Solar-powered sprayer maker Solinftec has developed a docking station that allows tank refills to be completed automatically.

This means the Solix can work for several days without human intervention, provided there’s enough sun to keep the on-board batteries topped up.

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The gawky, GPS-guided outfit carries a lid of four photovoltaic panels, with the energy they collect used to power the two front wheels and the spray pack.

Cameras monitor the crop ahead of a 12m boom, recording plant heights and stem counts, and initiating a squirt of herbicide whenever a weed is detected.

This sophisticated green-on-green system can spot unwanted species in maize, soya beans and wide-row wheat crops, and a similar model for oilseed rape is currently in the works.

Empty weight is a modest 550kg, plus the contents of a 180-litre twin tank.

List price is about £40,000 and there’s no ongoing subscription so, in theory, a farm could run a fleet of them in place of one conventional sprayer.