Spray Drift Issues Improve

It's Vine to Wine Wednesday on the Fruit Grower Report. Growing grapes and wheat farming, in the early years of Walla Walla's wine industry it was like oil and water, the two didn't mix, due to spray drift from the herbicides used to grow commodity crops like wheat. Times have changed and here in Eastern Washington grapes grow adjacent to seed alfalfa, and wheat thanks in part to the advances of precision agriculture that's provided the ability to apply fertilizers and pesticides with pin-point precision.

Dr. Vince Hebert, Laboratory Research Director with WSU-Food and Environmental Quality Laboratory says that regulations have helped as well.

HEBERT: There has been a lot of regulations in place that have really reduced off-target movement injury to wine grapes. Grape Vineyards especially in this region, cereal and infield crop production really have historically been exposed to herbicides. usually at some really low level. And this has really been presumably from a combination of drift together with regional air off-target movement. And I think really of particular concern in Washington State has really been the inadvertent off-target movement of highly active hormone mimics such as 2,4 D which can emanate from serial grain fields

Hebert is presenting a free seminar today on this topic.

HEBERT: Often what we see is this type injury is really low but purely episodic and based on weather patterns that may exist during the spring spray season.

The potential for spray drift depending on the interaction of many equipment and weather-related factors