Automated Commercial VR Sprayer
Introduction
Wild blueberry growers enjoy high demand for their crop but also face high risks managing a product that essentially grows on uncultivated, challenging terrain. Traditionally, pesticides are applied uniformly in wild blueberry fields. With the wet growing season and increasing pest pressure, wild blueberry growers have had to rely on pre/ post emergent herbicide application, fungicide application for leaf and floral diseases and insecticide applications to control insect outbreaks. Over-spraying in blueberry plant areas and bare spots with conventional methods may affect air and water quality, and increase production cost. Therefore there was a need to develop a variable rate sprayer for accurate spot application of pesticides to maximize profit and minimize environmental impacts. To reduce environmental risks and to reduce the cost of production, the Precision Agriculture Research Program (PARP) started developing a commercial variable rate sprayer for spot-application of Agrochemicals. After several years of phased development, the commercial prototype boom sprayer was tested in 2010 by Dr. Qamar Zaman.
Objectives
The prototype, 40-foot sprayer is equipped with 4 digital color cameras on each side of the front boom, which are attached by USB cables to the computer in the tractor. Custom software processes the images to detect weeds, bare spots and blueberry plants in real-time. In turn, these weed or plant triggering signals are transmitted to the eight-channel computerized VR controller. This device has user-programmable inputs such as a before-and-after buffer, time delay and the ground speed corrections. In effect, the flow rate can be adjusted automatically based on the number of nozzles operating at a specific time. The corresponding solenoid sprayer valve can be activated to spray crop protection product in the specific boom section where the weeds or plants have been detected. Besides the substantial crop protection savings, the researchers thought the environmental benefits on a crop that must maintain its wild and pristine image for markets in Japan and Europe. Preliminary results indicate cost savings of up to 80 per cent.
Researchers
Dr. Qamar Zaman, Associate Professor, Engineering Department, NSAC
Dr. Arnold Schumann, Associate Professor, Citrus Research and Education Centre, University of Florida, USA
Dr. Young Ki Chang (Post Doctoral Fellow).
Travis Esau (Graduate Student)
Scott Read (Senior Research Technician)
Partners
This research was funded by Oxford Frozen Foods, Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture, Wild blueberry Producers Association of Nova Scotia, CFI and Agri-Futures (ACAAF) Nova Scotia.
