Australia
June 14, 2017

On November 5th, 2010, a truck arrived at Yuna at the northern tip of the Western Australian wheatbelt. Its cargo was a John Deere 9650 harvester with a tow-behind Harrington Seed Destructor attached.

Twenty local farmers had arrived to see the new machine that they’d heard about for so long. The machine was the brainchild of farmer and inventor, Ray Harrington, and it can destroy weed seeds that exit the rear of the harvester.

This was day one of Michael Walsh’s two-year field research program to evaluate the effectiveness of harvest weed seed control at 24 sites across the entire Australian wheat belt.

There was excitement in the air and the anticipation was immense. Farmer comments were along the lines of ‘don’t bother trialling the thing, I want one now’, and ‘when can I get one?’

The harvester started, the HSD fired up like a jet engine, then just 20m into the first plot it stopped. And there it stood for three days while the faulty centrifugal clutch was repaired.

The farmer enthusiasm waned, and Michael Walsh sighed as he thought of the enormous task ahead!

Strangely enough, Michael will tell you that he loved the whole experience of completing this research, despite the many challenges along the way.

And what did he find from two years of this GRDC funded, AHRI supported research? One, solitary number: 60%. That’s it. OK, he did find out a bit more than that, including how frustrating it is to work with agricultural machinery, but that number is the main result.

Harvest weed seed control in wheat crops in Australia will reduce the annual ryegrass germination in the following autumn by 60%, and the HSD, chaff cart and narrow windrow burn techniques are all equally as effective as one another.

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Website: http://www.ahri.uwa.edu.au/

Published: June 14, 2017