Residue management: Precision Planting reveals new row cleaner

PONTIAC, Ill. — The relationship between row cleaners and planter row units has been rocky and a new innovation aims at smoothing over that sometimes negative interaction.

Jason Stoller, Precision Planting product manager, gave farmers their first look at the company’s new row cleaner, Reveal, at the winter conference.

Reveal is a new concept in planter residue management and is in the beta testing stage for the 2021 season.

“Reveal truly reimagines the row cleaner from the ground up. It’s a revolutionary new row cleaner design that’s entirely isolated from the row unit. The trailing design with parallel arms allows it to follow the ground,” Stoller said.

“Reveal interfaces to the planter with an adapter bracket. That provides a direct rigid mount to the frame itself, and it allows us to entirely isolate the vibration of the row cleaner from affecting the performance of the rest of the row unit. The adapter bracket is installed in a way that the row unit doesn’t have to be removed.”

Consistent crop emergence is critical for maximum yields, and this new row cleaner reveals the clean soil for the planter row unit to place seed.

The new innovation improves row cleaning and emergence in three ways:

• Reveal is mounted to the planter frame, not the row unit, therefore eliminating the negative effects that unit mounted row cleaners have on row unit ride and downforce.

• Reveal has independent pressure and tine depth adjustments. Typically, farmers have to adjust pressure to change tine depth on row cleaners. Reveal has a tine depth adjustment on the unit, and the pressure is independently adjusted from the tractor cab.

• Reveal uses an internal gauge wheel to gauge tine depth from the cleaned surface. Traditional row cleaner treader wheels gauge tine depth from the surface of the field that is not cleaned, meaning that cleaning performance varies with variation in depth of residue. Reveal removes residue even as the depth varies, since the gauge wheel is running on cleaned soil.

Pressure adjustments can be made either through a manual regulator in the cab, or for users of a Precision Planting 20/20, a module can be added to adjust pressure through the 20/20.

“Simply put, row unit mounted row cleaners hurt row unit ride and affect downforce requirements. Reveal is frame mounted, removing its impact on the row unit. With its own internal gauge wheel, Reveal precisely controls the depth of the cleaning tines to create a consistently clean and ideal environment for even emergence to occur,” Stoller noted.

Consistency

The bottom line is consistent plant emergence directly impacts farmers’ bottom lines, and the goal of Precision Planting’s research and development team has been to take plant residue management in a row cleaner to the next level to achieve that consistency.

“A good stand is the start for maximizing your yield potential, and the cost of poor emergence is one that’s felt all the way through the year. In fact, just a few hours delay in emergence is going to cost bushels. As those hours turn into a day a two, that cost only increases,” Stoller continued.

Soil moisture, soil temperature and seed-to-soil contact control the rate of emergence.

“Planter residue management is about seed-to-soil contact. The reason is as a seed comes into contact with a piece of residue instead of soil, that seed absorbs less moisture than it would if it was entirely surrounded by soil. That means that the germination rate for that seed is slowed and the result is a late-emerging plant,” Stoller said.

In-field testing of Reveal across a broad range of soil and typography has been conducted on planters in Illinois, Iowa, Australia and Argentina.

Cory Muhlbauer, Precision Planting research and development agronomist, leads the U.S. plot trials and validation activities with Reveal.

“The benefits of reveal are better ground engagement, better flotation, improved cleaning, a smoother path for row unit, lower row unit downforce and likely reduced row unit wear,” Muhlbauer said.