Weed management project “BeA” wins DLG Agrifuture Concept Award 2025

As part of AGRITECHNICA, the German Agricultural Society (DLG) honors “DLG Agrifuture Concepts” for pioneering work in agricultural technology and visions for the future.

This year, our “weed seed separation” project – “BeA” for short – was honored with the DLG Agrifuture Concept Award under the name ZÜRN SEED SELECT. The project is a joint development of Zürn Harvesting GmbH & Co. KG in cooperation with TU Dresden and EXAgT GmbH.

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Weed management within the combine harvester

Current harvesting techniques do not focus on weed management: weed seeds and lost grains are returned to the field with the chaff.

In the project funded by Rentenbank (project duration 2021-2024), a technology was developed that uses two drum sieves as a compact unit behind the combine harvester's cleaning shoe to separate and devitalise weed seeds and lost grains.  This reduces weed pressure, improving field hygiene and increasing yields.

Separating and devitalising weed seeds

The seeds fall through the drum sieves, while the straw and chaff are transported over them and returned to the chaff distributor.

The separated material is fed into a devitalisation unit and then spread back onto the field as non-germinable organic material. Thanks to the compact and modular design of the separation unit and its low power consumption, the system can be adapted to a wide range of combine harvesters without negatively affecting the combine harvester's cleaning shoe performance.

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Field trials to investigate the level of impact

The project demonstrated the technical feasibility of the method and proved its agronomic benefits with the help of large-scale field trials.

As a result, the new method was shown to reduce biomass in post-harvest growth (weeds and lost grains) in the trial plots. These improved field conditions led to yield increases of up to four per cent in wheat, which was verified in a meta-analysis over four consecutive years.