Management of Grape Powdery Mildew with an Intelligent Sprayer and Sulfur.

Wine grapes are an important agricultural commodity in the Pacific Northwest, where grape powdery mildew (GPM) is one of the main disease problems. The efficacy of various sulfur concentrations and output volumes from an air blast sprayer retrofitted with the Intelligent Spray System (ISS) were evaluated for the management of GPM. The ISS consists of a LiDAR sensor, Doppler speed sensor, embedded computer, flow controller, and individual pulse-width-modulation solenoid valves at each nozzle.

Canopy spray application technology in specialty crops: a slowly evolving landscape.

Many specialty crops are susceptible to insects and diseases, and as such are reliant on regular canopy pesticide applications to achieve quality attributes required for salability. The majority of specialty crop producers continue to use antiquated pesticide application technologies for directed canopy spraying such as the radial air blast sprayer that has been associated with chemical wastage and off-target drift of around 40% and 15% of total applied spray volume, respectively. However, precision sprayers are available that result in remarkable improvements to these parameters.