Case Study: Peter Knight, Burgate Farm, Godalming

“We’ve a lot of fields overlooked by houses, so it’s important from a public perception point of view, as much as for sound agronomics, that we need effective drift control,” he says.

His three self-propelled sprayers are used to tackle a 10,000 to 12,000ha (24,700 to 30,000 acres) workload on Burgate Farm, near Godalming, and units that he contract farms, or provides contract services to, under the Burgate Field Spray banner.

“Two of them are equipped with an air bag system but we only ever use it in field vegetable and salad crops these days,” says Mr Knight. “The GuardianAIR nozzles are so effective at controlling drift we’ve no need to use air bags in cereals and oilseed rape.”

We know the spray pattern will hold up down to as little as 1 bar

Peter Knight

Peter Knight and his main operator Steve Lake have been keen users of air inclusion nozzles since they first appeared. But they’ve switched to the new nozzle design because of its versatility.

“I’ll use a conventional flat fan nozzle for difficult targets like grass weeds where you need a very fine spray and also for fungicides if spraying conditions are ideal,” says Mr Knight.

“But the relatively small droplet size from the GuardianAIR means we can use it in pretty much every other situation – it’s probably used for 80 per cent of our spray treatments now that we’ve seen its performance in the field over a couple of seasons.”

The angled 110deg fan produced by the nozzle is used alternately facing forwards and backwards along the boom to avoid clod shadowing with pre- and post-emergence herbicides and also for T0 fungicides. The nozzles are all angled rearwards for later treatments for penetration into the developing crop canopy.

Operating speeds have climbed from typically 12-13kph to 15-16kph where conditions allow but on banks and rough headlands, the nozzle’s pattern consistency across a range of pressures makes life easier.

“If we have to ease back on the speed and the pressure drops, we know the spray pattern will hold up down to as little as 1 bar,” says Peter Knight. “We’ll still get full coverage without having to keep making adjustments.”

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