Site-specific weed control in real time

Various scientific publications regarding site specific weed regulation show that 25 % to 70% of the amount of herbicides commonly needed could be saved depending on the technical method used. Weed monitoring by walking to detect the distribution of weeds within the field is timeconsuming and expensive. Therefore an economic use of site specific weed control can only be achieved if simple sensoric detection methods combine weed recording and herbicide application in one working cycle. To replace manual weed recording, an optoelectronic "green sensor" was tested. First results from the use of the optoelectronic sensor between the rows of a corn field and in the tram lines in cereal fields yielded a linear correlation coefficient between the manual and sensoric counts of 0,6 and 0,9. With a machine combination (tractor, plant protection equipment) field tests were carried out with different crops on 130 hectares of land. On the average, 20 % of the herbicides could be guaranteeing successful treatment at the same time saved.