Aerial spraying systems for agricultural applications BI warns against the unforeseen costs of using counterfeit

Aerial spraying systems for agricultural applications

Aerial application, or what is informally referred to as crop dusting, involves spraying crops with crop protection products from an agricultural aircraft. Planting certain types of seed are also included in aerial application. The specific spreading of fertilizer is also known as aerial topdressing in some countries. Many countries have severely limited aerial application of pesticides and other products because of environmental and public health hazards like spray drift.

Today’s crop dusting business is completely different, with million-dollar turbine-engine planes, intricate GPS systems for planning the row flights and triggering the sprayers, and well-trained, experienced pilots. But a number of factors have fostered explosive growth in the aerial segment these past few years. The advent of new corn fungicides designed to be applied at tassel has taken aerial work to a new level. Plus, advances in flight technology that allow for more timely, efficient, and effective crop protection product applications have made aerial a valuable addition to and in some cases, alternative to ground approaches.

The Advantages

Several advantages of aerial, including the ability to treat more acres per day than ground rigs; the ability to make extensive applications in busy, narrow treatment windows, especially if weather/ soil conditions are unfavourable.

Another advantage of aerial application is no soil compaction. Driving ground equipment through a field leaves wheel tracks and compacts soil particles, reducing pore space and restricting oxygen and water movement into and through the soil and root zone. That compaction can be particularly bad on wet soils, sometimes making the soil like a brick and reducing yields. Wet soils never stop aerial applicators from spraying. Moving ground equipment through a field also inevitably damages the crop, sometimes up to five percent of the plants. That damage can reduce crop yield much more than the cost of an aerial application.

The extra height above the crop canopy with aerial application can help create a more uniform spray pattern. Nozzles can be too close to their target and give an uneven application, especially when a ground boom does not stay level in rough and uneven terrain. Aerial application can also apply seed and dry fertilizer formulations more uniformly than ground application, giving higher yield potential.

Many pesticides are only effective at specific pest and crop growth stages. If a grower misses that application window, those pesticides may not work and the crop can be lost. Once application starts, aerial applicators can apply large areas much faster, spraying more acres in an hour than a ground applicator can in a day. The ability to

apply pesticides rapidly at their optimum time is a big advantage for aerial application

The past few years have also brought a host of advances in mapping software, the most notable being the ability to tie orders to georeferenced fields. Operators can create job maps in their offices more easily, then download them onto memory sticks for pilots to load in the computer in the cockpit. Today’s ag aircraft use sophisticated precision application equipment such as GPS (global positioning systems), GIS (geographical information systems), real time meteorological systems, variable-rate flow control valves, singleboom shutoff valves and smokers to identify wind speed and direction.

The use of aircraft to control important pests and diseases through selective pesticide application plays a vital role across Africa. Agriculture is one of the key users of this technology, but clear benefits for public health and migrant pest control operations have made it an indispensable tool across these applications as well. The clear advantage of aerial application is its capability to rapidly treat large areas, an essential requirement of effective pest control.

A wide range of aircraft applications are currently undertaken in African agriculture, from sugarcane ripening to fungicide applications in banana plantations. Many aerial applications necessitate the use of Low or Ultra Low Volumes (LV/ ULV). This is best achieved with rotary atomisers, also known as Controlled Droplet Application (CDA). The tight control of droplet sizes from this technology allows selection of the optimum droplet size for the target, minimising wastage to under- and over-sized droplets and increasing efficiency. Aerial rotary atomisers are either wind-driven (for fixed-wing aircraft and fast helicopters) or electrically driven (for slower helicopters). Ground-based methods for rapid large-scale applications (or at least those using higher water volumes) are very labour intensive. Although aerial applications require the use of highly qualified personnel, they scale up very effectively- reducing the workforce and co-ordination requirements in effectively targeting large areas. One of the clear successes for aerial pest control for Africa has been the control of the tsetse fly. The largescale rapid suppression of tsetse fly provided by aerial application is the first step in effective control, usually followed by odour baited traps and treated cattle to prevent re-invasion.

This combination method was very successfully employed in northern Zimbabwe in the 1980s and 1990s, opening areas for agriculture which were previously tsetse fly ‘no-go’ zones. Aerial application has also found success in both larviciding and adulticiding applications for mosquito control. In addition to agriculture and public health, aerial application is often an integral part of migrant pest control programs. For example, locust swarms and hopper bands are often distributed over vast, remote areas, requiring the rapid, large scale treatment of aerial application to achieve effective control. During the current locust plague, Micron’s Micronair aerial equipment has once again proved successful in protecting agricultural crops from devastation.

Recently, there has been increased interest in UAVs for aerial spraying. Due to their limited payload and battery life, current platforms will likely remain limited to small scale operations, relying on LV and ULV application to remain cost-effective. However, larger scale UAVs currently in development may see deployment in similar applications to those covered by conventional aircraft. It is likely these larger scale UAVs will be able to adopt conventional aerial application equipment. However, for the time being, manned aircraft application is certainly here to stay and remain an essential tool across agriculture and pest control.

A comprehensive range of specialist CDA rotary atomiser systems for ULV and Low Volume aerial spraying.

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