Combine sensor gives harvest maps a boost

John Deere’s HarvestLab 3000 sensor is now available as a retrofit for 2018 and newer John Deere S700 series combines.

The system uses near-infrared-reflectance technology, and it’s already available in Deer’s forage harvesters, for manure sensing on liquid manure applicators, and as a standalone product.

For combines, HarvestLab will monitor harvested grain and allow growers to crank up the resolution of their harvest maps, with protein, starch and oil values accessible to operators on the fly.

So far, the system can be used for wheat, barley and canola, and more crops will be added.

Christopher Murray, go-to-market manager at John Deere, said the site-specific data is available to the combine operator on the Generation 4 Display, as well as automatically uploaded into the John Deere Operations Center with JDLink.