OSU drone spreading research

By Alex Thomas and John Fulton

Drone usage in agriculture continues to grow rapidly with farmers adopting for various roles in crop management. Ohio State University has been busy looking at drone use cases for spreading different seeds to understand what settings and setups provide accurate seeding rates and placement.

Different agriculture drones are available on the market today that can be equipped with spreader systems. Currently, the most popular drone spreaders use a single-disk spinner spreader that is gravity-fed through an adjustable hopper gate for metering material flow. Companies provide different gate sizes to handle differences in seed sizes. The large hopper gate should be used for large seeds or a higher seeding rate and is the standard hopper gate the spreader comes equipped with. A smaller hopper gate is available for spreading smaller seeds, such as clover, or used when applying lower rates. It is important to note that calibration is needed for each seed or mixture and hopper gate combination.… Continue reading