John Deere and Redekop unite to release new Seed Control Unit aimed at withstanding all crop conditions

John Deere and Canadian manufacturer Redekop have heralded the release of a new seed control system which aims to work in all crop conditions and destroy harvestable weed seeds in a single pass.

The Redekop Seed Control Unit (SCU) came out earlier this month after three years of successful testing with John Deere’s X-Series combine harvesters in Germany, Canada and Australia.

The SCU works by being mounted to the combine chopper behind the cleaning shoe of the X-Series, where it destroys weed seed by injecting processed chaff directly into the residue stream.

Redekop and John Deere have designed the SCU to work in all crop conditions with one set of reversible mills, preventing the need to swap mills when met with different harvest and crop conditions.

The reversible mill helps ensure less weed pressure and better crop establishment in later seasons by destroying up to 98 per cent of harvestable seeds before the material is directed back to the residue stream.

John Deere production system manager Ben Kelly said the SCU would aid more farmers in eliminating weed seed from their cropping operations.

“The SCU is already a proven performer on the S-Series and we are excited to have worked collaboratively with the team at Redekop to adapt the technology to be suited to the power and capacity of the bigger machines,” he said.

“This will also open the door to the X9 being an option for more farmers, knowing they can fit this highly effective weed control system, further allowing them to grow the efficiency of their small grain and cereal cropping operations.”

Redekop president Trevor Thiessen said the Canadian manufacturer and John Deere worked together closely to improve and perfect air flow, shoe pressure and load limits on the drive line for the SCU.

“To ensure the technologies work together, John Deere provided us with a pre-production X9, so we did our fit-up, fabrication and design work with that,” Mr Thiessen said.

“We had drawings for the back end of the combine that we could modify in the CAD system before we tried the physical prototypes, so that made it easier to develop a solution that integrates seamlessly with the X-Series.”

He said past trials have been especially important in showcasing how the new SCU handles the additional volume presented by the X-Series.

“The X9 has significantly more capacity, including cleaning shoe capacity, than the John Deere S-Series, so we had to make sure that the mills taking the material off the back of the harvester could handle that,” he said.

“We tested the SCU in Australia and Canada, but we were most concerned with the amount of straw and material it would encounter in European conditions.

“Being able to prove the X9 SCU in German wheat crops that were pushing eight to nine tonnes per hectare, and some barley running at 11-and-a-half tonnes per hectare, gave us confidence the unit could perform anywhere.”