A Experimental Study on Coverage Characteristic of a Self-Propelled Boom Sprayer for Paddy Field

수도작용 붐 방제기의 피복특성에 관한 실험적 연구

To investigate the feasibility of a boom sprayer in the paddy field, an experimental boom sprayer for both broadcast and directed spraying to the lower part of rice plants was developed. The droplet deposition characteristics of the boom sprayers were experimentally compared to those of power sprayer. Water sensitive papers(WSP) and a machine vision system were used to evaluate the coverage rate and droplet density. It was shown that the broadcast application by the boom sprayer was the best coverage among the tested sprayers. Coverage tate and droplet density were affected by the distance between nozzles and the sprayer ground speed, The best result was obtained when the distance of 30cm and the speed of 1.7km/hr. The directed application showed inconsistency in overall droplet distribution. The inconsistency was judged to be caused by conflict between plants and boom extenders. The power sprayer showed a very wide range of droplet size distribution, relatively larger droplets and inconsistency in cove The power sprayer was judged to be inadequate for the low-volume precision application because of inconsistency in performance and difficulty in adjusting the spraying rate. Based on the droplet coverage characteristics, it was concluded that the self-propelled boom sprayer for the broadcast application was feasible for an alternative to the power sprayer in case of low volume, precision application in paddy condition.