This invention is about an agricultural pesticide sprayer, which uses solar energy as source of power for spraying. It consists of a solar panel of 20 W capacity, a 12V DC battery, charged by solar energy received by the solar panel, a DC motor, operated by the battery, a pump, to spray the pesticide and a tank to hold the pesticide (in the form of solution / liquid). The entire unit is portable and is operated by one labour. The discharge rate of the sprayer during laboratory and field conditions were measured, the average discharge rate during both laboratory test and field test were more or less same which was about 0.023 l/s (82.8 l/h).

The performance evaluation of the sprayer was carried out for spraying in different crops viz., cotton, green gram, onion etc in farmer’s fields. The walking speed of the operator is about 2.8 km/h and swath width of the sprayer is about 0.6 m, which corresponds to a theoretical field capacity of about 0.17 hectare per hour. The effective field capacity of the sprayer was observed to be 0.14 ha/h which corresponds to an average coverage of 1 ha/day of 8 hours operation. As the equipment does not use any other external source of power and that it is operated by the user himself, it reduces drudgery, is quite economical and eco-friendly as it uses solar energy which can be easily affordable by small and marginal farmers. Further, its power can also be used for multi-purpose applications such as charging the battery of mobile, operating the radio and lighting the domestic light etc., which makes it more economically viable technology.

The applications of pesticides using spraying equipment play an important role. The chemicals are widely used for increasing agricultural production through better insect and pest management. Spraying is one of the most effective and efficient technique for applying small quantity of liquid through fine droplets to protect the crops. In India, many versions of hand operated and power operated spraying equipment’s are being used. At present, the farmers generally using all kinds of manually operated knapsack sprayer which can cover 0.4 ha/hr and motorized sprayer can cover 1.2-1.6 ha/hr for spraying of pesticides on crops like cotton, red gram. Farmers are facing the problem of coverage of large area within a short period of time as the pest attack is serious problem and spreads quickly.