Ways Sprayer Tech Is Coming up Fruitful in Orchards
The average sprayer found in U.S. orchards, vineyards, and fields is about 20 years old, making the field ripe for advancement, writes David Eddy at Growing Produce. Several companies have accepted the challenge, though they have approached it in different ways. Here’s a look at those technologies, as well as others centered on such problems as orchard waste management.
While fruit growers have overhauled their planting methods in recent decades — such as growing apples on a V-trellis — sprayer technology has not kept pace, says Tim Schaal, CEO of Airtec Sprayers Inc., Winter Haven, FL. Traditional air blast sprayers are not designed to spray evenly in a trellis system, producing drift and waste.
“Airtec’s tower sprayers for orchards and Airtec’s over-the-row air boom for vineyards both improve spray coverage while almost eliminating upward spray drift by targeting the plant canopies with air nozzles rather than blasting from the ground upwards like other air blast sprayers,” Schaal says. “This allows growers to focus on how much product is needed on the plant to solve their pest and disease issues rather than having to over spray with complex calibrations just to achieve coverage because they no longer have to account for the wasted spray material.”
The majority of sprayers are only high volume or low volume, he says, but because Airtec uses targeted air as the carrier of the spray, the volume of spray material is based on what is needed for product efficacy rather than needing additional water volume just to carry the spray particles to the plant canopy.
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“We are solely focused on improving coverage while eliminating waste and spray drift,” Schaal says. “Elimination of waste and spray drift inherent with other types of sprayers — create the biggest opportunity growers have to save money and improve their yields.”
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