New Alternative for Liquid Manure Application
CANADA - A new field injector under development at the University of Manitoba will allow farmers to apply liquid livestock manure into pockets created in the field rather than into furrows, writes Bruce Cochrane.
4 November 2009
2 minute read
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Pocket injection is a new approach to liquid livestock manure application.
Researchers with the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences have developed a prototype pocket injection system which consists of pulsing meters and AerWay rolling tines.
Dr Ying Chen, a professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering, explains the rolling tines create pockets in the soil and the pulsing meters deliver liquid manure in pulses into those pockets.
Dr Ying Chen-University of Manitoba
Pocket injection is to place manure into soil pockets.
You need to have a machine which can create soil pockets.
Soil pockets is a bunch of holes on the ground so those holes are referred to as soil pockets.
One also needs a manure delivery system which is able to deliver manure in pulses with each pulse being placed into one soil pocket.
By now there is no pocket injection being used.
It's a new concept.
The potential advantages include low soil disturbance, less manure exposed on the soil surface which is good to the environment.
Because of the low soil disturbance feature, pocket injection is suitable for grassland such as forage fields, hay fields as well as no-till land.
Dr Chen says researchers are still working on prototyping or pre-commercialization of the technology.
She says, while the concept of pocket injection has proved to be technically feasible, the technology for achieving pocket injection is critical.
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