Laboratory Performance Evaluation of Tractor Mounted Boom Sprayer on Brinjal Crop

Abstract

Brinjal is one of the most popular and principal vegetable crops grown in India. The most common method of applying pesticides to the field crops in the more developed and relatively wealthy agricultural regions of the world is with hydraulic boom sprayers. The working principal of the tractor mounted boom sprayer is to move the spray liquid to the individual nozzle along the boom. Due to inefficient spraying machine lot of pesticide was loss. The proposed sprayer was therefore tested using the pressure gauge and droplet analyzer in the laboratory for brinjal crop. The developed control valve assembly of boom sprayer was tested in a laboratory in terms variables viz., of droplet size, droplet density, uniformity coefficient, nozzle pressure and nozzle discharge for four level of operating pressure (278, 413, 551 and 689 kPa) and number of active openings of on-off valves (all valves open, one valve closed, two valves closed, three valves closed and four valves closed). The deposition of droplet was taken at top, middle and bottom position of plant and on upper and lower leaf surface. The nozzle pressure increases from 501.13 to 1093 kPa while closing the on-off valves of boom sprayer at 689 kPa operating pressure. The nozzle discharge increases from 0.88 to 1.35 l min-1 while closing the on-off valves of boom sprayer at 689 kPa operating pressure.