ENTAM and SPISE – Two essential elements for harmonisation of testing of plant protection equipment (PPE) in European Union*

ENTAM (European Network for Testing of Agricultural Machines) is a network of European bodies involved in testing agricultural machines which aims to promote the agricultural machinery performance certification by a «third part», to implement standardised tests of the performance, safety and environmental aspects of agricultural machinery and tools, to guarantee the agricultural machinery manufacturers that their machines fulfil the present standard requirements and to allow the farmer to have the necessary and certified technical information about machinery in order to make a correct choice when purchasing a new machine.SPISE (Standardised Procedure for the Inspection of Sprayers in Europe) is an European working group that aims to harmonise and promote sprayers inspection in the European Union (EU), to exchange information on sprayers inspection activities between EU Member States, to establish a pool of experts for consultations with the European Commission (DG SANCO) and to develop common rules for which Member States are responsible (subsidiarity).Both ENTAM and SPISE represent two essential elements for the harmonisation of testing of plant protection equipment (PPE) within the European Union and are strongly supported by the activity of the Julius Kühn-Institut (JKI) (ex BBA) Application Technique Unit that has been led by Prof. Heinz Ganzelmeier until 2012. DOI: 10.5073/JfK.2014.10.06, https://doi.org/10.5073/JfK.2014.10.0

Advice for the functional inspection of the dusters

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Electronic Control of Motor Axles of Forestry Trailers

Timber transport in the forest is a very complex operation, and expensive from an energy point of view. Furthermore, in some cases, this operation can be very difficult and dangerous in unfavorable conditions of the road surface, which mainly occur in winter (frozen ground) and in spring (muddy ground). The goal of this study was to develop an innovative transmission hydraulic control system for trailer motor axle that would allow correlating the forward speed of the trailer with that of the tractor, which is not necessarily always the same. In detail, the innovative motor axle of the trailer is driven by a hydraulic motor through a pump controlled electronically. A specific software is able to correlate the forward speed of the trailer with the speed of the tractor in any operating situation, thanks to the information given by a potentiometer screwed behind to the trailer component coupled to the tractor. The innovative system developed to control the trailer motor axle provides the possibility to use the trailer with any type of tractor, not requiring long and complex adjustment of tractor and trailer, since it is completely independent from the type of the tractor used

Advances in developing a new test method to assess spray drift potential from air blast sprayers

Drift is one of the most important issues to consider for realising sustainable pesticide sprays. This study proposes and tests an alternative methodology for quantifying the drift potential (DP) of air blast sprayers, trying to avoid the difficulties faced in conducting field trials according to the standard protocol (ISO 22866:2005). For this purpose, an ad hoc test bench designed for DP comparative measurements was used. The proposed methodology was evaluated in terms of robustness, repetitiveness and coherence by arranging a series of trials at two laboratories. Representative orchard and vineyard air blast sprayers in eight configurations (combination of two forward speeds, two air fan flow rates, and two nozzle types) were tested. The test bench was placed perpendicular to the spray track to collect the fraction of spray liquid remaining in the air after the spray process and potentially susceptible to drift out of the treated area. Downwind spray deposition curves were obtained and a new approach was proposed to calculate an index value of the DP estimation that could allow the differences among the tested configurations to be described. Results indicated that forward speed of 1.67 m/s allows better discrimination among configurations tested. Highest DP reduction, over 87.5%, was achieved using the TVI nozzles in combination with low air fan flow rate in both laboratories; conversely, the highest DP value was obtained with the ATR nozzles in combination with high air fan flow rate. Although the proposed method shows a promising potential to evaluate drift potential of different sprayer types and nozzles types used for bush and tree crops further research and tests are necessary to improve and validate this method.Postprint (published version

Advice for the functional inspection of the dusters

It is estimated that about 200000 dusters are actually in use in Europe, especially in the Southern zone. As required the EU Directive 128/2009/EC, this type of machines, employed mainly for distributing dry sulfur dust in vineyards, are subject to a mandatory functional inspection as all other kinds of equipment used for pesticide distribution.Postprint (updated version