A Bias Gantry Profiling Boom Sprayer for Orchard Protection
Abstract An air-assisted sprayer sends liquid medicine to a canopy of orchard plants for protection. However, the inherent drift in this method lowers the pesticide utilization. To meet the gardening requirements of a short-anvil densely planted apple orchard, a profiling boom sprayer was designed, and the operation requirements and prototype operation parameters of plant protection were determined. The droplet depositions in the upper, middle, and lower layers of the targets and in the inner, middle and outer rings were analyzed in field experiments. The standard deviations of the droplet deposition coverage rates on free, slender, and high spindles at different heights were 4.43, 2.82, and 5.29, respectively, and those of the droplet deposition densities were 5.97, 4.98, and 6.15, respectively. All p-values exceeded 0.05, indicating that droplets from the outer ring were uniformly distributed at different canopy heights. The average droplet deposition density exceeded 150 grains·cm-2 in the outer and center rings of the three tree-shaped targets, and reached 100.60 grains·cm-2 in the inner ring. The droplet deposition coverage rates on the free, slender, and high spindles in the inner ring were 37.41%, 36.69%, and 35.47%, respectively, indicating that the droplet penetration ability of the profiling boom sprayer meets the requirements of plant protection. The developed profiling boom sprayer has improved the inherent serious drift problem of the air blower sprayer, and has provided inspiration for the research and development of orchard plant protection machinery.Materials and Methods: water-sensitive paper produced by Liuliu Shanxia Plant Protection Technology Co., Ltd. (China); the profiling boom sprayer; a tractor; a wind-speed measuring instrument (AS856S, Shanghai Xima Technology (Group) Co., Ltd., Shanghai, China); a temperature and humidity measuring instrument (RC-4, Jiangsu Jingchuang Electric Co., Ltd., Jiangsu, China);, double-sided tape; a box ruler; a stopwatch and a scanner. The water-sensitive paper was cut into 3 cm × 2 cm rectangular units, and its back side was pasted to the apple trees of the test target with a small amount of double-sided tape. Facing the east, south, west, and north directions, papers sprayed by the inner, middle and outer rings were pasted on the top, middle and bottom layers of the fruit tree canopy (Dong et al., 2018, Fig.5a). To avoid disturbance from spray drift, six fruit trees were selected as the test targets at intervals of their tree shapes, and 648 water-sensitive papers in total were pasted.Results: After averaging over height, the standard deviations of the droplet deposition coverage rates of the free, slender, and high spindles were 4.43, 2.82, and 5.29 respectively, and those of the droplet deposition density were 5.97, 4.98, and 6.15 respectively. All p-values exceeded 0.05. The average droplet deposition densities of the three tree-shaped targets exceeded 150 grains·cm-2 in the center and outer rings. The average droplet deposition density in the inner ring was 100.60 grains·cm-2, and the droplet deposition coverage rates of the free, slender, and high spindles were 37.41%, 36.69%, and 35.47%, respectively. Averaged over the four directions, the coverage rate in the outer ring was 41.46% higher than in the center ring, and 90.87% higher than in the inner ring. Meanwhile, the average coverage rate was 34.93% higher in the center ring than in the inner ring.Discussion: The outer ring of the profiling boom sprayer evenly distributed the droplets at different heights. The growths of the droplet deposition coverage rates were similar, and the droplet penetrations in different rings were consistent. Although the droplet penetration of the inner ring was poorer in the horizontal than center and outer ring in the vertical direction, the blades of the inner ring were sprayed sufficiently to meet both the quality assessment of plant protection operations and the design operating requirements of the profiling boom sprayer.