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 […]
Category: Calibration
Horizontal boom sprayer calibration
Spray Patterns for Spot Sprays
Spot spraying promises to dramatically cut herbicide use. Data from Green-on-Brown (GoB) sprays suggest at least 50% and possibly 90% savings are possible, depending on weed density and the system employed. These savings are significant. But system performance depends on the nozzle selection even more than for broadcast sprays. What are the issues? Pattern Width […]
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 […]
Assessing water sensitive paper – Part 3
This is the final part of our three-part article discussing methods for digitizing and processing water sensitive paper. You can read part one here and part two here. Morphological operations We can now move on to the larger shapes, or “morphology” of the objects in our binary image. Our goal is to quantify deposits by […]
Variable Rate Spraying
Variable rate spray application is receiving a lot or attention with our increased ability to farm according to prescription maps. For dry products such as seed or fertilizer, metering is relatively straight-forward and variable rate application has been possible for many years. However, liquid product application has been more complex and requires special approaches Hydraulic […]