Use of Information Technologies for Precision Crop Protection

Application of herbicides can be the most effective way of weed control; however improper and excessive use can injure crops, damage the environment, and pose a threat to the applicator and others exposed. Thus, in this project efforts have been made to understand the ways to minimise the use, while getting the maximum efficiency. This can be achieved only by exploiting the efficiency in all the sequence of events for herbicide application technology. With this broad objective, we hypothesize new target-oriented, single droplet application technology as the most promising method to reduce the herbicide dose to its minimal level. Further, increasing efficiency would require understanding of optimal settings in terms of uniformity, orientation, amount, and physicochemical properties of the droplets thus produced. Potential and interaction due to use of adjuvants has to be exploited for improving physicochemical properties of herbicide treatment. Scanning Electron Microscopy - Energy Dispersive X-ray microanalysis (SEM-EDX) has been proposed to evaluate some of the respective parameters. Finally, relationship between physicochemical properties and its bio- efficacy will be identified by means of chlorophyll fluorescence and evaluation of biomass yield.