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Eco-friendly, cost reducing crop spraying system

Wingssprayer: less pollution and lower spraying costs by preventing wasteful crop spraying side effects.

Society demands that agricultural entrepreneurs invest in more sustainable production techniques. This also applies to conventional crop protection methods, known for the trade-off between spraying polluting chemicals to protect crops against infestation and disease. The Wingssprayer crop spraying system is developed to tip this trade-off scale into the direction of more sustainability. The Wingssprayer achieves this by reducing the polluting and wasteful aspects of crop spraying; known as drift and runoff.

The Wingssprayer, that can be mounted onto almost every spraying machine available on the market, reduces drift and runoff with the help of its distinctive wing. This wing offers the following three aerodynamic advantages: 

  1. The Wingssprayer functions as a buffer against wind. This prevents chemicals from drifting away during a spraying session and also enables farmers to use the Wingssprayer during hard crosswinds. This provides farmers with more options to spray crops throughout the planting and harvesting season.
  2. The Wingssprayer opens up a crop. This guarantees a good division of small droplets over the leaf of a crop and results in less soil pollution through runoff. That is because small droplets don’t roll off a leaf like bigger and heavier droplets do.
  3. The Wingssprayer functions as a spoiler. This spoiler creates an airflow that presses spraying chemicals directly into the crop, making it impossible for drift—a foggy cloud containing spraying chemicals—to escape behind a spraying machine. 
Taken together, these advantages result in a reduction of drift with up to 99.8%; a reduction of toxic fumes with 95% and a saving on crop spraying chemicals up to 25%*. This is not only beneficial with respect to human health and with respect to the environment (less pollution to the soil and open water; less stench in the air), it is also  attractive from an economic perspective.

These results are obtained by Wageningen UR, references:

  • Buurma, J., Smit, B., Leenderste, P., Vlaar, L., & van der Linden, T. (2012) Gewasbescherming en de balans van milieu en economie. Berekeningen bij de tweede nota Duurzame Gewasbescherming.  Lei- rapport, 2012-26.
  • Zande, J. C. (2012). Classificatie Wingssprayer met kantdop in driftreductieklassen. Plant Research International, rapport 457.