Syngenta to test spray technology for agriculture and lawn care

Syngenta announced today it has agreed to license a spray technology from Cambridge Consultants to test its agriculture and lawn-care potential.

Under the license agreement, Syngenta will evaluate Cambridge’s Vortik spray technology, which is less prone to blockages than conventional nozzles and tightly controls fluid concentration and permits a wide variety of liquid flow rates to reduce waste. The particle size of spray droplets also can be controlled to reduce drift depending on the weather, vehicle speed or crop types -- a key advantage in the European Union, where regulation requires agriculture to reduce spray risk drift.

Cambridge industrial product development head Nathan Wrench said Vortik opens up a range of new possibilities for crop protection and treatment.

"As well as the benefits of in-nozzle mixing at the point of spray, the technology can be combined with a network of sensors to enable variation of a formulation based on real-time feedback,” Wrench said. “It also allows spray quality to be controlled over a wide range of operating flow rates.”

Syngenta solutions innovation head Leslie May said the company relishes the opportunity to collaborate with partners to find ways to help farmers grow more crops with fewer resources.

"We are keen to explore the potential of the Vortik technology as part of our ambition to bring winning innovation into the hands of growers," May said.