Coordinated Precision Application Technologies for Sustainable Pest Management and Crop Protection

This project continues our concept that intelligent spray technologies with coordinated strategies for delivering pesticides can enhance pesticide efficacy and environmental stewardship for affordable control of pest insects, diseases and weeds. Objectives of this research will focus on advancement of delivery systems for applying agrochemicals and bio-products in conjunction with intelligent technologies, spray droplet transport, fate of spray droplets upon target impact, epidemiology of pests and pathogens, pesticide formulation, and microclimatic conditions. Selective approaches for this comprehensive objective will be the development of: (1) advanced intelligent-decision spraying systems to be retrofitted on conventional spray systems to automatically apply the amount of chemicals as needed to reduce pesticide waste and reduce off-target loss for field and greenhouse specialty crops, and (2) comprehensive coordinated methodologies to maximize pesticide retention on specialty and traditional crops to increase production profitability and competitiveness for growers.

Meet Our Engineers

  Dr. Heping Zhu

  Dr. Kale Harbick

  Dr. Hongyoung Jeon