10 years of Dutch research acknowledges the efficiency and supreme environmental profile of HARDI TWIN.
In 1991 the Dutch government formulated a Multi Year Crop Protection Plan. A main objective of the plan was to reduce impact on the environment, with special focus on drift to the many open canals in the Dutch environment. For the past ten years intense studies of spray deposit on crop canopy and emission into the environment have been carried out by the Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Engineering, IMAG in Wageningen.
Some of the results of the studies are already implemented in practical farming. The Dutch Water Pollution Act provides legislation concerning the application technique used for the outer 14 m of the fields that are bordered by open canals. Only with the use of HARDI TWIN air assistance this buffer zone can be reduced to a minimum of one meter.
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| Drift testing over potatoes – conventional spraying. |
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Drift testing over potatoes – air on. |
The tests showed that even when using air induction nozzles (Lechler ID and Greenleaf Technologies XLTD)HARDI TWIN can give further wind drift reductions of 40-65%.
Deposit tests were carried out in potatoes and cereal. In potatoes air assistance (5/8 of full air) gave 8% higher deposit on the leaves compared to conventional spraying. Also penetration into the canopy was improved – without increasing ground deposit.
In cereals air assistance gave an average of 74% on target deposit – or 7 % higher deposit than with conventional spraying.
In a wider perspective..
- All the Dutch drift testing with TWIN was carried out at a fixed setting with full air and vertical angling of nozzles. This on one hand indicates a high robustness of the air assisted spraying technique. On the other hand adjusting specifically to the individual spraying conditions from spray job to spray job - as farmers do in practise – would offer even further advantages of air assistance.
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- A “spin off” of efficient droplet control is the unsurpassed high spraying capacity derived from higher driving speed and more hours available for spraying.
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- An increasingly better understanding of the impact of plant protection on the environment is leading to more and more restrictions on spraying in sensitive areas. Several countries have developed lists of special requirements if not having to leave large buffer zones untreated. No other application technique had proved as efficient as HARDI TWIN in controlling the spray and limiting it to the target area. Thus HARDI TWIN must be considered as the safest investment in plant protection equipment in a time with continuous introduction of new rules and regulations.
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Literature:
Zande J.v.d. et al. (2008): Spray techniques: How to optimise spray deposition and minimise spray drift. Environmentalist (2008) http://www.springerlink.com/content/38200101436l164g/fulltext.pdf
Thank you to Plant Research International for providing photos.