don't like hearing that, but if you can slow down a little bit, you can increase the precision of the systems. My understanding the See and Spray, you know, 12-15 miles per hour, I think 15 miles per hour from what I heard the webinars recently, is the max you want to go with 12 miles per hour being the ideal travel speed, and that's quite similar for, you know, the GreenEye system. So, of course, these technologies will evolve, they will advance. But I think being strategic with the travel speed, we need to be careful because the slower you go, the last bouncing of that boom.

We will see the last bouncing of that boom, the more precise we're going to be, the better we control we're going to get. So I think slowing down can help us. So how do we, you know, keep up with efficiency? If we're spraying less, we've got to stop less to refuel. So that's how we gain on our efficiency there. So that's a really good question, Ryan. Thank you. [Ryan] And the question that comes to mind for me is, you know, how many years of experience with this kind of system does it take before we're you know, mixing the right amount of product, you know, we're kind of guessing at, well, you know, are there strategies for dealing with that from the get go, I guess, if we don't we've never used on/off kind of system, you know, how much spray should I mix for a scenario? [Rodrigo] Yeah, that's a fantastic question.

I thought that was going to be a major burden, as well. That was a concern I had. But then from talking with growers, and if you all have the chance to watch the recording of the Farmer Forum we had, you know, that's something that growers kind of get used to, and then experience really helps. That has not been a major limiting factor for success of deploying this technology. Ryan, I would say it's probably a little more complicated if you have the John Deere dual system because then you have, you know, a broadcast tank, and then you have spot spray tank. So that becomes a little more complicated because you're dealing with two operations. In one. But, what I've

heard from growers, it's just like planting. Every time you stop to refuel, make sure both, you know, you're taking care of both at the same time to optimize. The broadcast is what you're going to be using more.

And then usually what they shoot for is about 50% saving. So let's say you have 100 acre field, maybe be prepared to spray about 50 acres of that field, so have enough mix. Then, you know, oftentimes doors are going to be spraying multiple fields.

So if you're coming close to the order of fields, you got to spray, and you still have a lot in the tank. That's when you can go back to the default broadcast modes because one thing, you don't want to finish an application and be left with solution in the tank. That's not what we want to see out there. So I think as farmers adopt the technologies, the commercial applicators adopt this technologies. I think the experience kicks in.

The first year is a steep learning curve. That's what I hear. But after you use it for a year, you get used to it and you optimize it. So that refuel doesn't become a major burden. Good question.

[Ryan] Excellent. All right. Well, I think we'll continue and we're collecting a couple more questions, but we'll wait a little bit here and finish up with some more questions after you're done with your next portion. [Rodrigo] Awesome. Thank you, Ryan. Yeah, let me

just pull up my slide here again. All right, so the second part here, I just want to talk a little bit about what we call spray swath displacement, and this is research that my PhD student Zaim is leading as well. So here I'm just going to play a video, and I want you to check that boom stability.

So even in a relatively flat field, there is a lot of ups and down. And I think that's very, very important because now we're not triggering all nozzles in our boom. We're only triggering a few nozzles. In some instances, we're only triggering one nozzle, depending on the technology you're using, you have the option of only triggering one even nozzle. The John Deere System, as is currently, they're activating multiple nozzles, so the tapered overlapping nozzle, which I think is a really good strategy, and that's what I'm going to be discussing.

But the fewer nozzles you're activating, if that boom is going up and down, you're changing the amount of herbicide you're delivering. If the boom goes down too much, you may miss the weed in the swath you intended to target, or you may be spraying a very high rate. Now, if that boom goes then you're underdosing herbicide, and we all know what happens when you start using low rate of herbicides it just makes resistance problems worse. So that goes back to your travel speed question, Ryan. You want to travel at a speed where that boom is going to stay as consistent as possible. So you're actually delivering the intended amount of herbicide to the target.

And here's a scenario where we were actually using the One Smart Spray. So this is a front mounted system for research purposes. And I think this picture here captures it quite well. So the system actually did a beautiful job detecting the weeds.

The weeds were detected. Had an effective herbicide in the tank. The problem is, as the machine was traveling, there was a gust that came. As the gust came, I only had one nozzle activated with this particular treatment. What you see here is that swath displacement. So the herbicide was good.

