New Herbicide sprayer for tunnelled strawberries

Strawberry growing in the United Kingdom has become a highly competitive business as growers strive to replace imported fruit. Modern and highly professional agronomic techniques using both "Summer" and "Everbearer" varieties withi plants growin in raised double beds and under the protection of "Spanish Tunnels" is the order of the day.

This highly specialised crop production system requires the use of custom-designed sprayers to cope with early and sustained weed growth which must be achieved within the tight confines of the Spanish Tunnel without physical or chemical damage to plant beds.

Micron Sprayers, the pioneer of Controlled Droplet Application (CDA) spraying systems for fruit crop protection, have now designed a sprayer for weed control in the confined space of the tunnelled strawberry crop. Company Engineer Alf Ganderton together with Sales Directoy Haydn Beddows developed the new sprayer after discussions with growers at "Fruit Focus 2002".

The brand new and fully shrouded Flexidome sprayer provides minimal drift at low spray volumes to offer safe, lightweight operation and high productivity. "With our low tension spring loaded domed spray cover (shroud), we can accurately place herbicide right up to the shoulder on both sides of the bed, says Haydn Beddows. Each rig has two or four central domes and an optional "leg row" head to cope with the tunnel leg row. Micron also offer a tank agitator for the 60 or 200 litre tank.

The complete system allows growers to completely treat a single tunnel in just two passes and also to make substantial labour savings.

The Flexidome was initially trialled with excellent results at Wither's Farm in Ledbury using Micron's factory in Bromyard, Herefordshire. The Flexidome is used commercially by increasing numbers of strawberry growers including those in Essex, Kent, Hampshire, Cambridgeshire and Scotland.

Autumn 2003