What’s the Cost of Poor Deposit Uniformity?

We’ve heard it often: calibrate your nozzles to be sure your boom output is uniform across its entire width. The downside of poor uniformity is obvious: strips of over- or under-application causing problems with pest control or crop tolerance. A graduated cylinder held for 30 s under each nozzle is the approach of choice. Several […]

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Pressure Changes Spray Angles

Soybean demo plot sprayed with a contact herbicide using 110 degree air induction flat fans at 20 psi. The collapsed spray pattern did not overlap sufficiently to burn the entire crop down, leaving a striped pattern and demonstrating the poor coverage.

When we consult a nozzle catalogue we are interested in the flow and droplet sizes produced at a given pressure. Perhaps we should also consider the effect of pressure on spray angle. We have several articles discussing the collective impact of spray overlap, nozzle spacing and boom height on coverage uniformity (Check here and here […]

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Pesticide redistribution: an important aspect of synthetic pesticides

What is Redistribution? If you’re a sprayer operator with some experience behind you, you may have applied mercury arsenate, nicotine, Paris green, or perhaps even DDT. All of these historical pesticides were effective, but they were also toxic to both the applicators and the environment. Fortunately, today’s agrochemical manufacturers produce pesticides that are effective while […]

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Coverage is King

In the case of fungicide applications, subsequent sprays fill in gaps left by previous sprays. If timing is prompt, residual activity will see you through.

We’ve often heard the adage “Coverage is King” but what does that mean, exactly? It means that in order for your spray application to yield acceptable results, a threshold amount of the active ingredient in your tank must end up on the target. But at what point have we achieved sufficient spray coverage without wastefully […]

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Broadcast Boom Nozzle Spacing

North American built boom sprayers have nozzle spacings of 20” (50 cm in the rest of the world), but other spacings such as 15” (37 cm) and 10” (25 cm) also exist. What are the reasons for these alternative spacings and do they offer any inherent advantages? Why spacing matters Nozzles are spaced along a […]

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