Spraying company Miller has announced its award-winning Spray-Air technology will now be available on its preferred platform, the Miller Nitro front-mounted self-propelled sprayers.
Previously, the technology is only available as an option on Miller’s Condor series rear-mounted sprayers.
According to Miller’s Australian distributor McIntosh Distribution, the first Miller Nitro sprayers with the Spray-Air system will arrive in the country this month prior to a national dealer release and will be displayed at most agricultural field days this year.
Miller’s Spray-Air boom technology, which has swept up awards at several machinery field days back in 2010, promises improved application efficiency and greater return on spraying investment for growers.
The company says the technology has helped growers in Canada achieve great results, where they have been able to spray with half the usual amount of water and chemicals. In addition to helping growers save on spraying costs, the technology is also promoting environmental sustainability.
Miller’s Spray-Air system features patented Shear Guard PLUS air nozzles spaced every 10 inches along the sprayer boom which atomises spray droplets using the Dial-A-Drop technology.
Growers have fingertip control of the droplet size, spray pattern and speed of the air blast spraying into their crops on the go.
The optimum-sized droplets are not affected by speed and pressure changes, ensuring a uniform application of chemical over the entire field.
Miller adds the nozzles blast the droplets deep into crop canopies, ensuring complete top-to-bottom leaf surface coverage.
Due to the smaller, controlled droplets and directed air blast, Miller says the Spray-Air technology allows for very efficient use of water, often in the range of 2 to 5 gallons per acre (GPA) for herbicides, and from 5 to 10 GPA for fungicides.
McIntosh Distribution’s Jon Bent says the Miller Spray-Air system with the Nitro platform offers growers a range of application options.
“They can use it as a conventional boomspray; they can use the air with the standard nozzle droplets to assist penetration; or they can adjust the droplet size and go with or without the air,’’ he says.
“They can also apply a dribble band of liquid fertiliser using the nozzles, which could allow higher application rates compared with conventional spraying.’’
According to Bent, the new Spray-Air equipped Miller Nitro sprayers are ideally suited to broadacre cereal, pulse and oilseed crops as well as row crops such as cotton and specialty vegetable crops. He adds they will also be valuable in sensitive mixed farming areas to help control spray drift.
“They will provide benefits for hitting weeds in cereals as well as crops like beans and chickpeas; for lots of diseases, where growers want good penetration; and for desiccation of canola and cotton.’’
“Growers can have problems effectively desiccating cotton – sometimes it can take up to three to four passes.
“If we can get that back to a single pass, it will be promising.’’
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