# Reduction of Pesticide Use in Fresh-Cut Salad Production through Artificial Intelligence
## 4 Conclusions  
Given that the commonly distributed mixture (amount of spray liquid for pesticide treatments) for the cultivation of ready-to-eat salads is 1000 L/ha, the tests carried out produced extremely promising results. Through the optimization of setting parameters, in the first life stage of the plant it is possible to decrease that amount up to 426 L/ha, maintaining an excellent coverage of the vegetation, with a very low wasting of PPPs to the ground. In a further stage of the plants growth, the optimal amount turned out to be 460 L/ha, still more than half of the standard. The solution described will result in many benefits, ranging from environmental to economic sustainability. First, the overall treatment requires 55% less pesticide product and, consequently, chemicals will not be wasted anymore, avoiding soil and groundwater pollution. Furthermore, the usage of an electric rover replacing the diesel tractor will decrease the pollutant gas emission, also avoiding fossil fuel consumption and reducing CO2 emissions. Future studies should strive to explore additional improvements in pesticide usage with other parameters settings as, from the tests, very promising results have been obtained also below the proposed setting reaching 265.5 L/ha use. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Test Number** & **9** & **13** & **14** & **17** & **21** & **24** & **27** & **34** \\ \hline
**Height (cm)** & 53 & 27 & 27 & 37 & 49 & 49 & 49 & 65 \\
**Nozzle distance** (cm) & 40 & 25 & 25 & 25 & 40 & 50 & 50 & 50 \\
**Number of nozzles** & 3 & 3 & 3 & 3 & 3 & 2 & 2 & 2 \\
**Nozzle type (l/min)** at 300 kPa & 0.8 & 0.8 & 0.8 & 0.8 & 0.8 & 0.8 & 0.6 & 1 \\
**Nozzle inclination** (\({}^{\circ}\)) & 0 & 20 & \(-\)20 & 0 & \(-\)20 & 0 & 0 & \(-\)20 \\
**Air inclination** (\({}^{\circ}\)) & 30 & 30 & 30 & 30 & 0 & 30 & 30 & 0 \\
**Speed (km/h)** & 2.25 & 4.15 & 3.86 & 4.32 & 2.51 & 3.12 & 3.48 & 4.00 \\
**Pressure (mbar)** & 1914 & 2694 & 2670 & 2964 & 2490 & 6614 & 4950 & 2694 \\
**Flow (l/min)** & 0.64 & 0.76 & 0.75 & 0.80 & 0.73 & 1.19 & 0.77 & 0.95 \\
**Average plant height (cm)** & 7 & 7 & 7 & 14 & 14 & 14 & 14 & 14 \\
**PWM 1** motor (\%) & 100 & 100 & 100 & 100 & 68 & 80 & 80 & 100 \\
**PWM 1 pump (\%)** & 77 & 55 & 55 & 60 & 52 & 84 & 52 & 46 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}  
* pulse width modulation.  
\end{table} 
Table 2: Parameters from the tests 9, 13, 14, 17, 21, 24, 27 and 34. **Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, D.F., G.F., M.M. and D.P. ; Data curation, D.F., S.S., G.F., L.F., S.P., L.B.B., S.S., F.S., G.C. and M.M. ; Formal analysis, D.F., S.S., L.F., S.P., L.B.B., S.S., F.S. and G.C. ; Investigation, D.F., S.S., G.F., L.F., S.P., L.B.B. S., F.S., G.C. and M.M. ; Methodology, D.F., G.F., M.M. and D.P. ; Project administration, D.F., G.F., M.M. and D.P. ; Resources, D.F., L.E.G., G.F., M.M. and D.P. ; Software, G.F., L.F., S.P., L.B.B., S.S., F.S., G.C. and M.M. ; Supervision, D.F., S.S., G.F., M.M. and D.P. ; Validation, D.F., S.S., L.E.G., G.F., M.M. and D.P. ; Visualization, D.F., S.S., L.E.G., G.F., M.M. and D.P. ; Writing--original draft, D.F., S.S., L.E.G., M.M. and D.P. ; Writing--review & editing, D.F., S.S., L.E.G., G.F., M.M. and D.P. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. **Funding:** This research received no external funding. **Acknowledgments:** We are grateful to \"Azienda Agricola C.na Baciocca of the Universita degli Studi di Milano\" and to \"AIR Lab--the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Lab of Politecnico di Milano\" for the facilities that have been made available to us to develop this project. **Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. **Appendix A**  
**Table A1. Results of all the tests. **  
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Test** & \(N_{\textit{sat}}\) & \(N_{\textit{insert}}\) & \(\frac{-}{c}\) **(\%)** & \(\sigma_{c}\) **(\%)** & \(\frac{-}{d}\) & \(\sigma