Designing and development of an insecticide applicator for the control of brown plant hopper

Abstract

The brown planthopper Nilaparvata Luqens stal. is a dangerous pest which causes, quick and serious damage to rice in South East Asia. In India a serious damage occurred in Kerala during 1973-1976and the estimated loss in this was 12 cores of rupees.

An Investigation on the design and development of an insecticide applicator for the control of BPH, by spraying specifically the plant base, at a height of about 15-20cm from the field surface, was carried out. The applicator developed consisted of two hydraulic energy knap-sack sprayers each of 16 lit. capacity a boom carrier having a length of 2.4 m made of 18 mm GI pipe flexible hose a pair of cut-off devices, 4 down pipes each carrying a set of nozzles and shoe shaped nozzle cover. The nozzle used in this study was DSD nozzle which was giving more uniform spray pattern and which could be used with minimum number of down pipes. The shoe shaped nozzle cover reduced the tilting of the boom and enabled easy movement in the field.

The boom had a total weight of 10.5 kg and swath width 2.4 m. The discharge of the boom was 1300 ml/min. at a pressure of 2 kg/cm2. From the field tests it was observed that around 450 litres of fluid was sprayed in 8.0 hours of time covering an area of one hectare. The total cost of the complete applicator was Rs.1850/- including the cost of two knap-sack sprayers. The economic analysis revealed that, the operating cost of the applicator per hour was 19.30 rupees, excluding the cost of insecticide.