While there is progress in developing broadacre cereal seed singulation technology, on the ground the reality may still be a decade away.
Being able to place one wheat seed at a time, at uniform spacing and depth, and with fertilizer banded accordingly, represents the next frontier in seeding technology.
It not only improves cereal seeding efficiency, but more importantly results in better plant performance and increased yield.
According to some farmers experienced with precision planters - the most accurate machines currently available - there’s a lot of ground to cover before it will be viable commercially.
Boort cropper Steve Lanyon has four years of experience singulating canola and reckons he has just about mastered it but says the technology is at the same stage GPS was 15 years ago.
“It will probably be all mainstream in 10 or 15 years,” he said
“We’ve just about got canola nailed but there's a difference between doing it and doing it perfectly.
“This is my fourth year at doing it and we are learning more and more.
“We’ll have it perfected in the last 200 acres we do this year because we know exactly what we’ve got to do now.”
He has also trialled singulating cereal crops “with not much luck”.
“The key is having sensors that can count thousands of wheat seeds going past,” he said. “You don't want to lose forward speed so you get your acres done per hour, but you want to get it done precisely.”
He said the sensor technology was improving.
“Singulation in wheat and barley is probably not what I care about - it's about having one machine to do everything so I can get better uniformity across the machine than an air seeder,” he said.
Telangatuk, Victoria cropper Tom Dunstan has run precision planters for more than a decade, but reckons there’s other issues to worry about before singulation.
“I think there’s a whole host of other things to do before I need to do that,” he said. “They are an intricate piece of equipment, they are expensive to run, and there is a lot of detail in the maintenance of them. You come across farmers who are excited about singulation but there’s probably a whole host of other things they probably could brush up on first.
“Precision planting is something I am passionate about, but to be fair, it's not just the planter, it's the whole package - the management of residue, the banding of fertiliser below the row.
“In general broadacre terms, grain growers are still implementing no-till or considering or just starting on CTF, so they’d be saying we’re going to do these other things first and then we’ll look at singulation.”
With wheat planting at about 250 seeds a square metre he reckoned singulation would see them just about touching anyway.
“With a canola I’m looking at 25 plants per square metre and experimenting with 15 or 20 so that's the go,” he said.
“You don't want it to be slower, and you don't want to compromise yield at all - ultimately you want to increase yield.”
