A John Deere 7700 wide-flow self-propelled forage harvester was on show at Grassland UK in Shepton Mallet, Somerset on Wednesday May 10, fitted with the new ProDrive hydrostatic transmission system.

This system, which will be available for all self-propelled forage harvester models in the John Deere range, is on limited release for 2006, and will be in full production for UK and Irish customers in 2007.

This year is also a pilot year for AutoTrac assisted steering on the John Deere SPFH range, and the new HarvestLab sensor using near infra-red (NIR) technology, which allows accurate moisture measurement on the move – the first such system to be made commercially available. Both of these features will be previewed at Grassland UK, with AutoTrac fitted to the 7700 ProDrive working demonstration machine.

The new ProDrive system makes the forager more comfortable and easier to drive, by removing the gear lever and park brake pedal and using the main single control lever for fully automatic operation.

It also provides much greater traction than ever before, by introducing an extra front diff-lock to work in combination with the four-wheel drive and fully electronic wheel slip monitoring systems to transfer maximum power to the ground through all four wheels – no one wheel can spin out on its own. Productivity is also increased by the ability to drive at up to 40kph on the road and 20kph in the field.

HarvestLab is fitted to the back of the forager spout and senses the harvested material as it goes past. Used in conjunction with John Deere’s Field Doc recording system, with or without AutoTrac, this provides fully automatic moisture sensing and yield monitoring to an accuracy of +/-2 per cent, and can give adjusted moisture content and yield readings on the move, together with estimates for total wet and dry yields.

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