Spray drift for the assessment of exposure of aquatic organisms to plant protection products in the Netherlands: Part 2: Sideways and upward sprayed fruit and tree crops

As part of the Dutch authorisation procedure for pesticides an assessment of the effects on aquatic organisms in surface water adjacent to agricultural fields is required. This in turn requires an exposure assessment for these surface waters. So far, in the current Dutch authorisation procedure spray drift is the only source of exposure. For this reason, a new exposure scenario was developed, which includes also input by drainage and atmospheric deposition. The endpoint of the exposure assessment is the 90th percentile of the annual maximum concentration in all field ditches alongside fruit and avenue nursery-tree fields. In this report, the state-of-the-art of the spray drift data is described for orchard spraying and avenuenursery-tree spraying. The methodology of using a matrix structure is discussed for the assessment of spray drift deposition combining classes of Drift Reducing Technology (DRT) and width of crop free zones for sideways and upward sprayed crops (fruit crops and avenue nursery-trees). Key words: spray drift, air -blast sprayer, Drift Reduction Technology, ISO22866, surface water, crop free zone, orchard spraying, avenue nursery tree spraying.