Technical Report: Measuring and Preliminary Modeling of Drift Interception By Plant Species
Environmental Modeler Jonnie Dunne is lead author of this peer‑reviewed technical report published in the Journal of Environmental Quality, a journal of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America. The study addresses a longstanding gap in pesticide risk assessment by examining how vegetation intercepts off‑target spray drift.
Using controlled wind tunnel experiments and computational fluid dynamics modeling, the research integrates plant morphology, surface characteristics, and droplet behavior to quantify plant “capture efficiency” across different crop species. The findings demonstrate that plant structure plays a significant role in determining how much off-target spray is retained, with important implications for improving exposure assessments and refining regulatory and mitigation strategies.
Environmental Systems Modeling Service Leader Michael Winchell contributed to this study, alongside collaborators from Syngenta Crop Protection, SimuTech Group, and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.