We’ve followed the progress of Lemken’s Delta concept for some years. Featured in the company’s Azurit precision air seeders, its first iterations had their ups and downs. Last spring we put the current Azurit to work, and here’s what we found

A conventional precision drill places seed in a single row, line astern. The DeltaRow concept puts the seeds in two offset sub-rows spaced 125mm apart, and staggers those sub-rows. The aim of this (literally) lateral thinking is to give each seed up to 70% more soil area to exploit, potentially providing more room for root growth, increased nutrient uptake and then, better light interception. Fertiliser can be placed in a band under the seed. To see if the concept delivers tangible benefits in practice, we drilled maize with an eight-row, 5.6m Azurit 9/8.75 KD behind Lemken’s semi-mounted Solitair 25/600 KA hopper unit; its sole job was to supply and meter fertiliser. We’ll start with fertiliser and its placement.