Low-drift nozzles vs. standard nozzles for pesticide application in the biological efficacy trials of pesticides in apple pest and disease control.

The coarse spray air-induction nozzles have documented pesticide drift reducing potential and hence pose lower risk of environmental pollution than the standard fine spray hollow cone nozzles. However, it is questioned that use of the low-drift nozzles might not provide as effective crop protection as the standard nozzles. The objective of work was to assess the pest and disease control efficacy as affected by spray volume rate and nozzle type.

Environmentally Optimised Sprayer (EOS)--A software application for comprehensive assessment of environmental safety features of sprayers.

Despite technological progress in pesticide application equipment, chemical crop protection continues to contribute to environmental pollution. Water is at risk of contamination with pesticides from point and diffuse sources and could be reduced to a great extent with a better sprayer design. The sprayer manufacturers and pesticide applicators need to take more responsibility for the prevention of water pollution and therefore they have to make environmentally responsible decisions at different stages, from designing to servicing sprayers.

Decision support tools for environmentally safe use of pesticides.

Prevention of environmental risk due to pesticide application is demanded by EU legislation regarding water and crop protection issues. The pesticide users are required to take responsibility for the environmental consequences of applications. Therefore they need to make responsible decisions at both strategic and tactical level.

Computer modelling as a tool for the exposure assessment of operators using faulty agricultural pesticide spraying equipment.

Background: Faulty but still operating agricultural pesticide sprayers may pose an unacceptable health risk for operators. The computerized models designed to calculate exposure and risk for pesticide sprayers used as an aid in the evaluation and further authorisation of plant protection products may be applied also to assess a health risk for operators when faulty sprayers are used.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of different exposure scenarios on the health risk for the operators using faulty agricultural spraying equipment by means of computer modelling.