Combining Spray Drift and Plant Architecture Modeling to Minimise Environmental and Public Health Risk of Pesticide Application 1

Accurate placement of pesticide droplets on to crop and weed surfaces is a key step in guaranteeing high quality food production. Pesticides impact on plant surfaces to give protective coverage for crops and destructive coverage for weeds. Coverage is determined by interactions between the size and density of spray droplets, humidity and turbulence of the air through which the droplets travel, the physical characteristics of the target plant leaves and the architecture of the plant canopy. There are however, increasing concerns over the effect of pesticides in the environment particularly when they move beyond a field boundary. Droplet movement (spray) models and plan