Amazone has expanded its solo seed drill range by introducing a 6m machine with a 3,000-litre grain tank capacity, the Citan 6000.
    The new Citan, which has been available so far only in working widths of 8m, 9m and 12m, makes sense for farms that work using a split-sowing system where the soil tillage is carried out initially as an individual operation prior to sowing with a solo drill. Thanks to forward speeds of up to 20km/hr - it enables extremely high work rates to ensure exactly the optimum sowing date.
    As a rough rule of thumb, work rates for the Citan are approximately 1ha/hr for each metre of working width. At the same time, fuel consumption is about 2.8 lit/ha (measured independently at the DLG test centre) and a pulling power requirement of about 25hp/m working width. But, in spite of the high operational speeds, the quality of seed placement is excellent.
    The RoTeC+ Control coulters on the Citan, which offer a coulter pressure of up to 55 kg, and with the new Control 25 depth guidance rollers, ensure a very smooth coulter run due to their extremely accurate depth limiting action. For optimum seed embedment, either the Exact harrow or Roller harrow are available, the latter with adjustable pressure intensity.

RoTeC+ coulters in conjunction with the Control 25 depth guidance rollers ensure a very smooth coulter run due to their extremely accurate depth limiting action.

The advantages of a split sowing system become immediately obvious in crop rotations where there is an increasing proportion of winter wheat, and/or rape, resulting in more restricted time windows. This also applies for sowing spring cereals.
With increasing uncertainty of the weather, solo sowing can also help to preserve soil moisture, while it also offers the possibility during a wet autumn season of sowing successfully with a light, high-output machine.
In addition, solo seed drills are superbly suited to sowing catch crops where they work more cost effectively than a sowing combination but, at the same time, more precisely than spreader solutions mounted on top of a soil tillage implement.

For more information visit: www.amazone.co.uk.