The system detected the weed, but there was wind. So when we were spraying, you know, that small swath that we intended to apply moved away, so we didn't hit the target. And the question here, whose fault is that? The system detected the weeds.

The chemicals were good, but the wind was not favorable. So that's the one thing I want applicators to keep in mind this technology is phenomenal, but we want to be able to use it under good conditions. We don't want to be spraying you know, our broadcast applications when it's windy anyways. We want to minimize drift. We all know that. But for this See and Spray type of technologies, that becomes even more crucial because not only we don't want to drift away, but we want to make sure that, you know, the small swath that we're triggering is actually hitting the target.

So that's very important. We've done a lot of simulation work here over the past couple of years. So here's research by Zaim at Arlington Agricultural Research Station. Here in Wisconsin, we use common ragweed as our indicator species. So we did work where we compared even nozzles, flat fan nozzles.

We triggered only one nozzle compared to multiple nozzle activation. And we also played with boom height. So here's just a video of Zaim spraying. 3 mile/hour, when do you see all the fines moving away. And when that's happening, you know, that's reducing the amount that hits the target.

And that's problematic because we don't have all the nozzles in that boom kind of compensating for that movement. So that's important to keep in mind. So I'm not going to present all the data. I'm just going to present kind of the main takeaway. Is that when Zaim did this research, when we activated multiple nozzles as compared to a single nozzle activation, we always had better spray coverage and better spray coverage always translated in better weed control.

So targeting multiple nozzles when a weed was detected right here in the center always resulted in better weed control. Here in this example of this picture here, here was my target, but you see a lot of movement away because of a three to 4 mile/hour wind. So this spray swath displacement is a concern, and that's why we want to make sure we stick with multiple nozzle activation. So as a grower or if you're making a decision on whether to purchase a technology like this or not, you want to make sure that this technology offers the ability of multiple nozzle activations. Now, if the conditions are still and you can guarantee stable boom height in order to optimize saving, then, triggering a single nozzle might work. But again, that's not always what we're dealing with out there.

And then on top of that, we also did some, you know, wind tunnel study. So we call this our Wisconsin Innovation West Weeds Innovation Hub, right a fancy name for a relatively simple structure. And then that's the beauty here, you know, being creative and trying to get the data that our stakeholders need when we don't have access to a fancy wind tunnel. So what we did here, we had a shop fan simulating a 5 to 6 mile/hour wind, and we wanted to see how, you know, single activation, multiple nozzle activation, boom height impact the spray coverage. So here is just a video. We have five mile per wind, which is quite common for us when making applications.

And here we actually activated three nozzles. So here you can see how much, you know, our spray is moving here. So again, multiple nozzle activation is going to be very important selecting course or droplet size and perhaps using DRAs here to make sure that our spray solution is actually landing on target so we don't have messes out there.

The one thing here I want to say real brief summary of Zaim's work is every time the wind kicks in when we had 5 miles per hour wind compared to no we observed at least 30% reduction in spray coverage. And if farmers want to make applications or purchasing this technology, deploy it when it's not windy because if it's windy, it's going to move your spray swath around, which is going to reduce the amount of herbicide making it to the target, and we don't want to see that. Okay. So as conclusions from Zaim's research here,

wind conditions, nozzle selection, and boom height can have a major impact on spray quality and weed control, and that's also true for broadcast applications. But this activation of multiple nozzles here upon weed detection, we do think can provide more consistent spray coverage there for better weed control. So we do think that's very, very important. And we've been communicating that with both the technology manufacturers as well as the crop protection companies out there, and there's a lot of parallel research happening in academia and industry, and they're all supporting this conclusion here of multiple nozzle activation. So again, the main takeaways, these technologies are phenomenal, what they can do, they can help us optimize our inputs, only put our foliar herbicides where they are needed.

But in order for these technologies to be successful, pre emerging herbicides are still going to be the foundation of chemical weed control programs, and then perhaps only deploying these technologies where we have low eat infestation is where it makes sense, at least from our experiences. And then spraying, deploying an application when conditions are right, so you can minimize a chance for spray swath displacement because you want to make sure it hits the target. This is what I've been talking to your Wisconsin growers here. This is an extra tool in our integrated weed management tool box.

