Pesticide spraying with Drone at Ibrahimpur, an adopted village of ARS, Tornala on 08-10-2021
A demonstration cum farmers awareness programme on “Pesticide spraying with Drone” was organized by Dr. A.V. Ramanjaneyulu, Sr. Scientist (Agro.) & Head, Dr. N. Sainath, Scientist (SSAC) and Smt. D. Swetha, Scientist (Agro.) from ARS, Tornala on 08-10-2021, at Ibrahimpur, Narayanraopet mandal, Siddipet district. Mr. J. Vijay, Coordinator, DAATTC, Tornala, Mr. M. Nagarjuna, AEO, Ibrahimpur village, Mr. Devaiah, Sarpanch, Ibrahimpur village, Mr. K. Nagesh Reddy, President of Rythu Samanvaya Samithi (RSS), Mr. P. Sravan Kumar, Operations Lead, MARUT drones and team and 27 farmers from the village have participated in the programme. In this programme, a drone from ‘Marut drones’ tech pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad was employed to demonstrate spraying of pesticide (Propiconazole 200 ml/acre in 24 acres and Tricyclazole @ 120 grams/acre in 6 acres) in an area of 30 acres of paddy including ARS, Tornala monitored seed production plots. The varieties covered were JGL-24423, Telangana sona, IR-64 and KNM-118. The drone with Teejet-11002 model nozzle and 1.8 lit/minute discharge was operated at a speed of 2.7 m/second, manually. It took 20 minutes to spray in one acre paddy area and incurred a cost of Rs. 500/acre against 3-4 hours time at a cost of Rs. 800-1000/acre with conventional sprayers, excluding chemical cost. Further, it was observed that drift problem was minimum vis-à-vis conventional method. This way farmers could be shown that spraying with drone is advantageous in terms of saving labour, time and cost. Furthermore, it helps the farmers to escape from natural calamities by completing the spraying timely besides improving labour efficiency. The inaccessible and remote cropped areas and tall grown crops can also be reached with this method which can’t be done manually. In this programme, a drone from ‘Marut drones’ tech pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad was employed to demonstrate spraying of pesticide (Propiconazole 200 ml/acre in 24 acres and Tricyclazole @ 120 grams/acre in 6 acres) in an area of 30 acres of paddy including ARS, Tornala monitored seed production plots. The varieties covered were JGL-24423, Telangana sona, IR-64 and KNM-118. The drone with Teejet-11002 model nozzle and 1.8 lit/minute discharge was operated at a speed of 2.7 m/second, manually. It took 20 minutes to spray in one acre paddy area and incurred a cost of Rs. 500/acre against 3-4 hours time at a cost of Rs. 800-1000/acre with conventional sprayers, excluding chemical cost. Further, it was observed that drift problem was minimum vis-à-vis conventional method. This way farmers could be shown that spraying with drone is advantageous in terms of saving labour, time and cost. Furthermore, it helps the farmers to escape from natural calamities by completing the spraying timely besides improving labour efficiency. The inaccessible and remote cropped areas and tall grown crops can also be reached with this method which can’t be done manually.
