The Harrington Seed Destructor (HSD) is now an internationally known tool, but it all started more than two decades ago, as the bright idea of an Australian farmer named Ray Harrington.
Harrington was tired of spreading ryegrass seeds when harvesting his wheat and fighting weed resistance. Together with industry and academia, he created his first pull-behind prototype, the standalone Harrington Seed Destructor. Since then, an integrated unit, the iHSD, has been developed.
GROW weed scientists have been working with the integrated Harrington Seed Destructor (iHSD), which is designed to destroy weed seeds that enter through a combine header. Two cage mills, installed on the rear of the combine and running at a high speed, crush the chaff fraction of the crop residue leaving the combine, pulverizing the weed seeds inside it.
GROW researchers visited Australia in 2019, and got to hear Harrington tell the story of how his dream of crushing the weed seedbank became a reality. Watch this video for more:
Learn more about harvest weed seed control at GROW’s webpage here: https://growiwm.org/how-harvest-weed-seed-control/
Story and video: Claudio Rubione, GROW
