Weed Seed Destructor Ready For Market

Weed Seed Destructor Ready For Market COMBINES Accessories In early 2012 FARM SHOW published an article on the Harrington Seed Destructor Vol 36 No 2 a machine that destroys weed seeds behind a combine After a full year of testing across a large portion of southern Australia the machine has received many positive reports Trials at 14 locations showed the Destructor reduced annual ryegrass emergence by 40 to 90 percent depending on the initial level of infestation The machine is now being produced by DeBruin Engineering and will sell for about $240 000 Australian Ray Harrington who designed the initial pull-type Destructor says a new approach will soon be available for larger combines A specially designed weed seed “destructor” will be incorporated directly into the harvesters Instead of chaff and weed seeds needing to be conveyed out of the machine for processing the integrated destructor will process straw seeds and chaff before it exits the machine The auxiliary destructor uses power from the combine engine to process chaff at more than 30 tons an hour The commercial tow-behind machines will still be used on class 6 7 and 8 size harvesters Adam Davis a USDA weed scientist from Illinois says it’s unlikely that grain farmers in North America will adopt this type of technology That’s because these systems rely on weed seeds being harvested with mature grain which isn’t much of a problem now for row crop and grain farmers That may change as more herbicide resistant weeds like palmer amaranth and giant ragweed become more of a problem In Australia however herbicide resistant weeds have been a problem for many years More than 70 percent of the farmers either collect the chaff in a cart behind the combine bale it directly behind the combine or burn the chaff in small windrows on the ground All of those methods are somewhat effective and always labor intensive Harrington thinks the new integrated mill in larger harvesters may be the best answer More than 20 years ago FARM SHOW wrote about Arkansas farmer Johnny Reyenga Vol 14 No 1 who built his own combine-mounted grain cleaner to collect and destroy weed seeds Although Reyenga used the device several years on his own farm and had the idea patented it didn’t achieve commercial success Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Ray Harrington Box 65 Darkan West Australia 6392 Australia ph 011 61 427 363 004; rbh7@bigpond com au

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