Lemken’s Solitair Duo adds flexibility

LEMKEN’S NEW twin hopper drill, the Solitair 9+ Duo

LEMKEN’S popular Solitair stable of drills has been added to – just under a year since the market launch of the Solitair 9+ pneumatic seed drill, it has now introduces a ‘Duo’ version with a divided seed hopper.

This machine offers a wide range of options for simultaneously spreading seeds, fertiliser and even catch crops.

The seed hopper of the Solitair 9+ Duo holds 1850 litres and the capacity can be split 50/50, or 60/40, depending on needs. As a result, two application variants are possible:

In the single-shot version, seeds and fertiliser are combined downstream from the two metering units in each of the two hopper segments. The different components are guided to the double disc coulters via a seed pipe and deposited in a seed furrow.

This allows a suitable starting dose of fertiliser to be added for winter sowing or a complete fertiliser application for summer sowing. An automatic tramline mechanism is integrated into the distributors.

The double-shot system provides greater deposition flexibility. With this system, the two components flow separately to a double disc coulter via doubled distributors in two seed pipes.

They can then be spread either in a single row – as with the single-shot method – or separately and alternately in two rows following a quick-time exchange of the tramline cartridge in the distributor.

In addition, the deposition depth of every other row can be adjusted separately via the pressure roller up to a difference of 5cm.

This allows two different seeds to be placed at different and optimum seeding depths, or inter-row fertilisation to be applied at the same time as seeding.