Agricultural Spray Drones are great at spraying plant protection products but could they also be used for greenhouse shading? We found out with some surprising results!
Coletta & Tyson Nurseries are one of Europe’s largest specialist growers of ornamental plants. With a capacity to handle over two million plants per day, they currently grow over 100 million ornamental plants each year on their site which covers over 400 acres.
In recent years they have invested into world-leading automation technology and wanted to take their next steps into the future.
So when John called, and asked if our XAG drones could apply their Spring time application of Q4 shading agent to their green houses, it sounded like an interesting challenge.
When we arrived on site we mapped out the first green house for shading, filled up the drones 20 Litre tanks and set it going.
After a couple of trial runs we soon settled on a spray spec that gave a good even coating. We were using a 1 to 9 mix of Q4 shading agent, applied at 600 Litres per Hectare with a droplet size of 285 microns and a flight speed of 4KPH, 2 meters above the glass.
You’ll notice that we even set the drone to spray when it is traversing between each run to make sure we get coverage right up the edge.
This 1 hectare greenhouse would use 600 litres of mixed agent and take about an hour to cover. So with a 20 Litre tank, we’d need to refill 30 times which keeps the ground crew on their toes, but at least they’re not balancing in the gutter on a glass roof!
When the tank runs out, the drone automatically heads back to the take off point for a quick tank swap. Then it’s straight back to work.
In between tank fill ups we did some quick calculations.
The drone will get the job done in a quarter of the time it usually takes
And will use less than half the amount of Q4 shading agent.
And that’s before you take into account the huge health and safely benefits of keeping everyone’s feet on the ground!
So was this trial a success? Well it showed that shading with a drone was safer, faster, cheaper, and that counts as a big win in my book.