First practical recommendations

Mathieu Massinon’s work has already led to practical recommendations for the use of spraying equipment to be formed: the size of the nozzles, the spray pressure used, the types of additives to encourage, etc. The target audience is two-fold: farmer’s advisory services and designers of new products within phytopharmaceutical firms. For the latter, applications submitted to the authorities must justify the use of terms such as ‘anti-bounce products’ or ‘encourages contact’. The young researcher does not underestimate the immensity of the task which lies ahead if this type of recommendation is to be generalised to a vast range of crops and agro-environmental contexts. ‘Many things remain to be modelled. To do so, we first need a better understanding - on a smaller scale than used today - of the interaction between the drop and the micro/nano roughness of leaves, but also the mechanisms which encourage coverage, enabled by surfactants.It is hugely complex. In addition to purely physical phenomena, there are chemical phenomena to be taken into account, such as the potential polarity of the plant and the spray mixture. 

The ultimate aim is to create models which are capable of predicting the effectiveness of the retention on the scale of an entire field. But to do so, databases are required on an entirely different scale, which are capable of taking into account the significant variability of the plant kingdom. This is exactly what Mathieu Massinon is striving to do during a post-doctoral position in New Zealand and Australia. With his expert colleagues, he hopes one day to develop models which predict both the total retention of the product by the plant (on the scale of a crop), but also the route of the active ingredient through to its vital functions and, ultimately, its lethal action. Quite an undertaking ...