Evaluación de deriva de fitosanitarios en aplicaciones terrestres

The application of pesticides is a fundamental practice to achieve maximum yield, making it necessary to optimize results while considering environmental care, such as adequate crop coverage, minimal crop damage, and accessible costs. Drift of spray pesticides is one of the main causes of unintended damage, which is why these chemical products must be applied with efficiency and effectiveness due to their complexity and hazardous nature. The objective of this work was to evaluate the drift of terrestrial applications of pesticides using different application technologies, droplet sizes—Fine, Medium, and Extremely Coarse—under two different meteorological conditions and different height spray boom, according to an adaptation of the standard ISO/FDIS 22866. Two experiments were conducted in the department of Paysandú, at the “Dr. Mario A. Cassinoni” Experimental Station (EEMAC), Ruta 3 Km 363, from May to August 2022. The experimental design of both experiments was a completely randomized design, with sampling at different distances from the applied area. The number of replications was 3 and 2 for experiments 1 and 2, respectively, corresponding to the pass of the spray tractor. The spray boom height was 0.8 m in experiment 1 and 1.20 cm in experiment 2. A decrease in the total accumulated drift at 100 m was observed when using drift-reducing nozzles: 25% reduction at a boom height of 1.20 m with an average wind speed of 9 km/h and without significant difference for the bar height of 0.8m and average wind of 4.5 Km/h.