PROFILES IN ACHIEVEMENT
The Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI) was established in 1975 to provide a unique resource to both prairie farmers and agricultural machinery manufacturers.
The Company
In addition to continuing with its agricultural priorities, PAMI evolved in its knowledge and abilities to serve the needs of both the mining and transportation industries.
PAMI provides its clients access to valuable agricultural testing and benchmarking equipment as well as first-rate testing equipment for industry.
PAMI also offers a growing portfolio of computer-aided engineering capability. Through the use of specialized software that can digitally prototype a structure, bulk material or fluid, PAMI is able to analyze the performance of a product or system.
The Achievement
PAMI is leading producer-funded research that is furthering the understanding of the effect of modern high-clearance sprayer performance on spray deposition in an effort to reduce spray drift.
The project, “spray drift management under changing operational requirements”, aims to better understand the operational parameters affecting pesticides’ drift.
High-clearance sprayers are large machines that are operated at relatively high speeds. A better understanding of their aerodynamic properties is required to maintain the high productivity of large sprayers while minimizing spray drift.
This research is funded by Alberta Pulse Growers, Manitoba Crop Alliance, Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers, Sask Pulse Growers, and the Western Grains Research Foundation, with support from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Canadian Agricultural Partnership.
In collaboration with the University of Saskatchewan College of Engineering and College of Agriculture, as well as AgriMetrix Research and Training, PAMI is:
- Working to measure (with full-scale machinery tests) and model (using computational fluid dynamics) the airflow conditions under which spray is released along with the immediate flow dynamics of the spray;
- Measuring spray drift in field conditions and establishing dose-response curves to better quantify the impact of spray drift on multiple crops.
Completion of this four-year project is scheduled for early 2022.
The goal is that this project will yield valuable information on how crops are affected by pesticides’ drift, as well as how drift can be managed from the operation of modern high-clearance sprayers.
The Team
The principal investigator of the project, Ian Paulson, P. Eng., is joined by PAMI Engineer-In-Training Justin Gerspacher. Research collaborators include Donald Bergstrom, Ph.D., P. Eng. and David Sumner, Ph.D., P. Eng. of the U of S College of Engineering, Tom Wolf, Ph.D., of AgriMetrix Research & Training and Christian Willenborg, Ph.D. of the U of S College of Agriculture and Bioresources.