Anti-splash additives for reducing pollution and increasing yield with agricultural sprays

由于农药和化肥可能污染环境，以及作物产量下降造成的经济损失，农业喷雾剂的脱靶应用是一个主要问题。喷雾剂偏离目标有两个原因：风把喷雾剂吹走了，或者没有粘在植物上。通过将喷嘴靠近植物并在喷雾中使用更大的液滴，可以减少风的问题。然而，使用更大的液滴会减少对植物的粘附，因为它们更容易飞溅、反弹和滚掉。幸运的是，我们小组最近的工作表明，添加极少量的聚合物（约0.1%）可以使喷雾的附着力达到90%以上，从而减少25%以上的农用化学品需求量。然而，要采用这种聚合物添加剂，还需要克服一些挑战。首先，最有效的聚合物很难溶于水，并且很容易因过度混合或化学降解而降解，从而失去功能。在这项工作中，我们的目标是增加我们对聚合物功能的基本理解，并开发出一种不受这些缺点影响的农民使用的最佳配方。

The off-target application of agricultural sprays is a major concern due to potential for environmental contamination with pesticides and fertilizers, as well as economic losses due to poorer crop yields. Sprays go off-tagert for two reasons: wind blowing the sprays away or not sticking to the plant. Problems with wind can be reduced by getting the nozzles closer to the plant and using larger droplets in the sprays. However, using larger droplets reduces sticking to the plant since they are more likely to splash, bounce, and roll off. Fortunately, recent work from our group, showed that adding very small amounts of polymers (about 0.1%)can achieve greater than 90% adhesion of the spray, and thereby reduce the required amount of agrochemicals by more than 25%. However, there are some challenges that need to be overcome to enable the adoption of such polymer additives. First, the most effective polymers can be difficult to dissolve in water and can be easily degraded by over mixing or chemical degradation, thus losing the functionality. In this work we aim to increase our fundamental understanding of the functionality of the polymer and develop an optimal formulation for use by farmers that does not suffer from these drawbacks.