Abstract
Background: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) applied to agricultural plant protection is widely used, and the field of operation is expanding due to their high efficiency and pesticide application reduction. However, the work on pesticide drift lags behind the development of the UAV spraying device. Methods: We compared the spray drift potential at four liquid pressures of 2, 3, 4, and 5 bar ejected from the hydraulic nozzles mounted on a UAV test platform exposed to different wind speeds of 2, 4, and 6 m/s produced by a wind tunnel. The combination of the wind tunnel and the UAV test platform was used to obtain strict test conditions. The droplet size distribution under spray drift pressures was measured by a laser diffraction instrument. Results: Increasing the pressure leads to smaller droplet volume diameters and produced fine droplets of less than 100 µm. The deposition in the drift area was elevated at most of the sampling locations by setting higher pressure and faster wind speed. The deposition ratios were all higher than the flow ratios under three wind speeds after the adjustment of pressures. For most samples within a short drift distance (2–8 m), the drift with the rotor motor off was more than an order of magnitude higher than that with the rotor motor on at a pressure of 3 bar. Conclusions: In this study, the wind speed and liquid pressure all had a significant effect on the UAV spray drift, and the rotor wind significantly inhibited a large number of droplets from drifting further.
Highlights
Pesticide drift, a migration movement of pesticide from target area to any non-target area, has potential safety hazards for the surrounding environment, animals, plants, and people
When the liquid pressure was adjusted from 2 bar to 5 bar, the values of Dv0.5 varied from 124.46 μm to 85.95 μm, and a similar trend with pressure occurred for other droplet diameters (Dv0.1, Dv0.25, Dv0.75, and Dv0.9 )
For the impact of different wind speeds of 2, 4, and 6 m/s on the ground drift at four liquid pressures to be compared, all drift treatments and sample collection were conducted by the same operators
Summary
A migration movement of pesticide from target area to any non-target area, has potential safety hazards for the surrounding environment, animals, plants, and people. These include: (1) human exposures during pesticide manipulation are a serious concern, which have an inevitable relationship to diverse acute and chronic illnesses [1,2], for workers in neighboring areas and nearby residents; and, (2) this is especially dangerous if herbicides are sprayed and the treated fields are adjacent to sensitive crops [3]. Self-propelled boom sprayers are equipped with several nozzles mounted linearly They are suitable for application on vast land with high work efficiency [8]. Manned aircraft are equipped with advanced pesticide spraying technology, after decades of development there are still many limitations to them
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