Vegetable growers use herbicides to kill weeds to prevent crop loss. A University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) researcher is using artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce herbicide sprayed on crops.
“We are building multiple AI-powered herbicide application units, each of which works in different ways,” said Nathan Boyd a UF/IFAS weed scientist and horticultural sciences professor at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center (GCREC).
Targeted herbicide applications typically kill weeds by applying the chemicals only where the weeds grow. But in a new study, Boyd and his colleagues developed and evaluated a precision-spraying system designed to make sure herbicide goes through the holes that scientists punch in the plastic mulch and into the soil where tomatoes are growing.
Using what Boyd calls an “AI smart sprayer,” researchers at the GCREC showed that the new technology found the punch holes 86% of the time, which translates to a savings of more than 90% on herbicide use in tomato fields at the research center.
“This equipment applies herbicide on the soil wherever there is a hole in the plastic, because that is the only place that weeds can emerge rather than over the entire bed top,” Boyd said.
Plastic Mulch
Most farmers use plastic mulch to grow their vegetables. Plastic mulch is a sheet of plastic film that covers the soil in which crops grow.
In crops produced with plastic mulch, growers traditionally apply herbicides to the top of the entire soil bed just before the plastic is installed. But applying such chemicals over an entire bed is inefficient. Non-targeted applications increase production costs, the risk of crop damage and the amount of unnecessary pesticide in the soil.
That’s why it’s important to use herbicides properly.
“We are only applying herbicides into holes in the plastic mulch, which means far less herbicide use. This is pretty dramatic,” Boyd said. “The purpose of our technology is to develop a way to apply herbicide only where weeds can emerge — in the planting hole — rather than the entire bed top.”
Researchers must now get the technology onto farms, so growers can use it, and there are next steps.
“Further research is needed to assess the economic implications of herbicide reductions and evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the technology,” Boyd said.