Jacob Carballido del Rey, Antonio Rodríguez Lizana, Juan Agüera Vega, Manuel Pérez Ruiz
Studies of new tools and methods for weed control have been motivated by increased consumer demand for organic produce, consumer and regulatory demands for a reduction in environmentally harmful herbicide use, and the decreased availability of farm workers willing to perform manual tasks, such as hand weeding. This study describes the performance of a new sprayer system for commercial production that integrates two herbicide applications in a single pass, selective herbicide (SH) application in narrow bands over the crop row, and a non-selective herbicide (NSH) application between crop rows. A real-time kinematic (RTK) global positioning system (GPS) was used for auto-guidance in seeding and spraying operations. Conventional broadcast SHs and experimental treatments were applied at a constant nominal speed of 5.5 km h-1 for comparison. Trials in commercial sugar beet fields demonstrated the following: (i) average hand-weeding time can be reduced by 53% (ii) the new sprayer system reduced SH use by 76%, and (iii) sugar beet density did not change significantly during treatment. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using the new RTK-GPS controller sprayer system for differential and efficient herbicide application in inter- and intra-row zones in row crop production.
© 2001-2024 Fundación Dialnet · Todos los derechos reservados