Sprayers101 Archive
Search our archive of expert-written, data-driven analysis of spraying techniques, equipment, strategies, and more.
What is Spray Quality, Part 2 – Describing Sprays
Hydraulic atomizers comprise the majority of agricultural nozzles. They work by forcing a liquid through an orifice, resulting in a liquid sheet that is…
What is Spray Quality, Part 1 – Measuring Droplet Size
It’s often been said that droplet size is the most important factor governing spray operation success. Both spray drift and pesticide efficacy depend to…
How to Calibrate a Drone – Swath Width Calculation
Calibration is a fundamental step in any spray application. To apply the correct product rate, we need to know how much liquid per unit…
Sprayer Productivity for Smaller Scales
Travel is an amazing teacher. It exposes assumptions and replaces them with real life experiences. On a recent trip to New Zealand, I learned…
How Much Pesticide in the Tank?
Sprayer math can be intimidating, but the effort gives solid value. When combined with a calibrated sprayer you reap the following benefits: There are…
The Ultimate Sprayer Calibration and Unit Conversion Tool
Canada, like most of the world, is officially Metric. America operates using the US Imperial system. It sounds very cut and dried, doesn’t it? However,…
Improve your Drone Spraying Productivity
Drone operational settings such as capacity, speed, and swath width are useful figures for calculating productivity, but they only describe the airborne portion of…
Product Failure or Sprayer Contamination? A Case Study
It’s unfortunate, but every year we encounter a few instances of mysterious crop injury following an application. Was it a product formulation issue? Was…
We Need Better Drift Control Technologies
Sprayer manufacturers have all but offloaded the entire responsibility for drift management to the sprayer nozzle. It’s asking too much. Sprayers have changed a…
Increase Sprayer Productivity Without Driving Faster
Timing trumps most things in crop protection. A great spray applied at the wrong time isn’t nearly as valuable as a mediocre spray at…
Determining Airblast Travel Speed – The “Air Displacements” Method
What is the “right” speed to drive when spraying? Airblast sprayer operators must know their average travel speed to calculate how much pesticide and…
Assessing wheat head coverage from Defy 3D and 3D Ninety nozzles
We’ve been here before, haven’t we? I could rehash the explanation of why wheat head coverage is important, and define the variables involved, but…
Comparing Water Sensitive Paper Brands
Introduction Spray coverage describes the degree of contact between spray droplets and the target surface area. This metric can be used to predict the…
Wind and Flight Speed Shape Drone Spray Coverage: Lessons from 3D Deposition Mapping in Wheat
In this study, 3D sampling of drone spray applications in wheat demonstrates that coverage is strongly influenced by the interaction between drone downwash, flight…
Airblast Nozzles – Distributing Flow
There’s a certain deer-in-headlights expression that creeps onto a sprayer operator’s face when we discuss nozzle selection. We sympathize with our field sprayer clients given…
How Higher Speeds Affect Drone Swath Width
Speed Study Swath width is a fundamental parameter in spray drone mission planning. It facilitates the uniform application of broadacre pesticides at the target…
A Drone’s Swath Width Tapers During Acceleration and Deceleration
It can be challenging to illustrate how a drone deposits spray. We can take a cross-section of spray deposit (that is, the swath) using…
Establishing an Optimal Airblast Carrier Volume
North American product labels may or may not include carrier volume recommendations. When they do, it could be based on a two-dimensional value like…
How to Properly Set Up a Crop Sprayer
Article reprinted with kind permission from an original article written by Oliver Hill in the February, 2017 edition of Farmers Weekly. Photos ©Kathy Horniblow. Crop spraying…
Operator Safety: How to Avoid Pesticide Hazards
A Veteran Applicator’s Questions about Pesticide Handling Time and again, after years of working with dozens of different chemicals, I would wonder to myself…
Sprayer Loading and the Jar Test
The time and attention spent during sprayer loading is a worthy investment. It ensures that the products in the tank perform as intended and…
Cleaning Your Sprayer
We all know the importance of cleaning out a sprayer. It protects a sensitive crop. It protects people working with the sprayer. It protects…
Angled Spray Nozzles in Wheat
When T3 wheat rears its head, the first rainy day brings questions about spray angles. Let’s begin with a graphic that illustrates how angled…
Best Management Practices for Safe and Effective Pesticide Application using Drones
(Updated Aug 19, 2026) Remote Piloted Aerial Application Systems (RPAAS) or Unmanned Aircraft Spray Systems (UASS) are generally referred to as drones. They are…
Tank mixing Urease and Nitrification Inhibitors in Corn Weed-and-Feed Applications
This 2023 article is based on work performed by Mike Schryver, BASF Technical Service Specialist. Nitrogen is an essential nutrient required throughout a plant’s…