Three manageable factors that affect spray drift

It’s not only field sprayers that drift. Photo Credit – G. Amos and D. Zamora, Washington State.

In 2014 one of our OMAFRA summer students designed a short-and-gritty demonstration using a backpack sprayer, a variable-speed fan and some water-sensitive paper positioned downwind at 1.5 metre intervals. The intent was to illustrate how sprayer operators could reduce the potential for off-target drift by recognizing and accounting for three factors: Apparent wind speed (i.e. […]

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Adjuvants – A Primer

Spreader/Surfactant penetrating wax paper to get to water-sensitive paper.

We can always count on receiving regular questions about tank mixes but in recent years we’re hearing more about adjuvants. Many pesticides are already formulated with a variety of adjuvants. Perhaps they are intended to improve shelf-stability, or mixing and/or product performance. A pesticide label may specify a particular name brand or generalize a category […]

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Micron Woman – Guide to the World of Spray Droplets

You just finished a great spray day. Everything felt right! Your timing and product choice were bang-on, the weather was good, and your sprayer was calibrated. But, do you know what happened to the spray once it left the nozzle? The behavior of spray droplets, and how they interact with the target, can be tough concepts […]

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Exploding Sprayer Myths (ep.4): Speed Spraying

BB8

With due respect to Mickey and Mr. Lucas, and the massive hype surrounding Star Wars Episode VII, we felt we should jump on the bandwagon. Here’s episode IV in our series of short, educational and irreverent videos made with Real Agriculture. If there’s a single take-home message in this episode it’s this: …may the force […]

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Exploding Sprayer Myths (ep.11): Drift

This video won the Gold 2019 Canadian Farm Writers Federation’s Jack McPherson Award for Electronic Media. This award is for the best video, news story or feature broadcast by a Canadian medium less than 15 minutes in length on an agricultural topic. We’d like to thank Jason Strove, Bern Tobin and the whole team at […]

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