“Airblast101 – Your Guide to Effective and Efficient Spraying, 2nd edition” is now freely available as an ePub, or at cost via print-on-demand publishing, via www.sprayers101.com/airblast101 . The new addition has all new content, 33% longer, and more than 200 colour illustrations and figures.
Airblast 101 began in 2010 as a classroom-based workshop for Ontario’s airblast sprayer operators. It was intended as a primer and decision-support tool for operators to become safer, more effective and more efficient.
After several iterations, the first textbook edition was made available in 2015. It won the 2016 Canadian Agri-Marketing Association’s “Certificate of Merit” in the Special Publications Category. Well over a thousand copies have been circulated worldwide… but it was never really intended for an international audience.
In late 2019, working with US sprayer specialist Mark Ledebuhr (Application Insight LLC) and with contributions from NZ sprayer specialist Dr. David Manktelow (Applied Research and Technologies Ltd.), we began developing more advanced and globally-relevant content.
The familiar “Airblast 101” title is, perhaps, no longer accurate. The original emphasis was on the classic, low profile radial design developed in the 1940’s when it was recognized that pushing spray with air gave better coverage with less water. These sprayers continue to dominate in specialty crops around the world because they are simple, economical, and can operate effectively across a wide range of canopy forms and planting geometries.
But, air-assist sprayer design has evolved and diversified. With this new edition we’ve broadened the scope to include all air-assist sprayers. We hope to introduce you to equipment and practices you may never have personally encountered. We will also give you the tools to assess their relevance to your operation. This required a deeper dive into the physics of spraying, but we’ve kept the tone conversational and relied heavily on illustration to make concepts accessible.
Click here to read the complete article at onnurserycrops.com