KWH sprayer makes spraying three times faster and many times cleaner
Applied Plant Research (PPO) has succeeded in developing a spraying technique that reduces spray drift by over 95 per cent. This makes them the first in the worldwide fruit cultivation. And the new KWH sprayer also enables fruit growers to speed up their spraying operations by three times.
Looking back, it always sounds simple. The researchers of PPO have only been combining different techniques. In doing so they achieved a more than 95 per cent reduction in the spray drift of pesticides. Something that had never been achieved before.
It is very difficult to achieve sufficient drift reduction if fruit cultivation. Especially in spring - when the trees are not yet bearing leaves - large amounts of pesticides are blown about which results in too large amounts of pesticides ending up in ditches.
Spray mist clouds extinguishing each other
What did the researchers do? As a start they took a three-row sprayer; this sprays at two sides of a tree which makes that the spray mist droplets are blowing towards each other. When droplets are blown about they get into contact with the droplets of the other mist. This keeps most droplets in the tree.
The researchers are combining the three-row sprayer with low-drift nozzles and an adjusted amount of air support. This is how they achieve their spectacular reduction in spray drift.
Three times faster
The sprayer is three times more expensive than a normal sprayer but the fruit grower is working two to three times faster. This is especially important for spraying operations that require speed. Such as scab. When scab hits an orchard the grower has no more than a few hours to get the products into the tree. The three-row sprayer makes this possible for all his orchards.
The sprayer is an outcome for fruit growers in tourist areas because the traditional spray mists are no longer visible; growers are no longer seen spraying.