Evaluation and Comparison of Sprayer Drone to Control Tuta Pest in Tomato Crop

Tomato moth is one of the most destructive pests in tomato farms. One of the methods to control this pest is the chemical spraying using different sprayers. In recent years, spraying drones have also been used for chemical control of pests, but the performance of these sprayers in tomato farms has not been evaluated yet. In this research, three different spraying methods were evaluated in controling the Tota pest in a tomato farm in Safadasht Karaj region in a completely randomized design (RCD) and in three replications. Experimental treatments included:  1- spraying with the tractor lancer sprayer, 2- spraying with a back knapsack sprayer (atomizer), and 3- spraying with Sprayer drone. The results obtained with Duncan's multi-range test at the level of significant of 1% showed that the consumption of solution of pesticide was 373.3, 207.1 and 8.4 liters per hectare, the rate of drift was 46.5%, 32.6% and 9.9%, the effective capacity of farm was 0.5, 0.4 and 4.9 hectares per hour, and the farm efficiency was 44.6%, 35.7% and 68.0% in tractor lancer sprayer, knapsck sprayer and sprayer drone, respectively. In terms of effectiveness, based on the number of tunnels made by larvae on fruits and the number of live larvae found after 3, 7 and 10 days of spraying, it has been found that the tractor lancer sprayer had the highest effectiveness with 82% in 10 days after spraying. The spraying quality coefficient in knapsack sprayer and drone sprayer was 2.92 and 1.22, respectively. From the economical point of view, the benefit - cost ratio was 1.93, 1.88 and 4.80, in tractor lancer sprayer, knapsck sprayer and sprayer drone respectively. which shows that the sprayer drone works better than the other two sprayers. Based on technical and economical results, our recommendation is to use sprayer drone to control the Tota pest, despite its lower effectiveness.