The aim of this work was to determine downwind drift of drone and ground applications spraying fine and medium droplets. The drift evaluation method was based on the ISO 22866 (2005) standard, collecting the deposited downwind drift up to 64 m from the experimental plot. The drift evaluation method was based on the deposition of droplets on artificial targets and spectrophotometry of the target washing solutions. The spray solution was prepared with water and a dye tracer. The study was carried out at the Fiorelli farm (Piraju/SP, Brazil). Applications were performed with a DJI Agras MG-1S drone sprayer (10 kg payload), equipped with Lurmark F110015 and Teejet AIXR 110015 nozzles producing fine and medium droplets, repectively, both calibrated to a spray volume of 10 L ha-1, and with a Jacto Columbia AD-18 ground boom sprayer equipped with the AIXR 110015 for medium droplets, calibrated to a spray volume of 100 L ha-1. The flight height for the drone was 3 m and the boom height for the ground sprayer was 1 m. The trial was designed to have 5 repetitions per treatment. In each of the repetitions, the drone traveled a distance of 100 m in length, performing 10 passes. Thus, the area applied in each plot was 100 m x 50 m, equivalent to 5000 m2, or 0.5 ha. In the case of the ground sprayer, the application area was 5400 m2, corresponding to 3 passes with a width of 18 m and a length of 100 m (0.54 ha). All applications of this test were carried out on the same area. In all droplet sizes, some amount of drift deposited was found on the last collector (64 m), so there was not a collector with zero drift deposit within the sampled distances. For the drone applications, fine droplets produced more drift than medium droplets. Medium droplets sprayed by the ground sprayer produced less drift than both drone applications.

Drift of drone and ground applications according to the droplet size

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