Taking down drift: Applicators need to revisit basic spray practices to reduce drift, but they can also look forward to re-tooling of classic herbicides to help

摘要

WHILE it's been a bane of crop protection for decades, off-tar-get spray may finally be meeting its match. Advances in equipment, chemistry and spray techniques are coming together like never before this year, and application experts we talked with expressed a new high level of excitement about and hope for multiple strategies to deal with the problem. First, there's a growing movement to retrain applicators in light of increasing weed and insect challenges, including off-target spray. A key in controlling drift is using best management practices, some very elementary, some more cutting-edge, says Bob Wolf, retired application technology specialist at Kansas State University and now owner of Wolf Consulting and Research LLC, Mahomet, IL. For instance a simple part of spraying is calibration, and some applicators don't do it, he says. Even the best brand-new units need tweaking before they actually hit the field.