FARGO, N.D. – The introduction of air delivery made prairie seeding operations more efficient, but all that air created a new problem – seed bounce and poor seed placement.
“For the past 30 years, farmers have been trying to slow down the seed going through their openers,” said Darryl Justesen, a grain farmer and marketing director for Amity Technologies in Fargo, North Dakota.
“Ideally, we’d like to drop the seed into the trench the same way the old gravity drills did it, but all that air we use delivering seed to our openers gives us a big seed bounce problem.
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“I’ve used the D-Cup Diffuser seed brake on my drills for the past five or six years, and I’d say that up until now, the D-Cup is the best device I’ve found for slowing down the seed. But it’s not without hangups.”
Justesen said the hangup is just that, because the spiral effect within the diffuser holds seeds in the cup and then lets a bunch go all at once.
He thinks the D-Cup helps control seed bounce, but it creates a new problem with seed spacing.
There are gaps in the seed row, with few seeds and then a clump of plants where many seeds were dropped.
“About a year and a half ago, we decided to invest some money to see if there’s a better answer. We have to keep the air delivery, there’s no doubt about that, but we have to figure out a better way to relieve that air pressure.”
Amity contracted with Heartland Precision, an engineering firm in Wahpeton, North Dakota, which after a year of research and development came up with a venturi design that vents the air so the seeds consistently drop at the speed of gravity with fairly uniform spacing in the row.
Justesen said it was more a matter of fine-tuning than basing a new design on an obscure engineering principle.
“We went through more than 20 prototypes, but each one had some kind of drawback. This latest design releases all the pressure. When we measure the speed of the seed, we know it drops just like it used to with the old gravity box disc drills.
“We all know those old disc drills gave us the best seed placement, but today we require the efficiencies of air delivery. Now we can have our cake and eat it too.”
Yield benefits?
Justesen said stopping seed bounce should improve yields of all crops because every seed that is metered is put into the seed trench.
As well, the diffuser brings farmers one step closer to where an air drill can function like a corn planter. As corn acreage expands to farms where it has not been grown in the past, the prospect of using the small grain air drill is appealing.
“We still can’t singulate the seeds like you can with an actual corn planter, but there’s more to the success of corn planters than singulation,” Justesen said.
“One of the main reasons they work so well is the fact that they drop the seed with gravity. Well, we’ve accomplished that. Now we can finally plant corn with an air delivery system that offers the efficiencies of high volume and is affordable.”
He said a dedicated corn planter is expensive and complex. Singulation requires a lot of moving parts.
“But the diffuser is simple. It’s just an inexpensive piece of plastic with a lot of thought behind it.”
Amity has not yet put an official product name or price on the diffuser, which should be available before next spring.
For more information, contact Darryl Justesen at 701-232-4199 or visit www.amitytechnologies.com.