So here's a very comprehensive list of things that I think we can do in order to be successful long term for weed management, especially as we think about herbicide resistant weeds. So starting off our early season with a strong soil residual herbicide program, our research lab has done a lot of work looking at cereal rye cover crop. And if you let a cereal rye cover crop put enough biomass in a soybean year a cereal rye cover crop can also have tremendous value suppressing waterhemp.

So integrating residual herbicides with cover crop for early season weed control is a phenomenal strategy. From a post-emergence standpoint, using effective mixtures, I showed you today the example of Enlist and Liberty. Don't just use Enlist.

Don't just use Liberty, put two effective foliar herbicides together to increase the odds of successful control. I do see a lot of potential for the premium upgrade here for the Midwest with the results that I presented to you that we may not always need a layered residual broadcast application post. So a lot of opportunities here for the See and Spray Technologies in our systems. And then, lastly, narrow soybean row systems.

I mean, the reason why we have to spray so many times is because it's taking too long for soybeans to close canopy here in Wisconsin. It's quite common for me to be walking fields in August and the beans not to Canopied, yeah. So that's not a herbicide problem. That's a cultural problem there. We need to make sure that we adapt our agronomics, so the soybeans close canopy by mid July cause if the canopy is not closed, waterhemp will keep coming.

So narrow row soybeans can really help. Ah Rodrigo, that's too much, that's too complicated. That's too complex. And complexity is what it takes for success, doing the same thing over and over, just sticking to what is simple is not yielding good results anymore.

We need to diversify our systems. We need to use multiple strategies. And there are growers doing this. This grower that I've been using an example in my presentation. He's bringing cereal rye cover crop, and then he purchased the technology here.

So he put all the strategies to use narrow row system. He's using a strong residual with the cover crop early season and putting effective mixtures post-emergence through his See and Spray. So it's happening out there. They're taking advantage of some of the incentive programs or cover crops.

And I also learned that in order to purchase the See and Spray upgrade here, he was able to use some of the equip resources that are available to growers to, you know, sponsor, help offset the cost of this technology. So there are creative ways that we can start bringing this system. It's not simple, it's complex. The grower told me it's been a very steep learning curve, but he's very, very happy that he gave all these technologies a try and he's going to continue to implement them moving forward. It's truly holistic integrated strategy here.

So with that, I just want to quickly thank our sponsors. My program is heavily sponsored by the Wisconsin Soybean Marketing Board and also the Wisconsin Corn Growers Association, as well as the National entities, the United Soybean Board and the National Corn Growers Association. So thanks all the growers for directly or indirectly sponsoring our research and also the crop protection industry, as well as the North Central Soybean research program.

Because of all the sponsorship, I can have this tremendous team that you see here in this picture. And because of their excellent work that they do, I get to be here presenting these resources and the research findings to you all. So thanks again, Ryan.

I appreciate the invite in the entire extension Minnesota team here for the opportunity, and we'll stop speaking here and open and back up for questions. So thank you so much. Here's my contact information, so Twitter or email. Feel free to reach out. I'll be happy to continue the conversation if you have more questions and even feedback or suggestions for future work for us here. So thank you so much.

[Ryan] Yeah, well, thank you, Rodrigo, for being willing to attend today and provide your insight and expertise here. So that was really great. We really appreciate it to have you on cover this kind of cutting edge topic, you know, as far as weed management goes. So thanks to you again.

But back to questions here, we've got one that came in. Are you concerned about weed mimics in response to targeted spray systems? [Rodrigo] Well, that's such a good question. Yeah, that's some forward thinking right there. Absolutely. I mean, weeds will continue to evolve, and that is certainly a concern.

We've been experimenting with a different prototype for ultra precision applications, and we're going to continue to do some more work with that. And that's a concern when you have plants that have a structure that's a little choice similar to your crop. You know, the system may run into challenges.

So the concern that was just brought forward is something that we got to be careful moving forward. I mean, you know, weeds evolve. You know, we talk about herbicide resistance as being an example of evolution. But, you know, if you go back to the weed science literature, weeds have been evolving for a long period of time. An example I like to use is, like, back then, folks used to hand weed, right, in rice.

