In today’s lexicon, a “black box” is any proprietary system of inputs and outputs and mysterious happenings within. Outsiders have no knowledge of its internal workings, thus the term “black.”
HarvestMaster has taken the black box image seriously. Its new H3 NIR GrainGage is, quite literally, a square black box. It’s the industry’s first ever fully integrated on-combine near infrared (NIR) sensor for harvest data collection, according to the company’s new release.
GrainGage designers have basically packed a miniature seed lab into their black box. Other on-combine grain testers for research plot combines do not have NIR capabilities.
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HarvestMaster product manager Ray Newman says the H3 is designed for researchers, particularly plant breeders.
“This advancement will drastically improve efficiency and be an invaluable asset to the future of the seed industry,” he said.
Newman said the H3 GrainGage offers moisture, protein and oil predictions derived from established NIR calibrations for many crops. Custom calibrations can be created to meet individual needs.
The H3 eliminates the conventional system of bagging and shipping samples for offsite analysis. The harvest data is available in real time right in the field. It has been calibrated from thousands of samples analyzed in seed labs. Newman said the new NIR application is a low-cost option compared to traditional NIR bench-top units.
The new H3 technology can be transferred to upgrade existing H2 GrainGage units already in the field.
Newman said the veteran H2 is one of the most popular and commonly used on-combine data collection tools in research. The upgrade kit turns an H2 into a full H3 GrainGage.
HarvestMaster is now taking orders for the H3 GrainGage and H2 NIR upgrade kits.
