It is important to protect potatoes from insects and diseases at an early stage of their development. Pesticides are necessary to prevent loss caused by Colorado potato beetles feeding on potato leaves. Nowadays, there are attempts to reduce the use of chemical agents to the minimum necessary level. This article describes the construction of a novel valve that applies chemicals in an intermittent stream during potato treatment. Thus, it is possible to reduce the emission of chemicals to the natural environment. The article also describes the research site where the valve was tested, provides the results of laboratory investigations on different types of sprayer nozzles and their validation. Apart from that, the degree of the seed potato surface covering with the dressing was assessed in order to select the right sprayer nozzle and working pressure. The results of field tests of the seed dresser prototype with novel nozzles showed that they effectively dressed seed potatoes while saving 2 L (50%) of the chemical per hectare. Fissure sprayers achieved the highest degree of covering (up to 78%) with the first version of the valve (without auxiliary airflow). When the innovative valve (the second solution with auxiliary airstream) was applied at a distance of 50 mm from the seed potato fall path S, the highest degree of coverage with the dressing substance (up to 88%) was observed for the ejector sprayer. When the distance between the valve and the seed potato fall, path S was increased from 50 to 100 mm, the degree of surface coverage was lower for both of the valves used in the tests.
The demand for agricultural products increases with limited access to agricultural land. As a result, there is an increase in yield owing to new techniques applied to agriculture, i.e. precise seed potatoes treatment. For this purpose, the dressing of seed potatoes was tested using the author’s method of checking the quality of spraying with dressing agent and improving seed coverage. In the hereby work, the method of image analysis was used to detect the movement of particles of working liquid. The article presents a test stand for measuring spraying time after exiting an innovative pressure-pneumatic valve using image analysis. The analysis was made using a fast Cronos 1.4 camera. The subject of the research was the construction of the station and evaluation of the work of the innovative pressure-pneumatic valve in two configurations: without the addition of compressed air and using additional compressed air.
Numerical analysis of parts of the installation for transporting the mixture. The mixture consists of sand, stones and water. The analysis concerns the possibility of reducing the flow velocity of the mixture in the installation by means of installing the blades. The article presents an analysis of 10 blades that have been simulated. Speed distributions are presented after passing through the blades and determined which slows the speed of the mixture to the best possible extent.
Even sowing of the seeds is very important because the quality of the crop depends on it. For this reason, the aim is to sow without a culvert caused by an obstruction of the seed hose. For this purpose, a patency control system has been developed for hoses that allow the seed to enter the ground. This allows to ensure the uniformity of seeding, which is very desirable nowadays. The developed method consists in mounting parallel sensors built into the head or on the output nozzles from the head and sensors in the coulters from which information will be transmitted to the monitoring system.
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