About two weeks ago, we hosted the Automated Thinning & Weeding Technologies Round-Up at the University of Arizona’s Yuma Ag Center, Yuma, AZ (Fig. 1). The field day showcased the latest automated thinning and weeding technologies operating in the field at the commercial field scale level (> 1 acre). Participating companies thinned and/or weeded approximately one half of their respective demo plots 2-3 days prior to the event so that attendees could see the end result of the thinning/weeding “treatment”. The other half of the plot was used for live demonstrations the day of the event.

The performance of all of the thinning machines in the show was impressive, especially given the challenging conditions – intermittent patches of heavy weed pressure and roughly 2” nominal plant spacing with very poor plant spacing uniformity (i.e. a high percentage of the plants were closer than 1” apart) (Fig. 2a-c). I was also very impressed with the precision, speed and efficacy of the high precision spot sprayers and mechanical weeders (Fig. 2d).

If you missed the field day and you would like to see the demonstration plots and evaluate them for yourself, please feel free to contact me. We’ll be keeping the plots intact for the next couple of weeks.

Additionally, you are more than welcome to visit the plots with representatives from the companies that participated in the field day. Please contact me if you are interested. I’d be more than happy to make the arrangements. 

Fig. 2. Lettuce plant spacing in the 1-acre plots at the 2025 Automated Thinning &
Weeding Technologies Round-Up was a) tight (< 2”) and non-uniform. Automated
thinning and weeding machines were able to effectively (b) thin the closely spaced
lettuce plants, (c) identify and thin lettuce crop plants to the desired spacing in weedy
conditions and d) deliver herbicidal materials to target weeds precisely without injuring
crop plants.