Evaluation of Conventional Sprayers in Wheat Farms

Research on the performance of conventional sprayers in on-farm conditions is essential to the development of effective usage techniques. In this study, conventional sprayers were surveyed and evaluated for the removal of pests, weeds and crop diseases in wheat crops in the Karaj, Urumieh, Khuzestan and Khorasan provinces of Iran. The sprayers used were tractor boom, tractor lance, Turboliner, Micronair and atomizer sprayers. The experimental design was a randomized completed design and data was collected using 179 surveys from farmers during spraying. Additional data wascollected on the farms. Results show that 39.7% of the sprayers were lance, 29.6% were boom, 14% were Turboliner and 8.4% were Micronair. There was a significant difference between sprayers in poison solution consumption per hectare at the 5% and 1% levels. The maximum and minimum solution consumption was for the lance (854.2lit/ha) and Micronair (35.4 lit/ha) sprayers, respectively. The Turboliner sprayer had the most theoretical and effective capacities (11.4 and 7.1ha/h); atomizer and Micronair sprayers had the lowest capacities (1.02 and 1.3 ha/h, respectively). Spraying homogeneity for lance, boom and atomizer sprayers were not evaluated because the surface of the sensitive papers were completely soaked. VMD for Micronair and Turboliner sprayers was 398 and 441 micrometers; NMD was 189 and 123.2 micrometers; spraying quality was 2.1and 3.57, respectively. It was found that Micronair sprayers performed better than Turboliner sprayers and these two sprayers performed better than the remaining types with respect to spraying homogeneity. The greatest percentage of crop loss was recorded for the boom sprayer (10.3%).