Spray and Soil Fumigant Buffer Zones in Canada

Spray Buffer Zones Spray buffer zones are no-spray areas required at the time of application between the area being treated and the closest downwind edge of a sensitive terrestrial or aquatic habitat. Spray buffer zones reduce the amount of spray drift that enters downwind, non-target areas. Sensitive Terrestrial Habitats Sensitive terrestrial habitats can include hedgerows, […]

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Three manageable factors that affect spray drift

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. […]

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Spraying Ginseng with Arag Microjets

In June 2013 we ran a ginseng spraying workshop and we learned as much as the growers did. Ginseng is notoriously difficult to spray: It is highly susceptible to pathogens given the high humidity and still conditions generally found under the shade structure. It forms a solid ceiling of leaves that resist spray penetrating to […]

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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 […]

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Drift is… good?

OK, fine. We confess to the shameful use of click-bait in our title. Nevertheless, it’s absolutely true: Drift can be good. The reason this statement is unsettling is because of the lack of context, which is really what this article is about. The majority of sprayer-related information available to ag stakeholders relates to horizontal boom […]

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