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Effective weed management is crucial in the critical period of sugar beet production, but often lacks sustainability and environmental protection. Recent advancements in sensor-based weed control systems have rendered the latter a realistic prospect, which demands detailed analyses, especially under suboptimal field conditions. The present study analysed six robotic-assisted weed control systems (RAWS) in three experiments on sugar beets in 2024, conducted under dry soil and high weed pressure. The experiments included sensor-based inter-row and intra-row hoeing, spot- and band-spraying and were compared to a broadcast herbicide treatment and an untreated control. Weed control efficacy (WCE) in the intra- and inter-row areas, as well as weed species composition and crop plant damage, were assessed after treatment. The data show that intra-row WCE of two hoeing robots (Farming GT® and Robovator®) equipped with selective intra-row blades achieved up to 80%, which was higher than the broadcast herbicide control with 67% WCE. In the inter-row area, Farming GT® robotic hoeing and ARA® spot-spraying resulted in more than 90% WCE, which was equal to the broadcast herbicide application. Weed species composition was not affected by the different RAWS. Crop plants were affected by all hoeing treatments with maximum non-lethal burial rates of 33%. The highest lethal uprooting of crop plants occurred after Farming GT® robotic hoeing, at 5.5% overall. The results demonstrate the great potential of robotic weeding to replace broadcast herbicide applications.
Schumacher et al. (Wed,) studied this question.