Agricultural Application Engineering Laboratory

MISSION AND GOAL

The mission of the Agricultural Application Engineering (AgAppE) Laboratory is to provide regional leadership in the area of agricultural engineering extension and applied research with a focus on spray application engineering. Our primary goal is to promote best practices for safe, economical, and environmentally sound pesticide spray application for specialty crops including almond, pistachio, walnut, stone fruit, citrus, and grapes.

THEMATIC PROGRAM AREAS

The 'AgAppE Egg' represents our main thematic program areas.

Promoting Spray Application Best Practices

We collaborate with UC Cooperative Extension professionals and private industries across California to provide spray application/sprayer calibration training workshops and demonstrations to the agricultural community. Between 2019 and 2021, we conducted or collaborated in over ten training workshops across California. Over 300 individuals of the clientele were directly trained most of which received continuing education credits for their certification.

Developing & Evaluating Spray Application Techniques & Technologies

Effective spray application requires sufficient spray deposit on the target crop to perform the pest control activity. We develop through applied research practical techniques and engineering solutions that are effective for achieving high spray application efficiency, that is, high on-target deposition and coverage with less spray drift and ground loss. Between 2019 and 2021, we conducted five major field experiments in almond, citrus, and grape to evaluate deposition and drift from airblast spray applications. We also collaborated in field testing of drift mitigation techniques and technologies.

Developing & Deploying Spray Application Decision Support Tools

The complex nature of spray application under field conditions often limits the ability to recognize/use best practices for increasing application efficiency and results in inefficient application, low productivity, and negative environmental impact. We create models to extend knowledge gained from field data or to fill in spray application knowledge gaps and develop decision tools in the form of computer applications, online calculators, and mobile apps to enhance decision making in meeting these challenges. Since 2019, we have disseminated the CitrusSprayEx expert system computer application online in downloadable form and through several training workshops for planning and evaluating airblast spray applications in citrus and other tree crops. We have also developed the Airblast Spray Advisor and Airblast Spray Planner web apps to reduce the guesswork to ensure more efficient and environmentally sound spray application practices.