Assessment of the influence of working pressure and application rate on pesticide spray application with a hand-held spray gun on greenhouse pepper crops
Introduction
In Almería (S Spain), some 29,597 ha of greenhouses produce approximately 3,199,283 tonnes of different species of horticultural plants, primarily tomato and pepper (Cabrera et al., 2015). Although biological pest-control systems are on the rise, augmenting the use of beneficial insects to control pests and diseases, it is still necessary to use chemical control, whether alone or in combination with other integrated production systems.
For chemical pest control, a critical factor is the selection of the equipment to be used. For the application of pesticides in greenhouses, there are self-propelled autonomous machines (Balsari et al., 2012, Guzmán et al., 2008, González et al., 2009) as well as manually pulled trolleys equipped with vertical spray booms (Llop et al., 2015a, Llop et al., 2015b, Sánchez-Hermosilla et al., 2011, Sánchez-Hermosilla et al., 2012, Nuyttens et al., 2004b), which provide good results for coverage, penetration, and uniformity. Despite the advantages of advanced machinery, the use of low-technology equipment remains widespread, including spray guns, in greenhouses in different parts of Europe, such as Belgium, Italy, and Spain (Goossens et al., 2004, Cerruto et al., 2009a, Céspedes-Lopez et al., 2009), primarily for their ease of use and low economic cost. However, such spray systems often prove deficient, being used normally at a high working pressure with excessive application volumes (Cerruto et al., 2009b), resulting ingreat losses to the soil (Sánchez-Hermosilla et al., 2011, Sánchez-Hermosilla et al., 2012) while increasing exposure of the operator (Nuyttens et al., 2004a, Nuyttens et al., 2009a, An et al., 2015, Tsakirakis et al., 2010). Therefore, it is important for this equipment to be properly calibrated and to be used correctly for a sustainable use of pesticides and thereby reduce risks to the environment and human health (Balsari, 1999, Fernández et al., 2012, Cerruto et al., 2008, Páez et al., 2010, García-García et al., 2016, Parrón et al., 2014).
In south-eastern Spain, the equipment most commonly used is the hand-held spray lance with a double flat fan nozzle, given that its use is somewhat more effective than those of a conical nozzle (Garzón et al., 2000). Derksen et al. (2001) observed that, on increasing the application rate, coverage improved on the upper side of the leaf but not on the underside, where the great majority of pests and diseases develop. In a study made in a tomato crop, Lee et al. (2000) identified a threshold to the application rate (2800 L ha−1) beyond which deposition fails to increase. In previous studies evaluating the functioning of spray lances in a tomato crop, Sánchez-Hermosilla et al. (2013), reported that high pressures offered no advantage over lower pressures.
In the present work, the way in which working pressure and volume application rate influence deposition in the plant canopy were evaluated and also losses to the soil were assessed when a hand-held spray lance was used in a greenhouse pepper crop. The aim was to optimise application in order to make the use of this low-technology equipment as efficient as possible. For this, it was necessary to determine which working pressure performs best and whether is possible to reduce the application rate and achieve the same deposition in the canopy as with the application rate usually used by farmers.
Section snippets
Experimental design
The tests were conducted at the experimental farm of the Fundación UAL-ANECOOP of the University of Almería (36°52′N, 2°17′W), in a greenhouse of 1800 m2 (45 × 40 m) bisected by a central east-to-west lane 2 m wide perpendicular to the crop rows which were 20 m long in the northern section and 18 m long in the southern section (Fig. 1). For spraying, a hand-held spray lance equipped with 2 or 4 twin flat fan nozzles (Novi Fan S.L., Almería, Spain) was connected through a hose 30 m long and
Pressure assessment
Table 5 presents the mean normalized deposition data on the crop, as well as losses to the soil. It can be seen that P15 application gave 11% and 19% higher deposition on the crop than P20 (the reference application) in the first and second stage respectively, but without significant differences. The application at the lowest pressure (P10) gave results without significant differences, being somewhat lower than in the P15 application but better than with the reference rate, in both trials.
Acknowledgements
This work has been supported by the Andalusian Government under grant P12-AGR-773 (co-financed with FEDER funds of the European Union).
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