by Matt Hagny, consulting agronomist for no-till systems since ‘94.
We’ve been waiting for a very long time for some significant improvement in no-till drills — something low-disturbance, with the accuracy of a gauge wheel opener, and not a trailing press wheel doing the depth control. Something better than Deere’s 50/60/90-series.
Thus, it was sad when I got a sneak-peek at a CIH Precision 500 (“P-500”) a couple years ago, and saw that they had once again neglected to provide a seed-lock wheel, which is a deal-killer for no-till. However, the rest of the opener is ‘right’ in terms of seed boot & tube shape & location, blade size and angle, gauge wheel position & shape, effective range of travel, etc. (most of which was foreshadowed by the Flexi-coil FSO, with Case-New Holland having bought Flexi-coil ~ 15 yrs ago). On the P-500, I’m not sure how long some of the linkages, etc., are going to hold together, but the ability of… continue reading here: CaseIH-precision-dir-drills