Performance Evaluation of Sprayers Used for Covered Strawberry Crop

The strawberry crop shares some problems resulting from being horticultural crop cultivated on modelled and mulched lands, with narrow planting layouts, which reduce the types of machines available: hand held equipment (spray guns, spray booms, etc), or “cannon” distribution system. These sprayers produce both qualitative (uniform distribution of pesticide on and within the vegetation, ground losses) and quantitative (volume/ha; timeliness) problems. The aim of this paper is focused on the results of simulated treatment tests carried out in tunnels on strawberry crops with follow up analysis of the leaf deposits made using colorimetric techniques. Tests were made using the following hand held equipment: spray gun and two nozzle boom, connected with a hose to an hydraulic sprayer; furthermore an air assisted sprayer equipped with tangential cannon was used. Relating to hand held equipment, leaf deposits result from: a) the equipment characteristics and its positioning relative to target; b) operator velocity exchange during the treatment; c) position of the sampled leaves. Relating to cannon sprayers, leaf deposits show low capacity of penetration of the spray inside the vegetation and the need to adjust the length of the tunnel to the spray range. Finally, the ground losses are always higher than the leaf deposits, also in the case of localized treatments (carried out with the spray gun and the boom segment) owing to excess volumes/ha as regards to the effective needs of the cultivation