Europa: AVR’s foldable ridger meets demand for mechanical weed control

– and governments are calling for a change of techniques, which is clear from the fact that all manner of chemical crop protection products and weed killers are rapidly and increasingly being prohibited.

Mechanical weed control is more and more becoming an essential part of farmers cultivation practices, and is no longer limited to biological cultivation only.

Combination ridger

For years now, AVR has been successfully designing and selling its combination ridging machine, which consists of a base chassis with a characteristic ‘weight transfer’ system, to which different elements can be added. This way the machine can be used as a speed ridger, hoe-rake ridger or an ‘eco-ridger’.

The eco-ridger and hoe-rake ridger ensure environmentally friendly mechanical weeding. The eco-ridger scrapes off the weeds, applies a fine layer of soil and finishes off by reforming the ridges (i.e. the ideal machine for ridging in several steps).

The hoe-rake ridger, on the other hand, ensures a deeper removal of the weeds, which makes it very efficient for use in root cultivation.

The speed ridger uses large ridging discs to create large, tightly formed ridges when there is no need for a driven soil cultivation.

To meet the increase in scale in bio-cultivation and the increasing demand for a complementary cultivation operation in conventional farming, AVR introduces a foldable version to be able to remove weeds from even more ridges in one working pass – and it does this most cost-efficiently.

Advantages

§  Extra wide working width for a time- and cost-efficient operation.

§  Ridging using large ridging discs.

§  Weed control on the ridge sides and/or reshaping the ridge is done from the bottom up, which means that, thanks to the eco elements, the machine can be used when crops are already present.

§  Weeding on the ridge sides is possible using the hoe-rake ridger.

§  The hydraulic weight transfer system makes sure the ridge is tightly formed at all times.

Availability

During the previous season, the prototypes were submitted to stringent tests and were subsequently approved. For the 2021 season machines are available from now on, with a starting price of 23.100 €.

Model comparison

Eco-ridger

Speedridger

Weeder

Spring pressure

Adjustable per element

Adjustable per element

Adjustable per element  

Ridger

High-speed

High-speed

High-speed  

Pressure control

Hydraulic weight transfer system

Hydraulic weight transfer system

Hydraulic weight transfer system  

Required kW/HP

52 / 70  

52 / 70

52 / 70

Other equipment

Leveling elements

Discs with bearings

V-shaped hoeing elements  

Working widths in cm: 2 x 75-90 / 4 x 75-90 / 6 x 80-90 / 8 x 75 Other possible working widths are: 2 x 75 cm, 2 x 80 cm, 2 x 85 cm, 2 x 34”, 2 x 90 cm, 2 x 36”, 4 x 75 cm, 4 x 80 cm, 4 x 85 cm, 4 x 34”, 4 x 90 cm, 4 x 36”, 6 x 90 cm.

Options: Crumbling tines, tines for lighter soils, tines for heavy soils, sub-soiler tines in ridging hoods

Further information at www.avr.be