After using array in all burndown and post herbicide applications the last two years, John Obery has peace of mind.

“I haven’t had any field resprays or drift complaints since I first used Array in April, 1996,” says Obery, who custom sprays 35,000 acres a year for his family’s company, Obery Chemical and Fertilizer, in Metamora, Ill.

“I think Array is one of the best-kept secrets on spray application in the industry.”

Array is a new target-performance adjuvant that’s available for 1998. Obery told National No-Tillage Conference attendees last January in Indianapolis, Ind., that he first learned about Array through research done by Roger Downer, a research associate at Ohio State University’s Laboratory for Pest Control Application Technology in Wooster, Ohio.

“Downer told me to get some and I tried Array,” says Obery. “My experience tells me never to spray without it.”

Research Results

In a 1995 study, Downer evaluated various polymer-based drift adjuvants for their effectiveness with pesticide performance.

The researcher measured the effect of pump shear stress on the proportion of spray volume and driftable droplets. DR 2000, the short-chain polymer that is the active ingredient in Array, was the only drift-control polymer that kept its integrity throughout 12 pump recirculations. In addition, it did not pump shear.

“DR 2000 promotes an increase in droplet size and decrease in the driftable fraction of a spray cloud,” Downer reports. “The data suggests that DR 2000 may have surfactant-like properties which counteract the negative effects of uneven spray distributions on…