A groundbreaking innovation from MIT could revolutionize crop protection, slashing pesticide usage and pollution while boosting farmer productivity.
Reducing Agricultural Sprays Could Decrease Polluting Runoff While Cutting Farmers’ Costs and Enhancing Productivity
A team of researchers at MIT has developed a system to make pesticides stick to plant leaves, greatly reducing their tendency to bounce off and end up wasted on the ground. This technology could significantly cut farmers’ use of pesticides and fertilizers, saving money and reducing runoff.
Established in 1861, MIT is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
It is known for its programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
The institution has produced numerous Nobel laureates, National Medal of Science winners, and MacArthur Fellows.
With over 4,500 faculty members and 11,000 students, MIT offers a wide range of academic programs, including architecture, humanities, management, and social sciences.
The research is described today in the journal Soft Matter, in a paper by recent MIT alumni Vishnu Jayaprakash PhD ’22 and Sreedath Panat PhD ’23, graduate student Simon Rufer, and MIT professor of mechanical engineering Kripa Varanasi. The system adds a thin coating around droplets as they are being sprayed onto a field, greatly reducing their tendency to bounce off leaves and end up wasted on the ground.
According to Jayaprakash, lead author of the research paper and CEO of AgZen, the company formed to commercialize the system, ‘You could give back a billion dollars to U.S. growers if you just saved 6 percent of their pesticide budget.‘ The researchers found that by improving the control of chemical inputs into agriculture, they can deliver value across the entire agrochemical supply chain.
The technology is being deployed on farms ranging in size from a few dozen acres to hundreds of thousands of acres, and has already saved farmers 30 to 50 percent on their pesticide expenditures. The system uses a real-time monitoring system called RealCoverage to improve the controls on existing sprays, which has been deployed on over 920,000 acres of crops this year.
In field tests conducted by AgZen, the team found that they could double the amount of product on kale and soybeans just by changing where the adjuvant was, from mixed in to being a coating. This technology is not only useful for pesticides but also for other chemicals such as insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, or foliar nutrition.
Agriculture dates back to around 10,000 BCE with the domestication of plants and animals.
The Neolithic Revolution marked a significant shift from nomadic hunting-gathering lifestyles to settled agriculture.
This period saw the development of tools, such as plows and irrigation systems, which improved crop yields and allowed for population growth.
Today, agriculture remains a crucial sector, providing food for over 7.9 billion people worldwide.
The researchers believe that this technology is fundamentally changing agriculture, as the amount of food production has got to double due to projected world population growth, and every acre currently farmed must become more efficient and able to do more with less. The team at AgZen plans to introduce the new spray system on about 30,000 acres of cropland this year.
By reducing agricultural sprays, farmers can decrease polluting runoff while cutting their costs and perhaps even enhancing productivity. This technology has the potential to improve the control of chemical inputs into agriculture, delivering value across the entire agrochemical supply chain.
