WEED-IT retrofit gives Queensland farmer affordable way to hammer tough weeds

Retrofitting a WEED-IT optical spraying system to a John Deere self-propelled sprayer is giving a Queensland farming family control over hard-to-kill weeds.

Nigel and Trudy Parker and their son Josh grow sorghum, wheat and chickpeas on 1700 ha on Mistie Downs, their dryland farm north of Clermont.

Rainfall at Mistie Downs averages 600 mm per year, which predominantly arrives in summer.

“The beauty of this country is it has a good depth of soil. It captures the summer rain and stores it. A crop is still able to get moisture even in a dry spell” Nigel says.

After rain, there is a weed burst and at that time, it makes sense to blanket spray. The dilemma for Nigel, Trudy and Josh was how to deal with the straggler weeds.

Before we had WEED-IT we would have to spray the whole paddock for minimal weeds. Now we can just target the weeds.

Nigel Parker, Mistie Downs, Queensland

WEED-IT optical spot sprayers can be mounted as a retro fit kit option on tow-behind sprayers, but the Parker family felt it was more economical to add it to their existing self-propelled. They would stay in their comfortable cab without the cost of another tractor.

WEED-IT and the self-propelled John Deere are a good match.

“They are two independent systems. That’s the beauty of it. There are no complications with them trying to talk to each other.”

The John Deere carries the boom and spray tank and looks after the section control. The WEED-IT system is a series of sensors at 1m intervals along the boom. Each sensor controls, four nozzles space at 250 mm.

When a sensor detects a weed, the weed gets sprayed with the closest nozzles. If it is a small weed, one nozzle gets it. Bigger weeds get targeted by more nozzles, ensuring every weed gets hit at the right rate. The sensitivity of the sensors can be altered and they work just as well during the day and at night.

The Parkers’ Deere sprayer has a 36m boom and a 3000-litre tank. That tank can either be used for blanket-spraying or for WEED-IT spot-spraying.

Nigel says it takes about 10-minutes to swap from blanket applications to WEED-IT. “We just turn some taps, and the nozzle bodies screw in or out to swap over. It is not difficult.”

When blanket-spraying, Nigel and Josh travel at about 20 kph and they go 12-15 kph for spot-spraying.

With the WEED-IT, they can save up to 90 percent of spray costs.

“I hope the system will pay for itself in five to six years, depending on the seasons. If it is dry, we don’t see as many weeds and we won’t need it as much. But in a wet year we may use it far more.”

Their WEED-IT gives Nigel and Josh more control over when they spray.

“If we don’t have to have lots of weeds, we can just run over the paddock without using much chemical. It keeps the paddock tidy.

Spraying weeds while still small is one advantage. Another is being able to use higher rates and more expensive sprays to target hard-to-kill weeds such as Feathertop Rhodes grass.

“We can target them more often. We haven’t been doing it long enough to lower the seed bank, but it’s a given it will happen.”

Deciding that the WEED-IT was the tool they needed and which version to get took some time. Croplands Queensland Territory Manager Lachlan Coom and a contractor with a tow-behind WEED-IT came out to the farm to demo the system.

Lachlan talked through what we wanted to achieve. He was very patient. I kept going back with questions: ‘What if we did this?’ Or ‘What if we did that?’

Nigel says

There are lots of WEED-IT systems working locally. “It helped with the decision that what we are doing is not new. It is proven technology and people are happy with it.”

Once Nigel and Trudy decided they wanted WEED-IT retro-fitted to the self-propelled, the next issue was making it affordable. Trucking the sprayer to a Croplands workshop was going to be expensive, so Nigel offered to strip the boom down and then accommodate the installers on the farm.

Josh spent the four days with them helping and learning.

“It was in our interests to look after them and it meant we could see what they were doing in case there is trouble later.”

The hand rail had to be changed in two places to keep the Deere sprayer’s ability to fold for transport and storage in the shed.

There is now an extra monitor in the cab, which does not bother Nigel in the slightest. It is easy to use and Lachlan guided them through it.

Nigel appreciated that Croplands understood that it is a big decision and up-front cost. Their flexibility to do the installation on-farm lowered that cost.

“Doing it at our place worked out well for us. They are a great bunch of people – Lachlan, Doyle, Tim and Damian.”

(It also helps that Trudy is an excellent host and kept everyone well-fed.)

The Parker family’s WEED-IT has already cut their spray bill and is giving them more control over when and what they spray. It is also better for the environment to cut the amount of chemicals needed.

“It has been a handy, valuable tool. It has got to be better to put a little chemical in a smaller area,” Nigel concludes.

WEED-IT a lifeline in Queensland farmer’s fight against resistant weeds.

Queensland farmer Shane Beil says he would not be able to keep farming without his Weed-IT precision spot sprayer.

Shane and his wife Nicky’s farm is Kilcummin Station, near Clermont, in Central Queensland. They run cattle and grow broadacre crops on about 7300 ha.

Crops are primarily sorghum, wheat and chickpeas, and they have also grown mung beans and sunflowers. Except for contract transporters, who cart their grain, Shane and his family manage the day-to-day running of the farm – from planting through to crop care and harvesting.

It is a dryland farm. We have black soils, which are good to work. We run 250 breeders and their progeny, all on natural grasses.

Shane Beil, Kicummin Station, near Clermont, Queensland

“This year we grew 2500 ha of sorghum, which we planted in January and harvested in May. We planted 1250 ha of chickpeas in April and we will harvest them in September or October. The chickpeas are a good option for us because we can get a crop from them when it is too dry for wheat.”

At the beginning of 2024, the Beil family upgraded to a new self-propelled sprayer to boost the efficiency of the cropping program. It is a John Deere 410R with a 36m boom and 3800-litre tank.

To reduce chemical use but still target the herbicide-resistant weeds that many farmers in Central Queensland now have, he also had Croplands fit a WEED-IT retrofit kit (spot spray system) to the new sprayer.

WEED-IT’s ‘green-on-brown’ system for spot spraying on fallow ground can reduce water and chemical use (and therefore costs) by up to 95 percent. It uses near infrared sensors to detect individual weeds as small as 1 cm² at speeds up to 20 kph and then directs spray nozzles to dose them.

The Beil family’s WEED-IT system has sensors mounted every metre along the boom. Each sensor works with four nozzles spaced at 250 mm intervals. Shane says when it detects a weed the size of your thumb, it uses one nozzle. When it detects a bushier weed it uses two, and when it detects a patch it uses four.

We used the WEED-IT to do three fallow sprays when we prepared the ground for sorghum in December and January.

Shane Beil

“At the time we did the first spray, the paddocks were fairly dirty. We left a few weeds behind and then we had a bit of rain, so we went again and got 100 percent. We then did a third pass over 10 percent of the area before we planted.”

Shane says he operates the WEED-IT at 18 kph but it is set up to work at speeds up to 22 kph.