Hort articles about spray drift and mitigation.
We’ve identified and discussed shortcomings in the content and design of today’s pesticide labels in an earlier article. From the perspective of the spray applicator, the information needed most often can be difficult to locate, anachronistic, contradictory, subjective or even missing from the label altogether. To truly encourage an applicator to read and follow the label we need a consistent, concise and […]
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. […]
Read More… from Three manageable factors that affect spray drift
Choosing the right time to spray can be tricky. Our gut tells us that spraying when it’s windy is wrong. The experts tell us that spraying when it’s calm is wrong. So when can you actually spray? I’ve always advised my clients to spray in some wind, because it has a few advantages. The main […]
The year 1989 marked my first spray drift trial under the watchful eye of Dr. Raj Grover and John Maybank. We evaluated the performance of several spray shrouds, Flexi-Coil, AgShield, Brandt, and Rogers, and wanted to measure just how effective they were. But in my heart I wasn’t interested in drift. I wanted to study […]
Drift symptoms can take a few weeks to be discovered, and to figure out the cause, people need to reconstruct the conditions during the application in question. Wind direction is the easiest. But when we consider factors like inversions, volatility, calm conditions, and others used to explain the movement of pesticides, it can quickly become […]
Read More… from What’s the Relationship Between Vapour Drift and Inversions?