Abstract
Rainfastness is the ability of agrochemical deposits to resist wash-off by rain and other related environmental phenomena. This work reports laboratory-scale and raintower studies of the rainfastness of fluorescently labeled poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) using fluorescent microscopy combined with image analysis. Samples of hydrolyzed PVA exhibit improved rainfastness over a threshold molecular weight, which correlates with PVA film dissolution, swelling, and crystalline properties. It was also established that the rainfastness of PVA scaled with the molecular weight over this threshold. These PVA samples were further characterized in order to determine the effect of the crystallinity on rainfastness. The quantification of rainfastness is of great interest to the field of agrochemical formulation development in order to improve the efficacy of pesticides and their adjuvants.
Highlights
The world faces the important challenge of securing a sustainable food supply for a growing population
The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations expects that global agricultural production will have to increase by 60% from 2005−2007 levels in order to feed an estimated 9 billion people in 2050.1 Agrochemicals are utilized to improve crop production and yield; they take the form of pesticides, fertilizers, growth agents, and adjuvants.[2−7] These treatments may take the form of seed or soil treatments or sprayed mixtures and are almost always a formulation of more than one component.[8,9]
PVA88M and PVA88H were chosen as medium- and high-molecular-weight partially hydrolyzed samples, but gel permeation chromatography (GPC) shows that the molecular weight values are very similar
Summary
The world faces the important challenge of securing a sustainable food supply for a growing population. An outline of the agrochemical delivery process and potential losses is as follows: Losses may begin during the initial spraying process; if weather conditions are not ideal, spray drift can occur.[5] This spray drift results in a waste of formulation and unnecessary pollution of the surrounding environment, not to mention the detrimental effects of unprotected crops.[6] Even when sprayed droplets hit their intended target, they may have poor retention on plant surfaces. We examine the retention of dry deposits of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA), a commercially available water-soluble polymer
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