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ARS Home Midwest Area Wooster, Ohio Application Technology Research Engineering







Intelligent Spray Systems for Floral and Ornamental Nursery Cropsheadline bar The ornamental industry produces an abundance of flowers, nursery shrubs and trees to beautify our environment and improve our lifestyle. This abundance is predicated on the use of pesticides to protect them from pests. However, the application efficiency of conventional pesticide spray technologies for crop protection is very low. Consequently, excessive pesticides are often applied to target and non-target areas, resulting in greater production costs, worker exposure to unnecessary pesticide risks, adverse contamination of the environment, andundesirable impacts on wildlife and sensitive ecosystems. The capabilities of conventional sprayers are limited and unable to optimize spray outputs and thus cannot compensate for the rapid changes of growth characteristics in nursery crops. The industry has constantly demanded the development of new advanced sprayers that deliver pesticides economically, accurately and require minimum human inputs during the entire spray application process. The objective of this research is to develop advanced and affordable spray systems that employ intelligent technologies to continuously match system operating parameters to crop characteristics during pesticide applications. Significance of this research would be to provide critical technology to increase application efficiency and reduce uncertainty associated with current pesticide sprayers used in nursery crop production, and to achieve real cost benefits to producers, consumers and environments with newly pesticide application strategies. Floral and ornamental nurseries will be the primary beneficiaries as a result of achieving the objective, as well other specialty crops including orchards, vineyards, berries, and vegetables.Pesticide applicators and sprayer manufacturers will have access to safe, reliable and user-friendlysprayers thatdeliver pesticides more economically, accurately, timely and in an environmentally sustainable manner with minimum human involvement before, during and after applications.


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