Driving impression: Amazone Cayena 6001 tine drill Last year’s Agritechnica in Hanover saw the European launch of Amazone’s Cayena 6001 drill. Before the show we had the chance to use one, albeit in some tricky conditions…

With the Amazone Cayena drill, what you see is pretty much what you get. Mind you, what you see is a little unusual — check out that funky faired-in hopper. Below it are 36 semi-rigid tine coulters carried in three banks, a following harrow and a set of rubber press wheels. And to hammer home the all-you-needis-in-the-box point, the UK options list is refreshingly slim.

There’s no buyer need for endless hours of spec poring here; the decision is made for you. Amazone reckons that this is a machine for high work rates in cultivated or uncultivated land, with narrow tines suiting it to conditions where conventional coulters have trouble — particularly dry, hard or stony soils — and where water conservation is important. Typical, then, that the test period coincided with wet weather. So wet that had it not been for the need to get the job done, we wouldn’t have been out drilling. But the Cayena coped, and establishment turned out fine.

The test site had been in winter barley. Two shallow passes with discs had partly incorporated straw chopped and spread by the combine, leaving a fairly level surface. Good straw management is an important factor with this tool, as blockage is always on the cards despite the tines’ stagger and 166mm spacing. After hitching the drill to a linkage drawbar, operation starts with calibration.

This follows the usual Amazone pattern: enter the required seed rate into the Amatron+ control box, extract the calibration tray from under the hopper, fit it and weigh the final result. Enter this value into the Amatron+, and it does the rest via an established electric seed metering set-up. Forward travel speed is monitored by the Cayena’s own standard-fit radar, while alternative cell wheels cater for different seed sizes.

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