INSTRUCTION LEVEL OF OPERATORS OF AGRICULTURAL SPRAYERS

109 A matéria publicada nesse periódico é licenciada sob forma de uma Licença Creative Commons – Atribuição 4.0 Internacional http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ INSTRUCTION LEVEL OF OPERATORS OF AGRICULTURAL SPRAYERS Alfran Tellechea Martini1*, José Fernando Schlosser2, Gilvan Moisés Bertollo3, Marcelo Silveira de Farias4, Gustavo Oliveira dos Santos2, Luis Fernando Vargas de Oliveira2 1 Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Campus Cachoeira do Sul, 96503-205, Cachoeira do Sul RS, Brasil. 2Departamento de Engenharia Rural, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, 97105-900, Santa Maria RS, Brasil. 3Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, Campus Santa Helena, 85892-000, Santa Helena – PR, Brasil. 4Departamento de Ciências Agronômicas e Ambientais, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Campus de Frederico Westphalen, 98400-000, Frederico Westphalen RS, Brasil. *E-mail: alfrantm@gmail.com Recebido em: 26/08/2020 Aceito em: 26/12/2020 DOI: 10.17058/tecnolog.v25i1.15641 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT


Introduction
The efficiency of the control under a biological target relies on the proportion of the active ingredients applied on it as well as on the quality of distribution and the uniformity of application in terms of the target area. In this sense, the sprayers are aimed to distribute the phytosanitary products over a given target according to suitable drop measurements. According to Schlosser [1], the quality of an agrochemical application depends on getting date as much as possible about four factors involved in the spraying process: agricultural machine, biological target, local weather implications and pesticides to be used.
According to Gandolfo and Antuniassi [2], the inspection of sprayers and the operators treinament, with regard to the maintenance and use of agricultural sprayers, can contribute to optimizing the control of weeds, insects and diseases. According to these authors, the embrance of these practices may also contribute to the reduction of costs and the lower use of pesticides in the cultivation areas, resulting in lower risks of contamination.
In this context, Schlosser et al. [3] explain that, during the work jorney, the agricultural machine operators are susceptible to not ergonomic positions of work, high levels of noise, dust and pesticide contamination. The theme related to the pesticide contamination is important to be discussed because, according to Konradsen et al. [4], it is one of the most serious world health problems, mainly in terms of countries in stage of development.
In this sense, taking into consideration the data To procedure on this research, when arriving at the properties, firstly it was done both the team and the project presentation to the property's owner or to the responsible by it, ressaulting that personal information would be kept confidential.
After agreement, the project was presented to the machine's operator that was responsible by the spraying activities, and so after it was applied the questionnaire (Annex A). The operator's indication was done both by the owner itself or by the responsible by the property, in which place the operators received technical orientations about operational security and use, as well as suitable maneuver of pesticide products, after previously requirement of the information on this research.
After evaluations were conducted, the data collected were submitted to exploratory analysis by descriptive statistics with the use of percentage frequency.

Results and Discussion
After a previous data survey on basic knowledge about pesticides application, sprayer maintenance programs and  Machine maintenance to be efficient means not just making fast repairs, but also it needs to keep function able to operation in order to avoid failures and reduce risks of unplanned stops [12].
As it can be seen in Figure 1 Considering still the operators who both perform calibration and accuracy on the volume of application (Figure 2), it is said that the most worrying fact observed is the not use of manometers by these professionals, either because they believe it is not necessary once that they are used to use the calibration container (23.08%) or just because the manometers available are not working properly (15.38%). In this sense, was reported that 77% of the interviewees did not use manometers for calibrating the sprayers simply by being unaware of the importance of those spraying parts [15]. It is important to ressault that according to Martini et al. [14], most part of the sprayers calibration errors are related to the use of imprecises manometers or to the lack of them to determine the hydraulic circuit inner pressure.