Italian seeding specialist MaterMacc has revealed its new MS9000 series planting unit. It’s been designed to place seeds in the ground at a constant distance on the row and at a constant depth, allowing optimal growth of the crop whatever the soil conditions.
Various aspects have been meticulously investigated for the drill’s development: market demands, future trends related to precision farming and, last but not least, the impressions and real needs of end customers. The goal was to create a sowing unit that was quick to set up and to customise. To satisfy different market demands, making changes to the seed distribution system, a fundamental point of sowing, had to be free of invasive changes. The desire was, therefore, a versatile unit with a wide range of applications that’s quick and simple to set up.
After numerous field tests, carried out in the worst conditions on different types of soil – including crushed stone to the depth of 15cm to 20cm – the new MS9000 seeding coulter was born with the following strengths:
• Evolved and robust structure in all its parts, thanks to elements obtained from blocks of tempered cast iron that allow a maximum load up to 250kg in direct seeding configuration on the contact point of the furrow opener through a classic spring system.
• A removable front block that allows multiple sowing and settings solutions:
- a free element to be able to place devices directly on the frame, independent of the sowing unit (minimum tillage or direct seeding);
- a classical clod remover (minimum processing);
- a stones remover with crampons (direct seeding);
- a turbo disc (hard);
- a rotary clod remover (minimum processing with residues); and
- a turbo disc plus rotary scraper (direct with residues).
The MS9000 allows quick setting in the field. Once in the work area, the machine is registered in accordance with the texture of the soil in a rapid and replicable way according to the number of rows present.
An electronic seeding distributor then guarantees precision and functionality, with speeds up to 14km/hr.
The connection system to the frame (120mm or 180mm sections) can also be adapted to existing frames to offer the customer a fair choice of applications from the first season on the market. There’s high travel capability for the parallelogram to be able to adapt to unevenness on unworked soil.
The drill has no distribution limits, with a wide range of seed deposit and distance between seeds. The element doesn’t need to be reconfigured in order to switch from sowing small- to medium-sized seeds.
There are few adjustments to set-up the drill, and a classic gravity drop system is used that doesn’t have power-sapping compressors.
The weight of each seeding unit is only 135kg, which makes the combination suitable for use with smaller tractors compared to competitor’s drills, for economy of use. Direct seeding, with eight rows at 75cm row spacing has been tested with only 140hp even in the most extreme conditions.
MaterMacc says the MS9000 has been designed to work in Precision Farming applications using technology that allows sowing data to be recorded and consolidated with information on other operations carried out.
