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 lot over the past 25 years. They have become larger, with more tank capacity, boom width, and, if self-propelled, horsepower.  They are more comfortable and ergonomic, with more sophisticated swath control […]

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Thermal Inversions for Sprayer Operators

The Earth’s Atmosphere. The illustration of the Earth is to scale, but the landscape is not. Our focus in on the Surface Boundary Layer.

In April 2014, NDSU extension published an excellent factsheet explaining what thermal inversions are, how to detect them and how they affect pesticide spray drift. That factsheet inspired this article. The Atmosphere The Earth is surrounded by a layer of air called the atmosphere. Think of it as a sheet of liquid percolating and flowing […]

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Exploding Sprayer Myths (ep.12): The Buffer Zone

In this episode of Exploding Sprayer Myths we reduce a complicated best practice to black and white… literally. Watch as Jason and Tom get a creepy lesson in the do’s and do not’s of no-spray areas. Under the watchful eye of Dr. Jim Todd (OMAFRA Industrial Crops Specialist and Rod Serling cos-player), brace yourself as […]

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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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Rainfastness of Insecticides and Fungicides on Fruit

This article was co-authored by Kristy Grigg-McGuffin, OMAFRA Horticulture IPM Specialist In view of the frequent heavy rains in many regions this season, understanding rainfastness, or the ability of a pesticide to withstand rainfall, is important to ensure proper efficacy. All pesticides require a certain amount of drying time between application and a rain event. […]

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