Dutch machinery maker Croptimal has introduced a lower-cost, tractor-mounted version of its Croptiscan selection robot, which finds diseased plants in seed potato fields, Future Farming reports. The new Croptiscan 3000 is aimed at seed potato growers with smaller acreages who still want to catch disease early.
Croptimal's Croptiscan robots are built to detect disease in seed potato crops. The machine marks plants affected by diseases such as potato virus Y or leaf roll, and in some cases also detects plants that are mixed with the sunburn protection oil Pur-Shade. The marked plants are then removed in a separate pass.
The mounted Croptiscan 3000 uses the same technology as the self-propelled models, which come in 4-, 8- and 12-row versions. It has a working width of 3 m and works at around 5 km/h, a capacity of 1.5 hectares an hour. Shielding against ambient light lets it run by day and by night.
Croptimal puts the gross price at €95,000, plus €4,000 a year in licence costs for service and algorithm updates. A self-propelled Croptiscan 3000 with the same working width costs €175,000. Because the design is modular, a grower can later convert the mounted unit for use on a self-propelled machine.
For smaller seed potato businesses, the lower entry price makes machine-based disease detection more reachable; the company's self-propelled robots remain the option for larger areas.
Photo: Rasbak / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Future Farming
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