Effect of Spraying using Sprayer Robot for Cotton Crop

Abstract

Chemical pesticides have played and continue to play a major role in the rapid advancement of agricultural production. Farmers are continuously spraying the growing crop economically and profitably. Cotton crops are grown above human shoulder height at that time spraying operation is impossible to penetrate the canopy over shoulder height with manual spraying. At such stages overhead spraying was not given proper spray distribution. Mostly the chemicals do not hit actual target and cause wastages of spray material to the environment. It is necessary to apply pesticide in such manner that the maximum droplets are deposited on the target. Exposure to pesticides and poisoning is an also problematic among farming communities for their health due to side effects of pesticides. Therefore, this study was taken to solve spraying problem. First developed sprayer robot for cotton crop and it was run between two rows at constant speed by remote without any driver. The sprayer robot was evaluated for cotton crop in term of spray deposition (VMD, NMD, UC, spray coverage percentage) on top and bottom side of leaf at different height of crop. During evaluation, observed that VMD was increased with height of cotton crop and it varied from 149.73 μm to 426.93 μm, NMD was also increased with height of cotton crop and it varied from 70.60 μm to 215.99 μm, UC varied from 1.67 to 2.70 for cotton crop, coverage percentage varied from 4.54 % to 39.71 % for cotton crop.