The invention and application of the steam engine changed the face of the whole world in a short period of time. ——Marx

The advent of the steam engine caused the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. Since then, mankind has accelerated the pace of entering the industrial age, and steam locomotives have become an important symbol and key tool for cultural and social progress in this era.

Has the agricultural plant protection industry also ushered in a "steam engine" that can change the industry in a short period of time? The answer is a big "YES", and a similar history will be staged again.

"Plant protection drones" and "flying defense" are hot words that have been heating up in the plant protection industry in recent years. Among them, the most popular topic is pesticide spraying by plant protection drones. An emerging industry is emerging, that is, using drones to replace manual pesticide spraying, topdressing foliar fertilizers and other plant protection operations. In a few years, drone spraying of pesticides has changed from "impossible in the eyes of the market" to "feasible", from "difficulty in development" to "hundred billions of huge plant protection market". This great change in thinking is confirming the arrival of a new era of plant protection. The future of agricultural plant protection will undergo tremendous changes due to the rise of plant protection drones.

Comparison of plant protection precision agriculture drone and traditional plant protection methods

1. Manual spraying is inefficient, high cost, and poor control effect

At present, in the production process of grain crops in China, plant protection is still dominated by manual and semi-mechanized operations. According to statistics, the plant protection machinery currently used in China is mainly manual and small machine (electric) sprayers. Among them, manual sprayers, knapsack sprayers Motorized medical machinery accounts for 93.07% and 5.53% of the domestic plant protection machinery, respectively, and tractor-mounted plant protection machinery accounts for about 0.57%. Plant protection operations require a lot of labor and are labor-intensive, and poisoning incidents of pesticide applicators occur from time to time. According to reports, 200 yuan per day in some areas of Guangdong Province has not been able to invite artificial spraying. At present, the amount of pesticides in China is increasing, the operation cost is high, the waste is serious, the effective utilization of resources is low, and the crop yield and quality are difficult to be guaranteed. Can not meet the requirements of modern agricultural development. According to statistics, China's annual output loss of grain crops caused by diseases and insect pests is more than 10% due to untimely control.

In today's serious shortage of rural labor force, most of the labor force in the season of pest outbreaks is mainly middle-aged and elderly people who are left behind. This phenomenon will cause the quality of spraying to be low, heavy spraying and missed spraying are common, and long-term backpacking operations will also harm pesticides. body, and even cause death by poisoning. The use of agriculture drone sprayer for sale spraying not only sprays uniformly, but also has good atomization effect. If an unmanned helicopter is used for operation, a strong downward pressure wind field will be generated during the operation, and the medicine can be directly sprayed on the roots and stems of plants to ensure prevention Effect. At the same time, by means of man-machine separation, pesticides avoid contact with the human body during the spraying process.

2. There is no standard for artificial drug spraying, and the amount of drug is uncontrollable. Plant protection drones can achieve precise pesticide spraying

He Xiongkui, director of the Research Center of Medicinal Equipment and Application Technology of China Agricultural University, once said, "Modern agriculture needs modern plant protection, and modern plant protection needs high-efficiency medicinal equipment." my country's summer is hot and rainy, and pests and diseases occur seriously. The annual control area is more than 6 billion mu, and pesticides are used every year. The amount of pesticides is more than 300,000 tons (1 million tons of commercial pesticide preparations are used in the market), and these pesticides are mainly sprayed by medicinal equipment. Due to the backwardness of plant protection machinery and improper application methods, the pesticide cannot be applied uniformly, resulting in extremely low utilization rate of pesticides. Only about 30% of the pesticides are effectively used, and about 70% of the pesticides not only do not play the role of pest control, but also affect the ecological environment. caused serious pollution.

Plant protection drone and agriculture can use advanced technology to control the dose of spray nozzles to achieve precise spraying; the high atomization of droplets can ensure the effective adhesion of pesticides on the surface of plants and improve the control effect.

3. Scale and mechanization have spawned the demand for drone plant protection

In the United States, a farmer can support 125 people, while China has only one tenth of that. Why? The reason is that the core technology is not mastered, the degree of mechanization is not high, and it is difficult to achieve intensive management of rural land transfer and unified defense and rule. The operation efficiency of plant protection drones of hundreds of acres per day can fundamentally solve large-scale operations and promote the process of large-scale agricultural planting and mechanization. According to the suitability of the farmland flight operation environment, foreign agricultural aviation is roughly divided into two types of operation forms: manned and unmanned. In the United States, Russia, Australia, Canada, Brazil and other countries with large arable land per household, manned fixed-wing aircraft are generally used for operation, while in Japan, South Korea and other countries with small arable land per household, micro-unmanned aerial vehicles are used. The form of aerial plant protection operations is increasingly being adopted by farmers. From the perspective of latitude and plot shape, the farmland conditions in my country and Japan are more similar. From the perspective of crop types, both my country and Japan plant a large amount of rice, so the use of drones is inevitable.

4. The application of foreign plant protection drones tends to mature

According to statistics, UAV plant protection has accounted for 54% of the total cultivated land in Japan, 50% in the United States, and the world average has reached more than 17%. These data show that UAV plant protection is not a new concept for the world. . For Japan, one of the representative countries in this industry, drone plant protection has been developed in its country for nearly 30 years. In 2012, some people in the industry estimated that there were more than 3,000 drones operating on Japanese farmland, of which 60 % of rice fields are completed by drones.