A new feature from John Deere allows producers and commercial service providers to measure N, P, and K values in liquid manure applied as fertilizer.
The John Deere HarvestLab
3000 with Manure Constituent Sensing analyzes liquid manure 4,000 times per second to provide laboratory-quality values for important nutrient constituents to help producers manage their total fertilizer program.
According to John Mishler, precision ag tactical marketing manager for John Deere, the HarvestLab 3000 infrared sensor used to evaluate nutrient characteristics of forage crops and feed can now be used to provide accurate values for major constituents found in liquid manure used for fertilizer. “The system provides accurate, real-time values for total nitrogen, ammonia nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous and dry matter content of the manure as it’s applied to the field,” Mishler explained. “This enables the operator to manually or automatically adjust the volume based on the nutrient values to meet specific nutrient targets or goals for their fields, and possibly save on commercial fertilizers.”