Orchard growers can reduce their spray costs while maintaining efficacy by tweaking their application rates based on the size and shape of their trees.
Terence Bradshaw, an assistant professor of specialty crops production at the University of Vermont, argues that pesticide labels have not kept pace with the shift to high-density orchards with small trees.
âThese labels were made up for legacy materials and when trees were big and there was a lot of volume to fill,â Bradshaw said in a March 23 webinar as part of the New England Winter Fruit Meetings.
Instead of applying pesticides on a per-acre basis, it often makes more sense nowadays to use a rate per volume of tree canopy.