Abstract

Million liters of annual toxic solutions are used to combat pests and plant diseases and weeds in farms. Drift is one of the most critical problems which chemical applicators have to deal with. Wind drift would be highly controlled if the droplet size could be kept almost constant in stable atmospheric conditions.The most important factor in spraying is droplet size which is influenced by several factors including; spraying pressure, nozzle orifice diameter, the chemical viscosity and wind speed in the region. In this study factors affecting particle size have been studied using statistical methods. Nozzle orifice diameter and spraying pressure were considered as independent variables and particle size was chosen as the dependent variable. Analysis of variance showed that the effect of pressure and nozzle diameter and their interactive effect on particle volume mean diameter (VMD) were statistically significant at the 1% level. In order to compare the results estimated from regression equations and observed particle diameter chi-square test was used. Based on this test, the difference was not significant.

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