Do You think You could drive faster, but doesn't know how this would affect, the deposit on plants? Read our findings based on TESTS which were carried out

Orchard farmers wonder how does the increase of driving speed affect the quality of deposit of PPP and efficiency of PPP.  However, there is not much literature about this topic.

Suppression of harmful organisms in orchards is still based on protection with PPP. Their efficiency depends on quality of application of spraying agent. What is more the quality of application has a huge impact on quality of end product – fruits.

Increase of agricultural areas, stricter conditions of production economics, decreasing of production costs and very narrow time window for spraying, all result in a need for higher spraying speeds.

Because of different types, forms and measurements of plantations make it difficult for farmers to find the best setting of sprayer and to define the best working speed. In order to achieve the best deposit of protection agent on the plant it is crucial to optimise air capacity and to direct the airstream. Next important topic is to find working speed which is the most suitable for plantation.

We carried out test in two different types of plantations, with two different driving speeds. The primary speed was 6 km/h and the increased driving speed was 9 km/h. The fact is that because of various factors (terrain, form of plantation) it is not always possible to work with 9 km/h or more.

With higher driving speed we can shorten the time needed for application of PPP.  Furthermore, our response time to suppression of harmful organisms is also shorter with higher driving speeds.

Every year the need of shorter response time becomes more important. The farmers aim to bigger cultivations which can become a problem. Higher driving speeds are one of solutions for effective work on bigger cultivations. But we have to be careful that the driving speed is still safe – we cannot drive faster if our cultivation and agricultural equipment doesn't allow this. In cultivations which allow higher driving speeds we can save time and we all know that time is money.

 To find out more about our test and how the higher driving speed affected deposit on plants, follow our FB channel (@ZupanDoo) or Twitter (@InfoZupan) next week.