Hooded broadcast sprayer for particle drift reduction

BACKGROUND There is renewed interest amongst crop protection professionals and regulators in the adoption of spray hoods to further reduce pesticide off-target movement during applications. Although the benefits of sprayer hoods have been reported since the early 1950s, adoption has been relatively low among farmers and applicators. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of spray hoods in reducing pesticide drift of spray solutions from nozzles typically used for herbicide applications in row crops with tolerance to dicamba or 2,4-D. RESULTS Hooded applications substantially reduced spray drift potential across all treatment scenarios compared to conventional applications. Hooded applications using the AIXR nozzle without drift-reducing adjuvant (DRA) had a similar area under the drift curve (31.5) compared to conventional applications (open sprayer) using the TTI nozzle with DRA (27.7), despite the major droplet size differences between these treatments (D-V50 = 447.5 and 985 mu m, respectively). CONCLUSION These results indicate that the adoption of spray hoods combined with proper nozzle selection, and the use of DRAs can substantially reduce spray drift potential during pesticide applications. The use of this technology can be complementary to other drift-reducing technologies.