Is UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) for pesticide application and how much is its efficency of depostion compared to conventional spraying?
In India, Where mainly water based pesticides are used and the farmers residence are within or nearby the pesticide application zone.Is it safe to use drones for pesticides application.
Bikram Jyoti There is an excellent paper on the topic, perhaps the first one, which proposes that 99.9% of the aerial spray of pesticide, particularly through UAV, does not end up on the crop, but rather lost in the environment.
Article Amounts of pesticides reaching target pests: Environmental i...
Anju Baroth Yes you are correct this is a paper written by pimental in 1995. But my question is that as per my knowledge in plant protection the coneventional pesticide application methods are far superior in pesticide depostion on target pest comapred to aerial spraying. Then why does goverment is promoting pesticide application by UAV.
Bikram Jyoti Thank you for an excellent question! However, I have two questions for you so that I can understand the origin of your theory
1) Do we have scientific data that proves that conventional methods are superior?
2) Are you sure that government is promoting the use of UAVs and its not the farmers who are using them on their own?
If the answer to both the questions is yes (please share papers for Q 1) then the situation is really serious and we need to make the policy makers aware of the repurcurssions!
Anju Baroth , Thank you for your prompt reply. Answer of the first question lies in the article of Pimental 1995 , which you have shared and there are many more. To elaborate I have only concern related to use of UAV in cereals crops. In orchards were canopy size is broader and strength of plant is stronger, UAV will work. Till now I have not came through any paper related the the optimization of of operational parameters for use of drones in cereals crops that to in Indian conditions. I have already mentioned that , Since Indian farm fields are nearer to the residential areas . Therefore health risk will be more due to drift. So UAV in Indian conditions can only be promoted , when the optimization and test evaluations can be done in the research institutes.
Secondly, I am working as a scientist in central Institute of agricultural engineering which comes under Indian Council of agricultural research.. Which is the core institute In India doing research in area of agricultural equipment's or implements. So, We have been motivated to work in the field of UAV.
Therefore, I had asked for the any research paper which has compared conventional spraying with UAV. All my answers are based on the theoretical assumptions, plant protection text books and available research papers. Therefore, In my opinion UAV can only be used or promoted after an extensive test in different field conditions.
Hello sir, we are the research team in China working on Aerial pesticide spraying.
(International Joint Research Centre of Precision Agricultural Aerial Application Technology, South China Agricultural University)
you may find some useful points from the following article by our centre.
Field evaluation of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) sprayer: effect of spray volume on deposition and the control of pests and disease in wheat
Very good discussion, and very useful information from Zeashan Khan , Abhishek Dixit and Anju Baroth .
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