VIEWPOINT
purpose to date.
What has also changed since the
“early days” of demonstrating a drift
control technology is how regulators and
registrants are responding to changes in
use patterns where tank mixture is driving
complexity in study design. Labels for
specific materials and combinations of
greatest concern to regulators appear to
be more prescriptive in terms of allowable
mixtures, nozzles, and pressures. With
the output of these tests driving the
range of permissible uses for a pesticide,
it inevitably becomes more critical to
maximize both accuracy and precision of
measurements that drive risk assessments
while concurrently reducing the time and
effort required to obtain them.
Credibility: DRT and the
EPA GVT
Along with the demand to test more
varied and complex spray mixtures, the
need for more accurate and precise
measurement of effects related to nozzle,
pressure, and tank mixture selection
are required. The need correlates with
the emergence of the US EPA’s Generic
Verification Protocol (EPA GVP) which
stipulates how reliable testing should
be conducted. Spraying simple additive
dilutions in water through several nozzles
at a range of pressures is no longer
suitable. More representative spray
www.agropages.com
mixtures must be tested under conditions
shown to support more accurate and
precise measurement. Notably for
spatial techniques like laser diffraction,
application of stable concurrent airflow
was proven necessary to ensure droplet
sizes are accurately measured. This
immediately made most test facilities
incapable of conducting a suitably
accurate measurement and became
a principal consideration in the design
of Croda’s LSWT. A cornerstone of our
effort was Croda’s commitment that any
capability we create would be able to meet
the most demanding test requirements we
might anticipate.
New and varied techniques need to
be applied to conduct measurements
relevant to describing the performance of
spray quality modifiers, where in earlier
times simple droplet size measurement
might suffice. These measurements
must be made quickly on complete and
representative samples, show robustness
independent of operator skill, be
demonstrated as capable of withstanding
scientific scrutiny, and provide a high
degree of reproducibility over both
short and long timespans to build more
continuous datasets. The techniques must
be capable of analyzing and comparing
data across large experimental treatments
by reducing background variations
enough to assess small but significant
differences. Execution must be flexible
2017 Formulation & Adjuvant Technology 11
enough to handle both small and large
studies efficiently and in the same facility
configuration, with the capacity to track
system control and operating parameters
over periods when data is collected.
The requirement for human coordination
of data collection should be avoided
wherever possible taking maximum
advantage of system automation and
integration wherever possible. Finally,
the capability to produce high quality data
must be validated externally and directly
against the facilities tasked with certifying
DRT for EPA.
External validation or measurements
must be transparent and subjected to
peer review to assure regulators that
data is reliable and may confidently be
applied to important calculations for off
target movement. Beyond this, primary
spray quality measurements should be
capable of being supplemented with
additional techniques executed under
identical experimental conditions, thereby,
maximizing the range of data collection
while retaining linkage which enables
different data elements to be analyzed
and correlated with a high degree of
confidence. The capacity to extract more
information from a single measurement,
as well as provide dual concurrent
measurements to connect multiple
techniques and build better models, is
a powerful addition to the basic droplet
sizing capability that would underpin such