First measurements with a lidar system specifically designed for spray drift monitoring

Pesticide spray drift is usually measured by means of passive collectors and tracers. However, there are several drawbacks to their use, related to the fact of being a time-consuming, single-point and time-averaged sampling methodology. Alternative methodologies are being searched in order to overcome these difficulties. In this line, lidar technology is one of the most promising alternatives since it can measure the spray drift in real-time, with high range resolution , requires little labour and low time consumption, and it does not need chemical analysis (Gregorio et al, 2014). In spite of these advantages, so far lidar systems have been used in a limited number of spray drift studies (Hiscox et al., 2006; Khot et al., 2011) due to its high cost, complexity and the fact that most systems are not eye-safe. This article compares the measurements obtained with a new lidar system specifically developed for spray drift monitoring with those obtained using passive collectors following the ISO 22866 standard.