Boom sprayer optimizations for bed‐grown carrots at different growth stages based on spray distribution and droplet characteristics

BACKGROUND Pesticide losses and uneven spray distribution should be avoided as much as possible as they reduce the effectiveness of spraying and increase environmental contamination as well as costs. Within the H2020‐project OPTIMA the goal is to develop a smart sprayer for bed‐grown carrots, including optimizations such as air support and variable nozzle spacing. This paper focuses on selecting the most optimal nozzle types, spacing and height for spraying bed‐grown crops, while taking into account different target zone widths depending on the growth stage, based on spray distribution and droplet characterization measurements. RESULTS The results indicate that four bed spray configurations consisting of four nozzles per bed, i.e. XR8004/XR8004/XR8004/XR8004, AIUB8504/AI11004/AI11004/AIUB8504, AI8004/AI8004/AI8004/AI8004 and XR8002/XR8002/XR8002/XR8002, spraying at 300 kPa and recalculated to 12.0 km h−1 forward speed, are appropriate for spraying different target zone widths (ranging from 1.2 to 2.2 m) with high uniformity (CV