Support system for efficient dosage of orchard and vineyard spraying products

This paper establishes a system to support the dose evaluation part of the pesticide registration process so that growers can make more efficient use of different spraying products across a broad range of European orchards and vineyards. The system comprises: a dose adjustment model and a small database of standard target structures (i.e., regional exemplars where efficient and efficacious use of pesticide is obtained at the label dose rate). The model includes a generalised scaling group relationship between the parameters that describe: sprayer output, target row structure and spray volume deposit. The upper limit for dose adjustment is based on the environmental fate of pesticide and this is represented in the model by the ratio of maximum ground area dose rate to minimum efficacious deposit which is normalised for alignment with target structure measurements. The model is used to examine the leaf-wall-area dose rate recently proposed by the European agrochemical manufacturing industry for harmonising pesticide registration. Good agreement is demonstrated between published measurements and model predictions of ground area and leaf-wall-area dose rate variation at constant deposit for a wide range of target structures (i.e., English pome- and stone-fruit orchards and Italian vineyards). The results are used to establish standard target structures for spraying products with different uses. These standards are needed by regulators to: translate between the different methods of expressing dose rate and improve the accuracy of label dose recommendations. The standards are also needed by growers to enable: more accurate calibration of spraying equipment and prediction of the optimum adjustment of label dose rate for different orchards and vineyards. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.