A new smartphone app, designed to help farmers, agronomist and sprayer operators prevent key pesticides entering and polluting raw water supplies – and to avoid further restrictions being placed on active ingredients – was profiled by Adama at Lamma 2016.
As part of Adama’s WaterAware initiative, the WaterAware app spatially assimilates soil type and the associated soil moisture deficit information along with forecast weather, to provide farmers and sprayer operators with a simple “Yes/No” guide with regard to the timing of spray and pellet applications and the potential risk to surface water.
“WaterAware helps farmers to identify the potential risk from applying a product on a particular day, given their on farm conditions, in order to minimise the risk of pesticides entering surface water supplies,” Adama’s marketing director, Ali Bosher, said.
Following the launch of WaterAware in 2014, the new app is a further indication of Adama’s commitment to promoting the responsible use of current chemistry which is under increasing pressure, not least from issues surrounding the levels of pesticide in raw drinking water supplies and the need for the UK to comply with Drinking Water Directive (DWD) and Water Framework Directive (WFD) objectives.
“UK agriculture has lost more than 70% of the active substances at its disposal since the early 1990s,” Mr Bosher said, “and this, combined with the increasing technical challenges posed by resistance, increased EU legislation and the lack of new modes of action, means we need to do all that we can to protect the remaining actives at our disposal.”
Jacky Atkinson from the Drinking Water Inspectorate noted that efforts to date, while achieving some success, still needed to be improved upon.
“A raft of measures have been put in place and have demonstrated some really promising results in some areas,” she said. “However, for metaldehyde specifically, the next two years are critical and by 2018 companies must assess whether they need to do something over and above the existing guidelines.”
Best practice
“It’s clear that efforts to date have been insufficient to mitigate many of the non-target, water related impacts,” Mr Bosher added. “The increasing trend of raw water exceedances for oilseed rape herbicides such as metazachlor, carbetamide, propyzamide and quinmerac – along with the slug control metaldehyde – need to be reversed. At present about 40 per cent of the 485 surface water drinking water protected areas in England and Wales are at risk of failing to meet WFD objectives.”
In developing WaterAware, Adama hopes to help avoid the need for additional regulatory measures.
“We felt that an app utilising field-based risk assessment data would complement other approaches whilst being an effective measure based on best practice,” Mr Bosher said.
WaterAware App:
- the WaterAware app uses GPS positioning to allow field specific risk assessments.
- soil classification is automatically assessed using the British Geological Survey’s MySoil-UKSO Platforms.
- Met Office weather data is used to assess the impact of spraying potential “today” and in 72 hours.
- soil moisture deficit data is taken from MORECS.
- pesticides are identified by VI and Water Authorities.
- the app is calibrated for use with OSR, winter wheat and grassland leys.
The WaterAware app is free to download: from Google Play for Android devices or the Apple Store for Apple devices.
For more information visit: www.adama.com.
