Ground vs Air Calculator
Often a farmer will be faced with a decision as to whether to treat their crop by ground application or aerial application. Aerial application has a number of advantages over ground-based application. These include:
Advantages
- Timeliness of operation
- Zero soil compaction
- Zero disease transfer
- Zero crop damage
- Professional accurate application
In order to assist our clients in assessing potential wheel track damage, we have built an online calculator. Simply enter in the assumptions below to calculate potential average wheel track damage per hectare.
Wheel Track Damage Calculator
Tips
As a general rule the more advanced the crop the greater the damage, and the wetter the ground the greater the damage. When crops are more advanced the damage is multiplied, as the vehicle chassis tend to damage the crops as well as the wheels. Damage will be greatest as tyre width increase and boom width decreases.
Crops often recover visually from being run over but often these areas lag behind the rest of the paddock and grain ripens later or not at all. Damage will obviously vary with crop type, crop stage and other variables but a rule of thumb seems to be an average of 40% damage (ie yield loss) to areas that are run over.
When calculating total machinery wheel width, don't forget that if the front and rear tyres of the towing vehicle and the tyres of the spray unit don't all run in the same wheel track, you will need to add these together. If they do run in the same wheel track, your total wheel track width will be less but the damage factor may be greater.