Palmer amaranth is the enemy on the Came farming operation. "It's such a prolific seed producer. I believe I saw a report (that) Palmer has six-way resistance to the chemicals we are trying to use to combat it," Kody Came said.

Came is a fifth-generation farmer from Salina, Kansas. The operation includes his dad, aunt, brother and a couple of younger cousins. Wheat, corn, soybeans and milo complement a 400-head cow-calf operation.

The Cames were in the market for a new sprayer, and their John Deere dealer found a hard-to-get See & Spray Ultimate model. It's a two-tank machine -- one tank for a residual herbicide, the other for targeted application.

Would the technology tackle Palmer? It did. "It took care of the Palmer amaranth," Came said. "See & Spray worked really well for us."

He had hoped See & Spray would save 33% of the nonresidual herbicide typically applied. "We actually saved closer to 66% of our chemical. That opened our eyes to what this technology was capable of," Came added.

More is on the way. Deere, with its Blue River Technology, Greeneye Technology, AGCO's PTx and CNH (Case IH and New Holland) are deep into building new sense and act technologies with applications beyond corn, soybeans and cotton to cereals and canola, sugar beets, potatoes, peanuts and blueberries.

BLINK OF AN EYE

The modern precision-spraying kit consists of cameras mounted to the sprayer boom with incredibly fast image processors. See & Spray needs all of 30 milliseconds to complete the imaging process (the average human blink of an eye lasts 100 milliseconds).

The key is ever-improving digital models. The value of precision spraying is in a system's model, the library of digital plant images that is more refined with every pass of the camera.

Nadav Bocher, CEO and co-founder of Greeneye Technology, sees the potential. "We're going to see high value from a machine with eyes (cameras) and a brain (processor) running through a field making thousands of decisions every second."

The sensing technologies represented by Greeneye's retrofit spraying system and others give farmers the ability to act precisely, in real time, by way of algorithms that will soon enable sense and act to also address nitrogen deficiencies, battle insects, blunt crop disease and manage weeds by species.

With its technology sold already in nine states to corn, soybean and, this year, cotton producers, Tel Aviv, Israel-based Greeneye will soon introduce Greeneye Plus. Plus unlocks savings from inputs beyond herbicides. Plus will optimize the application of fungicides and micronutrients before expanding to fertilizers.

Deere's See & Spray model has been tested against 1 million real-world acres. See & Spray technology saved farmers 8.3 million gallons of herbicide mix during the 2024 growing season, Deere said. On average, See & Spray customers saw an average of 59% herbicide mix savings.

"We've hit two milestones: building out a small-scale model to commercial trials and getting the technology into customers' hands and using it over a million acres in multiple states and multiple countries," said Josh Ladd, Deere's go-to-market manager for application.

Deere announced in late February that it is expanding its See & Spray Select technology for 2026 to include a variable-rate capability providing precision applications and product savings to fungicides, desiccants, preharvest products and more.

THE PAYBACK

Case IH is entering the sense and act space with SenseApply. "SenseApply is our very first step into the sense and act space in terms of crop application technologies," said Alex Caldwell, product marketing manager for application equipment, North America. SenseApply is a single, cab-mounted, multispectral camera.

Mounted to the roof of the Case IH Patriot sprayer and the Trident liquid/dry combination applicator, SenseApply offers green-on-brown spot-spraying and a Base + Boost function that increases application rates through individual nozzles as they pass over areas of high weed pressure. SenseApply also has a live, variable-rate feature for applications such as burndown, nitrogen, harvest aid, plant growth regulators and fungicides. Trident can tap into the functions of SenseApply to apply nitrogen in dry or liquid form.

"I think growers are going to be extremely surprised with the utility and the payback and the price point with which this comes to the market," Caldwell said. "Something we're wanting to hammer home is this technology is theirs (the growers') upon purchase. There are no annual subscriptions, no per-acre fees associated with this. The device is theirs. They can move SenseApply from machine to machine."

SenseApply will be available for 2026.

Available in 2026 from New Holland (also a CNH brand with Case IH) is IntelliSense Sprayer Automation. A factory install with the Guardian Series front boom sprayers, IntelliSense Spray Automation has much the same capabilities as SenseApply, with applications for corn, soybeans, cotton, pulse crops and small grains.

Mapping weeds by species is on the horizon. "As the technology progresses, our customers are looking for weed maps with species identification that allows them to target specific weeds," Deere's Ladd explained.

Think about Palmer amaranth and all its seeds. A field can suffer for years. "(A species map) suggests different treatment (strategies)," said Blue River Technologies CEO Willy Pell. "You might send out a guy with a shovel. You might hit the field with a heavier dose of chemical. You will think about your treatment next year in a different way. You might track it from year to year to make sure you are decreasing its seed bank."

GROUND ZERO

Blue River is arguably ground zero to the birth of precision technologies. Blue River opened its labs in 2011 with an idea to build autonomous lawn mowers. Co-founders Lee Redden and Jorge Heraud, Stanford-trained engineers with family backgrounds in agriculture, shopped the concept around among potential customers. They found little interest.

They did find interest in smart implements with the precision and recall to sift, from a moving machine, desirable plants and plants that aren't, and interest in implements performing at the level of individual plants, integrating computer vision with machine-learning technology.

Blue River's LettuceBot was born in 2012.

In lettuce production, most young plants need to be removed, opening 10 inches of space between the remaining lettuce plants. Armed with 1 million lettuce images and quarter-inch accuracy, LettuceBot, a silver-colored box towed by a tractor, was soon thinning lettuce rows in Salinas Valley, California, and outside Yuma, Arizona, eventually capturing 10% of the market.

