International spray experts meet in Shepparton orchard

Organised by Citrus Australia and sponsored by Bayer Crop Science, the field day featured visiting Canadian spray specialist Jason Deveau, co-developer of sprayers101.com, a globally renowned website describing best practices in safe, efficient and effective agricultural spraying.

Also speaking were application technology specialists David Manktelow, from Applied Research and Technologies in New Zealand, and Mildura-based Alison MacGregor from Citrus Australia.

Topics covered included maintenance and calibration, understanding good coverage, turbulence and fruit loading, drying times, the future of variable rate spraying and more.

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Mr Manktelow said while the growers who attended produce a range of crops, they were all keen to learn more about the latest in application technology and how to improve sprayer performance.

"There are relatively few application technology specialists working in the world right now, yet it's amazing how much in common we have when we get together, but it's also really important to recognise that there's a lot to learn from other peoples' experiences," he said.

"We're finding that working across countries and sharing our experiences is really empowering in terms of finding practical solutions for problems in local industries with the equipment that you've got, and the canopies that you grow.

"There's a lot of commonality, but there's also a lot of subtlety in terms of how do you actually adapt that to specific problems, and that's what we're trying to do at workshops like this."

Mr Manktelow said having Jason Deveau in attendance was particularly valuable, as he believed the Canadian has cracked the code of successful knowledge transfer in this space through his website.

"One of the things that really attracts us to Jason is his suite of extension tools under the Sprayers 101 banner, which is a fantastic resource, full of really good information," Mr Manktelow said.

"What we're trying to do as part of our collaboration, is to provide a more Australasian flavour to that information and make it more relevant for growers in New Zealand and Australia.

"It's an exciting prospect to be working with Alison MacGregor and Jason in this collaboration, along with Bayer which has the Grower's Edge series of information resources for spray application."

Mr Deveau is an application technology specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and is commonly known as the "Spray Guy".

He said the key to the success of Sprayers 101 is simple.

"It's open source, everyone's free to use whatever they find and to write and disagree with what they see, and that evolution is what makes the site better and better," Mr Deveau said.

"Now five or six years out, we're happy to boast over 650,000 page views a year on a site that is not-for-profit and just there to improve the greater good. We're quite proud of it."

Currently his home country of Canada represents around 25 - 30 per cent of Sprayers 101 users, the United States makes up about 50pc and Australia comes in third at about 10 - 12pc.

"I think we all know that resources are limited, so an open source platform like Sprayers 101 is a sounding board for any altruistic expert that feels they have good information to share globally," he said.

"Something that we're endeavouring to change, and one of the reasons this trip has been so inspirational, is I'm going to go back to reconsider content from a more worldly perspective.

"For the Goulburn Valley growers we presented to today, we hope we've been able to shake up what they think is normal.

"Things they did yesterday may not be something they want to do tomorrow, and we want to give them universal tools that are simple and easily applied to any operation that can improve the job they do."