Unmanned aerial vehicles assist in the battle of ‘insect mouth grabbing food’

At present, it is the key period for rice flowering and heading growth in Guizhou, and also the prone period for rice diseases and pests such as rice planthopper, rice leaf roller and Sheath blight of rice. Strengthen the field management of autumn crops and respond to the occurrence of diseases and pests in autumn crops such as rice. Guizhou is promoting agricultural technicians to strengthen field technical guidance and management at the grassroots level, and actively promoting the application of new agricultural technologies, products, and machinery such as “plant protection drones” in the “pest mouth grain grabbing” work, striving to achieve a bumper autumn harvest this year.

In recent days, the agricultural department of Honghuagang District, Zunyi City has continuously organized plant protection UAVs to carry out rice disease and insect pest flight control operations. In Gongmiba District, Hailong Town, Honghuagang District, rice seedlings are growing well. The flight prevention staff poured the prepared pesticides into the water tank of the plant protection drone and skillfully operated the three drones to successfully take off. The drone shuttling over the rice field, spreading layers of rice seedling waves and evenly spraying “pesticide mist” on the leaves of the seedlings, sent off a “timely rain” of rice planting “insect bites grabbing food”.

It is reported that a plant protection drone can “fly” over 300 acres of land every day, which is about 50 times more efficient than traditional disease and pest control for farmers. A person in charge of on-site flight prevention operations said, “Compared to manual operations, drone spraying has the advantages of reducing prevention and control costs and high operational efficiency. The original workload of a few days can be completed in just a few hours, and the prevention and control effect is also relatively good, which is well received by the masses.

This year, Honghuagang District of Zunyi City has a total rice planting area of 15000 mu. By purchasing third-party services, the whole district will carry out UAV flight defense work for more than 5000 mu of rice planting demonstration area. Yi Jinquan, senior agronomist of Honghuagang District Agricultural and Rural Bureau, said, “This year, rice leaf rollers, rice planthoppers and other diseases and pests in the region are more serious than in previous years. Through the precise application of drug by UAVs for plant protection and rice fertilization operations, the level of specialization, intelligence and greening of fertilization has been improved, and efforts have been made to control early, small and clean up, minimize disaster losses, and increase security for grain production and income.”

For some time in the future, Guizhou will adhere to the mechanism of “unified prevention and control, joint prevention and control, and mass prevention and control”, continue to strengthen the tracking investigation in the field, earnestly do a good job of grain crop Pest control, fertilizer use and other related planting technical guidance, and strive to achieve accurate prevention and control, advocate green prevention and control, to ensure that “insects seize grain” has achieved results, and firmly hold the people’s “grain bag”.