TESTING AND EVALUATION OF TRACTOR OPERATED POWER SPRAYER

Plant protection equipment are nowadays gaining importance for attaining self-sufficiency in most of the crops. There is hardly any crop which can be grown without help of insecticides and pesticides. For proper and optimum usage of costly effective spraying technologies and spraying equipment should be innovated. Tractor operated power sprayer is a machinery used for developing high pressure discharge and for long target actuating capacity. Tractor operated power sprayer is less time consuming, feasible for marginal and larger farms and also it provides more effective spraying as compared to conventional as well as battery operated sprayer. In this project, tractor operated power sprayer was used for performance evaluation. In performance evaluation includes laboratory test and field test. General test deals with checking of specifications and checking of material. Short run test deals with discharge rate determination which was found 44.590 l/min (at minimum pressure 5 bar), 44.680 l/min, 43.865 l/min and 44.508 l/min (at maximum pressure 20 bar), volumetric efficiency of pump was found 84.15%. Long run test deals with the nozzle wear test and some visual observations.