A John Deere Publication

Installed on a John Deere sprayer, See & Spray Select sprays weeds only when detected.

Ag Tech, Agriculture September 01, 2021

Tech@Work: See & Spray Select™

Small grain growers can lose waste and gain savings with game-changing See & Spray™ Select technology.

In arid regions across the U.S. plains and Southern Canada, growers utilize a practice known as chem fallow or summer fallow, which involves leaving a field out of production for 8-14 months to conserve soil moisture. To control weeds during this time, herbicide is applied to prevent weed moisture consumption. Growers often broadcast two to five herbicide passes per year to control weeds, using more herbicide than may be needed, and more cost to the bottom line.

More efficient and cost effective farming practices are something growers strive to achieve every day. To support this effort, John Deere launched See & Spray™ Select in March of 2021. Growers can use See & Spray Select, installed on a John Deere Sprayer, to minimize input costs and only spray weeds when they are detected. This technology works by having cameras mounted 1-meter apart tied to individual processors. They work together to identify green, and then send a signal to the ExactApply™ nozzle-body to turn on and successfully spray the weed. The cameras can scan over 2,000 square-feet a second, and identification to spray happens all within a 200-millisecond window. If the job requires it, the operator can easily switch to traditional broadcast spray without leaving the cab.

See & Spray Select can save farmers on average, 77% on their herbicide costs when spot-spraying their fallow fields. Fallow ground spot-spraying is only the beginning of the See & Spray journey as John Deere helps farmers transition from field, to zone, to row, and now to individual plant spraying.

John Deere continues working on future solutions that will meet additional customer needs beyond See & Spray Select. These solutions will leverage foundational See & Spray technology to provide value for both pre- and post-emerge applications in crops such as corn, soybeans and cotton. ‡