Brent Warneke

I have been working on the Intelligent Sprayer (ISS) project with the Nackley lab investigating management of plant diseases such as grape powdery mildew while also investigating ways to improve spray coverage and efficacy of the ISS on hazelnuts and nursery crops. I was recently invited to write an article for Sprayers101.com, a resource used globally to inform and provide resources to producers, to discuss my work exploring pesticide redistribution in plant tissues following application.

Pesticide redistribution is a characteristic of many modern synthetic pesticides that aids in their efficacy and reliability. Pesticide redistribution is the movement of pesticide away from its point of deposition to a different spot on or in the plant where it retains its activity against the pest or pathogen of interest. While many pesticides have redistribution properties, they are often under-studied and not always considered when choosing a pesticide product for an application.

One example of a type of pesticide redistribution is “translaminar redistribution”. This occurs when a pesticide is applied to one side of a plant (for example, a leaf) and absorbs through the plant tissue to protect the other side that did not directly receive spray (Figure 1). This can help make a pesticide application more effective especially when the crop contains dense or complex growth that is difficult to fully cover with pesticide when spraying. There are other types of redistribution that each are effective in their own way such as xylem systemic, phloem systemic, and vapor redistribution.