Case IH equipment developed with focus on agronomic design

PHOENIX — Developing and testing equipment for agronomic design is the focus for Case IH.

“We focus on every soil type, seed and season for the grower,” said David Brennan, Case IH planter marketing manager. “This is important to the grower because if we mess one of these up, that will impact the bottom line.”

Case IH brings together its marketing, engineering and agronomy groups to conduct field research.

“We access the surface finish by looking at the surface levelness and the clod sizing,” said Alison Bryan, Case IH tillage research agronomist, during a media event.

“In sample areas, we measure the size of the clods and count the clods to determine how many are in each category of sizes,” Bryan said. “We dig deep to see what’s happening at the subsurface floor which can be smooth or rough depending on the tool you’re using.”

After establishing different tillage treatments, the researchers plant crops to acquire feedback on planter performance.

“We look at emergence, plant stand, seeding depth and percent barren because we want to know if that is affected by our tillage treatment,” Bryan said.

“Seed placement is essential to planters so for every crop that goes into planters we do full-scale planter plots and row-by-row planter plots to look at closing systems and residue managers,” said Lily Cobo, Case IH planter research agronomist. “We will hand harvest the plots and shell each ear.”

“With AFS Soil Command, we have the ability to do a prescription in a field that has light soil, highly erodible ground, rocks and pretty good soil,” said CJ Parker, Case IH tillage marketing manager. “On highly erodible ground we can raise up the 875 ripper and leave the residue there, or if there is a tile line, we can raise the shanks up to make sure you don’t get into the tile.”

AFS Soil Command gives farmers the ability to adjust tillage based on different management zones.

“In an area with dark soil, we can use more aggressive tillage and run a littler deeper and in highly erodible areas we want to be much less aggressive, even running at zero,” Bryan said.

“The prescription can be as simple or complex as the farmer wants,” she said.

In Wisconsin, the Case IH researchers looked at soil type and topography using a 335VT tillage tool and changed the depth of the disks from zero to 2.5 inches.

“In the highly erodible area the tool ran at zero to cover more surface of the soil with residue and not allowing the rain droplets to hit as much of the soil and detach it which is the definition of soil erosion,” Bryan said. “So, increasing the residue coverage potentially allows more water infiltration rather than runoff.”

For conventional tillage, Bryan said, the 875 disk ripper can be used more aggressively to alleviate compaction.

The researchers went to five fields in North Carolina and did assessments to identify the compaction layer.

“We did a tillage prescription for the minimum depth that we needed to alleviate the compaction,” Bryan said.

The field was split in half with one side of the field tilled at a constant depth of 14 inches and the other side tilled by prescription ranging from 5 to 14 inches.

“We saw how quickly we can get through acres when our productivity increased 10% with the prescription,” Bryan said.

Productivity is important to farmers, especially with tight weather windows during the spring when there is constant moisture or in the fall when the ground is going to freeze, the research agronomist said.

“The soybean yield was 63.5 bushels for the field tilled at a constant depth and the yield increased by 2.5 bushels per acre when we had prescription tillage and varied the depth in the different management zones,” Bryan said. “You are not always going to see that, if you have a field that is very consistent, the prescription probably won’t give you an advantage.”

To evaluate the interaction between soil management and planter settings, the researchers created a poor versus ideal seedbed to see the impact on the planter.

“For the poor seedbed we used a True-Tandem 335VT and set it so it was not level across the machine and the crumbler was set to zero,” Bryan said. “For the ideal setting, we set the tool at 2.5 inches and we applied 90 pounds of pressure to the crumbler.”

Clod sizes are divided into three categories — 1 to 2 inches, 2 to 3.5 inches, and 3.5 inches and larger.

“We want a lot more of the 1- to 2-inch clods, especially in the spring,” Bryan said. “With the poor setting of the tool, we saw 14 of the largest clods on average in the sample area compared to five large clods with the ideal setting.”

Poor seedbeds with large clods can impact seed to soil contact and plant growth.

“Studies show a plant one leaf stage behind its neighbor yielded 50% less and a plant two leaf stages behind loss 78% of the yield,” Bryan said.