And what happened, the weedy rice version that used to be, you know, prostrate to the ground just became upright. So then the growers themselves could not tell the weedy rice from the rice crop. So that's just an example.

So that's certainly a possibility moving forward that might challenge these technologies a little bit. Excellent question or thought there. Thank you. [Ryan] Yeah. Okay, so another one here, how likely do you think this kind of technology is going to be available for other crops, and they sit outside of corn and soybeans as far as this targeted spray technology.

[Rodrigo] Yeah, that's an excellent question. So I think, you know, if you're thinking about a John Deere, if you're thinking about, you know, the GreenEye, I think they're primarily designed for row crops. So corn and soybean being the biggest market right now, cotton and then, you know, even, like, the small grains, next. So I think that will come. I think folks are working into that. So right now it's primarily corn and soy here for Midwest conditions, but they do want to expand for green and green applications and small grains.

The challenge there is that the row spacing. So there are narrow row crops, and the narrow the crops are the more difficult it becomes for the systems to actually detect the weed. So I think it will come, but there will be some more challenges.

But as far as the specialty crop world goes, there are some of the more ultra precise technologies that are being used. For instance, in the 2025, 2026 system, I'm going to be looking at the ARA system, and that's from Ecorobotics. And that is a system that right now is being used in onion production. So we're going to be testing in non-GMO soybeans. So they're ultra precise.

So instead of 15 inch nozzle spacing, there are actually like 4 inch nozzle spacing in a chamber with additional lighting for ultra precision and identification of weeds. So we're going to be looking into that. So what I'm saying here is, we're also trying to bring some of the technologies that are currently available for specialty crops into a row crop scenario to see if there is there is a fit there. But as we continue to move forward, I showed you the 12 different or 14 different entities that are playing in this market right now.

Some of them are focusing on specialty crops. Some of them are focusing on raw crops. So I think there's going to be a lot of advancement here moving forward. But, of course, the primary goal now for the technology I discussed today are in corn and soybeans for us here in the upper Midwest.

[Ryan] We got about 1 minute left here. So, there's kind of two questions here. One's about the scouting value to identify weed frequency. And they're talking about to create a decision model on, you know, kind of implementing a broadcast application.

So that question was a little wordy, but kind of getting at that, like, I guess, real world scouting. And then there's a second question kind of on the technology or use side about the effect that the lights have in terms of reducing the limitations when applying after sunset. [Rodrigo] That's a good question. So I'll start with the latter question here, Ryan.

So the light units, they help. Let's say, you know, it's a data that's a little cloudy. The system is having a little hard time on its own, detecting what's actually weed in a row crop.

Because if the system is having a hard time, what these technologies do, they go back to the fault mode, which is a broadcast application. So then you lose the value of that See and Spray. The additional, you know, lighting there helps minimize the need for that. So having that extra light, always assure there's enough lighting there for the cameras and the computer units to process and detect weeds. The caveat to that is once you start adding light units, you add a little more weight to your spraying system, and it's something else to maintain.

So that's kind of the downside. So there's the pro and there's the cons there as well. So that extra light helps optimize weed detection, therefore control. And then for the first question, I'm not sure if I quite got it. So today, we focused on the systems that you detect weeds and, you know, spray on the go.

But there are also other technologies that are evolving through the use of drones, for instance, so they're using drones to generate weed maps. And then once you have those weed distribution maps, you can upload that map within your spray. And then have a targeted application that way. I'm not sure if that's what the question was, but that's one way of scouting using drones rather than the See and Spray and then uploading a map into sprayer. I know Sentera is in Minnesota, they're working with that.

They have a lot of drones, and I think my understanding is that within 24 hours, they can fly and generate a map. So that's really cool advancement there. On the See and Spray front, I think these maps help us make long term decisions. We can know where the pockets are. But as a weed scientist, I see tremendous future there with the precision for pre emergent application. So if I know where my weeds are, in this season, there's a high likelihood that there's also going to be more weed pressure in those areas in the following year.

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2025-01-28 17:55

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