By 2017, Blue River launched See & Spray, the technology targeting individual weeds with a nonresidual herbicide. John Deere purchased Blue River that year for $305 million. Deere revealed the technology to the tech world at the 2020 CES in Las Vegas. In 2021, Deere introduced See & Spray Select for control of weeds in fallow fields. A year later, Deere launched See & Spray Ultimate, a two-tank system for treating weeds with residual and nonresidual products in growing crops -- corn, soybeans, cotton.

NO MORE. NO LESS.

"We saw this future," Pell said, "every single plant gets what it needs. No more. No less. Farmers will use fewer inputs and get better results."

"Successfully expanding into a new crop relies on training the system's algorithms to manage the complexities of that crop," Greeneye's Bocher said. "That depends on two things: the quality and quantity of the data we collect. We gather data from a diverse range of scenarios, using it to build our learning models and train our algorithms."

PTx Precision Planting's newest precision spraying systems are SymphonyVision "Rate" and SymphonyVision "Spot." They both use cameras to detect weed severity. SymphonyVision Rate sprays continuously, adjusting the application by weed severity. SymphonyVision Spot turns on nozzles in the presence of weeds and turns nozzles off when no weeds are present.

"Our AI models are being updated, and we'll continue to be adding crops and regions," said Jason Stoller, director of product engineering for Precision Planting. "Growers will be able to update software just like we load software updates today on the planter."

SHARPEN THE PENCIL

Out in Kansas, the Cames saw the Deere precision sprayer model evolve in real time. In their first year with See & Spray, the Cames found it would not distinguish between velvetleaf and soybeans. "They looked too similar," Kody Came said. "The machine hadn't learned quite yet to be able to differentiate between the two, so it didn't end up spraying those plants."

Year 2 was different. The Deere model had evolved to catch the distinction between soybeans and velvetleaf. "I think it more speaks to the ability for this technology to consistently learn and adapt. I thought [the evolution] really spoke highly of the technology itself," he said.

Came put a pencil to See & Spray technology on his farm. "It cost us $3.33 an acre to run it," he explained. "We saved $2.52 an acre in chemical costs (in 2024), so it cost us $0.81 to run that machine. I don't know many pieces of equipment that you can run for $0.81 an acre." That cost includes Deere's subscription fee, depreciation, fuel and interest on the machine.

"People have an issue with the subscription fee," Came continued. "But, the way we look at it is that the subscription fee allows this software and machine learning to be updated and (allows) new and different things to be done with it. The subscription charge is more of an investment in the technology for its betterment."

**

(Sidebar)

The following is more information about precision application solutions and products:

Greeneye Technology: Greeneye:

Greeneye Technology's retrofit system transforms any sprayer into a day-and-night smart machine (with Greeneye's lighting technology). Greeneye's dual-tank system allows farmers to spot-spray contact herbicides at an 87% reduction in product and broadcast residual herbicides. Greeneye is available this year for cotton. Greeneye also is introducing Greeneye Plus this year. Plus will expand Greeneye's precision application capabilities to other products, beginning with fungicides and micronutrients. By applying these inputs only to the rows, crop managers can reduce applications by 30 to 40%, Greeneye said.

John Deere: See & Spray:

See & Spray technology targets individual weeds in corn, soybeans and cotton, plus weeds growing in fallow fields. New for 2026 are precision applications and product savings of fungicide, desiccant, preharvest products and others. John Deere offers See & Spray in three configurations:

-- See & Spray Premium converts a sprayer into a single-tank precision target sprayer. Premium is available as a factory install or Precision Upgrade for market year 2018, newer R Series and 400/600 Series, and select new John Deere and Hagie sprayers.

-- See & Spray Ultimate is a two-tank system that can reduce nonresidual herbicide use by more than two-thirds. Two tanks combat herbicide resistance by using two independent tank mixes in one pass.

-- See & Spray Select was first released to treat fallow fields. It can reduce herbicide applications by 77%. New for See & Spray Select in 2026, Deere is introducing a variable-rate capability, providing precision application and product savings to fungicide, desiccant, preharvest products and others.

PTx Precision Planting: SymphonyVision:

SymphonyVision is the follow-on technology to Precision Planting's SymphonyNozzle, a pulse-width modulation system (PWM) giving independent rate and pressure control to each nozzle across the boom.

SymphonyVision uses cameras to adjust applications based on weed severity and comes in two versions:

-- SymphonyVision "Rate" detects weed severity, adjusting the rate of each nozzle automatically while continuously spraying. Precision Planting recommends placing its "Rate" cameras every 10 feet on the boom.

-- SymphonyVision "Spot" uses cameras to detect weed severity to adjust the rate of each nozzle automatically when weeds are present while turning off nozzles when they aren't. Suggested camera spacing is 5 feet.

PTX Trimble: WeedSeeker 2:

WeedSeeker 2 is a day-and-night spot-spray solution. Using optical sensors (not cameras) and advanced processing, WeedSeeker 2 detects and eliminates weeds. Each nozzle is connected to one sensor. This is a green-on-brown-only system. PTx Trimble said WeedSeeker 2 can reduce applied chemicals by up 90%.

Case IH and New Holland:

Case IH is launching SenseApply technology for 2026. SenseApply is a live variable-rate application solution that consists of a single cab-mounted camera system with a range of application solutions. The selective spray solution offers green-on-brown spot-spraying and a Base + Boost function that boosts rates from individual nozzles as they pass over high weed pressure. SenseApply also has a live variable-rate feature for applications such as burndown, nitrogen, harvest aid, plant growth regulators and fungicides. New Holland launched a similar product called IntelliSense Sprayer Automation.

Dan Miller can be reached at dan.miller@dtn.com

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