One of Sweden’s largest onion producers, Almhaga Gård, has been testing the Swedish-developed Ekobot weeding robot on 3 of its roughly 300 hectares of onions for two years now. This is to be able to increase the harvest and reduce the use of pesticides.
One of Sweden’s largest onion producers, Almhaga, has been testing the Swedish-developed Ekobot weeding robot on 3 of its roughly 300 hectares of onions for two years now. Almhaga Gård’s goal is that with the help of the robot system, it should be possible to increase the harvest and at the same time reduce the use of pesticides.
– Trials of mechanical weed control with Ekobot began in 2021 at Almhaga, and during 2022 the system has been tested on a larger scale on a total of approximately 3 hectares.
– We became interested in Ekobot because we believe it is part of the future with mechanical weeding robots. The chemical treatment is important to us, but we have also seen in the cultivation that the sprays we use put growth back on the onion. It also seems that some sprays make the plants more sensitive to leaf mold which takes a lot of harvest here. So a reduced use of chemicals is something we are constantly working on. Here, Ekobot can clearly be one of several future mechanical alternatives for us, says Axel Isaksson, cultivation manager Almhaga Gård
Read more about Almhaga and Ekobot at https://www.ekoweb.nu/