ROMULUS, N.Y. The machine shop at the former Seneca Army Depot in Romulus is 280 feet long, 54 feet wide and 60 feet high -- large enough to hold a touch-football game, a missile or a Ford New Holland tractor hooked to an airblast sprayer. During the Cold War, the facility was surrounded by chain-link fence and razor wire, heavily guarded and off-limits to the local community. Army engineers used the shop to work on munitions and tanks. Their goal was political: to fight Communism. Post-Cold War, agricultural engineers at Cornell are using the space to test airblast sprayers that fight insects and diseases. Their goal is environmentally friendly: to reduce pesticide drift.
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| Cornell agricultural engineer Andrew Landers, a pesticide application technology specialist, uses a simple piece of metal to demonstrate to growers during the Cornell Fruit Field Days how introducing a deflector and adjusting its angle on an airblast sprayer can improve efficiency. NYSAES/Cornell |
"Inefficient spray technologies result in an over-use of pesticides and/or a reduction in pest control, both of which cost growers significant amounts of money," said Wayne Wilcox, Cornell professor of fruit diseases in the department of plant pathology at Cornell's New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, N.Y. "They can also result in unnecessary and avoidable levels of environmental pollution and spray applicator exposure to pesticides."
Wilcox evaluates spray deposition and its effect on pest control for several new spray technologies with Andrew Landers, an agricultural engineer and pesticide application technology specialist from Cornell's Ithaca campus. The standard airblast sprayer costs $5,000 to $35,000. They are used by 99 percent of apple and grape growers worldwide to apply pesticides.
Landers has worked with sprayers in Europe and the United States for 30 years. He came to Cornell three years ago from Cranfield University in England, and here he manages cooperative projects with grape, apple, vegetable and turfgrass growers in Riverhead, Plattsburg, Fredonia, Ithaca and Geneva.
At the cavernous machine shop at the army depot in Romulus, Landers set up the "Jean Machine" developed in his lab. The machine, which provides a visual and measurable demonstration of air flow, was designed to fit in the back of a Plymouth minivan so it could be used for demonstration purposes at grower meetings. It is made of PVC pipe, placed vertically at 4 1/2-foot intervals, strung netlike with 20 pound test fishing line on which is hung 8-inch seam binding at regular intervals. Wind patterns are also shown via neutrally buoyant helium bubbles. A hot wire anemometer measures wind speed data. Data is used to construct contour graphs to compare modifications to the sprayer. "When we turn on the airblast sprayer and run it without liquid, we can see the airflow characteristics via the 'Jean Machine' and the helium bubbles and measure it with the hot wire anemometer," said Landers.
In the grape industry, for instance, grape canopies are 6-feet 6-inches high in rows that are generally 9 feet apart. "We have measured the deposition of some sprayers that are shooting pesticides 20 feet into the air-clearly beyond the usable range. Our goal is to control drift by developing better deflection technology and then educate grower to use the 'fix' we develop," said Landers.
Generating and testing data was much more complicated than the solution which is not expensive. Landers and his colleagues at Cornell developed deflectors made from readily available sheet metal.
"They are six to eight times longer than the ones that come with the sprayers from the factory," said Landers. "Then we adjusted deflector length, the angle of deflection, and added a metal plate to the front of the deflector to prevent spray from shooting forward."
Using the new improved model, Landers estimates growers can increase spray efficiency by 50 percent. That, and the fact that the "fix" can be made for less than $100 are the two messages he will deliver to growers throughout the Northeast in winter meetings.
"Growers in the Finger Lakes may spend from $100 to $300 per acre on fungicide and insecticide sprays," said Tim Martinson, who is the extension educator at the Finger Lakes Grape Program in Penn Yan. "The majority are fungicide sprays to control four major diseases of grapes. With improved deposition, growers might be able to reduce rates and save on their spray bill. More importantly, this simple deflector will improve disease control, while preventing these expensive fungicides from being blown off into the air and landing where they aren't wanted."
For his part, Landers said he appreciates the level of cooperation his program has had with the company that bought the Seneca Army Depot. To test the technology, he needed indoor space large enough so the turbulence generated by sprayers would not bounce back and compromise the testing limits of his equipment. "I would really like to thank the Advantage Group out of Bethesda, Md., for making this testing space available to us," said Landers. "They bought this abandoned depot intending to develop it as a leading distribution center for the Finger Lakes. Their director, Pete Gorski, was willing to give me this space for our spray tests. This project is a good example of developers working with the local community."
Post-Cold War cooperation? It's a reality in the Finger Lakes.
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