Studies on performance evaluation of battery-cum-manually operated boom sprayer under lab and field condition
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Date
2021-11
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G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand)
Abstract
Plant protection activities are most important practices during crop production. The application of fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides is one of the most recurrent and significant tasks in agriculture. Conventional agricultural spraying techniques have made the inconsistency between economic growth and environmental protection in agricultural production. For pesticide application,the parameters like area of the plant canopy, area of a plant leaf, height of the crop, and volume of plants related to plant protection product applications are very important for obtaining better results.Common plant protection equipments include Knapsack sprayers (manual and power operated), foot sprayer, tractor mounted sprayer in India. Most of the sprayers spray chemical from the top of the plant which causes improper spray distribution in case of crops with dense or medium canopy. The pest and insets present inside the canopy and under the leaves are not affected by this spray which leads to infestation and damage even after spraying. Several problems due to use of conventional backpack sprayers arise. Fatigue is produced to the operator due to carry of heavyweight backpack sprayer for a long time. For reducing the above problem, it was felt to develop and modify low cost battery cum manually operated boom sprayer. It was suitable for small land holding farmers and had low cost of operation. The performance of the modified sprayer was evaluated in both laboratory and field condition to ensure that the objectives are fulfilled. Under laboratory conditions, sprayer was tested in both manual and battery mode of operation. The independent parameters for lab test were nozzle type (flat fan), stroke length (full and medium), speed of operation (1, 1.5 and 2 km/h), nozzle height (300 mm), and level of tank (1/4th ,1/2th, 3/4th and full). The boom sprayer performance evaluation was evaluated in the Dept. of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering on the concrete surface and discharge rate as well as pressure was measured. The modified boom sprayer should be operated at 1 to 1.5 km/h speed of travel at any selected level of tank at full stroke length (i.e. 45 mm) in manual mode operation. The machine was tested in the field on turmeric crop at three different speeds (1, 1.5 and 2 km/h). The water sensitive paper were tagged at the different positions of the plant canopy and to check their percentage coverage, volume median diameter, image area, deposits/cm2 and deposition μL/cm2, Deposit scan software is used. This software is free and open source by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) for the spot evaluation of spray quality. It was found that, in field condition, the developed sprayer should be operated at 1.5 km/h speed of travel and with the help of these flat fan nozzles we could get the desired image area, deposits/cm2, and deposition for the different position of plant canopy as well as sufficient to eradicate pests and diseases.