Look ma - no hands!
Although this month's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is usually associated with the "geek brigade", global manufacturer John Deere chose it to launch new technology aimed at farmers and growers.
The DeePot 25.1 centres around a 2500 litre hopper, the same unit supplied to the manufacturer Kuhn for its Megant drill. The layout behind the hopper sees four fertiliser delivery points carried on a folding coulter-bar that can deliver 300kg of ground pressure. Support wheels can be adjusted to suit varying row widths, while also managing depth control of the parallelogram-action linkage.
At ground level, entry is achieved with a leading disc that in turn is followed by a narrow blade assembly to part the soil. Granular fertiliser is delivered by the Turbo-S fan unit to the coulter, before the “cut” is closed by a pair of sprung press wheels.
