Abstract
It has been recognized for decades that low and inconsistent spray coverages of pesticide applications represent a major challenge to successful and sustainable crop protection. Deployment of water-sensitive spray cards combined with image analysis can provide valuable and quantitative insight into spray coverage. Herein we provide description of a novel and freely available smartphone app, “Smart Spray”, for both iOS and Android smart devices (iOS and Google app stores). More specifically, we provide a theoretical description of spray coverage, and we describe how Smart Spray and similar image-processing software packages can be used as decision support tools and quality control for pesticide spray applications. Performance assessment of the underlying pixel classification algorithm is presented, and we detail practical recommendations on how to use Smart Spray to maximize accuracy and consistency of spray coverage predictions. Smart Spray was developed as part of ongoing efforts to: (1) maximize the performance of pesticide sprays, (2) minimize pest-induced yield loss and to potentially reduce the amount of pesticide used, (2) reduce the risk of target pests developing pesticide resistance, (3) reduce the risk of spray drift, and (4) optimize spray application costs by introducing a quality control.
Highlights
IntroductionConventional (synthetic) and organic pesticides are applied to manage pests (insects, weeds, nematodes, diseases, etc.) in virtually all agricultural field cropping systems
Conventional and organic pesticides are applied to manage pests in virtually all agricultural field cropping systems.Most commonly, pesticides are applied as liquid formulations with either tractor-mounted ground rigs or manned airplanes around time of planting, or to canopies of an established crop, such as strawberry plants (Figure 1a)
Spray volume and average spray droplet size are generally correlated, and it is widely accepted that small spray droplets are less likely to penetrate deeply into crop canopies compared to larger spray droplets
Summary
Conventional (synthetic) and organic pesticides are applied to manage pests (insects, weeds, nematodes, diseases, etc.) in virtually all agricultural field cropping systems. Pesticides are applied as liquid formulations with either tractor-mounted ground rigs or manned airplanes around time of planting, or to canopies of an established crop, such as strawberry plants (Figure 1a). Pesticide spray applications with unmanned actuating drone systems have become commercially available, and are used in a wide range of cropping systems, especially in East Asia [1,2,3]. Drone-based pesticide spray applications typically involve considerably lower spray volumes than tractor-mounted spray applications [2]. Spray volume and average spray droplet size are generally correlated, and it is widely accepted that small spray droplets are less likely to penetrate deeply into crop canopies compared to larger spray droplets.
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