ORCHARD SPRAYING

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5296, 8 January 1947, Page 7

ORCHARD SPRAYING

new method app'lied If experiments now being conducted in the Okanagan' Valley in British Coltumbia prove successful, air hlast utilisation by a simple, light and economic machine may be the answer as to what future methqds of spraying orchards and fields may be. A sprayer-duster of this type has been j | brought into the Okanagan Valley by the Division of Entomology, Science | Service, Dominion Department of Agriculture, writes Dr. James Marshall, of the Division at the Summerland Laboratory, and is being operated at Summerland, Penticton, and Kelowna. Xt is still in the experimental stage and consequently has undergone a number of adjustments and altera tions. Even now it is not suitabl'e for the use of the commercial orchardist. It requires a change in spraying procedure quite apart from the fact that it operates with entirely new types of spray concentrates. Nevertheless it is less expensive than a high pressure machine. At the same time, it indicates that the new type of spraying and dusting equipment will he light and moderately priced and probably operated by one or two men at a. speed flve to twenty times that of eonventional two-gun high pressure equipment. The future machine may utilise the air hlast principle, whereby f'airly concentrated solutions or dusts, or perhaps both together are pumped or injected* at little or no pressure into a po-werful current of air.