Thesis
Development and assessment of application technologies and spray-drift quantification technique in tree-fruit crops
Washington State University
Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
2017
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/102790
Abstract
Application technology is an integral part of every cropping system. Hence, three distinct problems were identified in three arena of application technology and subsequent research activities were carried out to address those problems. In first part, an application technology was developed to apply HMO-based thermotherapy for effective management of pear psylla and subsequently a laboratory scale experiments were conducted on pear-leaf bioassay to quantify efficacy of HMO-based thermotherapy treatments to control adult pear psylla. Six treatments applied to pear-leaf bioassays were 1% HMO at 40 C, 0.5% HMO at 40 C, water at 40 C, 1% HMO, 0.5% HMO and water as control. Treatments namely, 1% HMO at 40 C and 1% HMO achieved complete mortality at 3h, while 0.5% HMO at 40 C and 0.5% HMO were at 24h after application of treatment. However, HMO treatments affected leaf physiology and resulted in leaf-necrosis. In second part, commonly adopted 3-row grapevine sprayers were evaluated for spray deposition in second and third row. Two experiments were carried out at pea-size berry and veraison grapevine growth stages for evaluating over-the-row directed multi-head fan and overthe-row air-shear 3-row sprayers, with application rate of 701.5 L/ha at 689.5 kPa and 467.7 L/ha at 400 kPa, respectively and with forward speed of 4.8 km/h. The results indicated variation in deposition in row-2 and row-3, however the difference was not statistically significant. Hence, further thorough investigation is recommended to identify deep insights to take improvement measures. In third part, a dielectric based leaf wetness sensor (LWS) was evaluated for its potential to quantify the spray-drift of orchard sprayers in comparison with the two most common drift measurement methods based on water sensitive papers (WSP) and fluorescent tracer. Qualitatively, the LWS-based spray drift indicated same trend as indicated by spray drift captured on respective WSPs. Quantitatively, spray drift as assessed by LWS represented high correlation with WSP (r = 0.87) and high coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.91) with fluorescent tracer method derived drift data.
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Details
- Title
- Development and assessment of application technologies and spray-drift quantification technique in tree-fruit crops
- Creators
- Parish Prakash Nalavade
- Contributors
- Lav R. Khot (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Biological Systems Engineering, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Identifiers
- 99900525180601842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis