Agricultural spray technologies used for the application of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides have come a long way over the last few decades. While things like precision spraying tech and the utilization of AI can deliver more of the right chemical where it is needed, getting it to stay there is another battle. An MIT spinoff, “AgZen,” says it has developed a system to do exactly that.
AgZen was founded in 2020 by MIT researchers Vishnu Jayaprakash and Kripa Varanasi to commercialize technologies that improve the effectiveness of pesticide treatments. The company’ has two core products. Its flagship “RealCoverage” is a system that uses AI to optimize sprayer settings, such as nozzle selection, pressure, boom height, and droplet size, to maximize coverage and reduce pesticide usage. According to Jayaprakash, the system can reduce chemical inputs by 30% to 50%.
The company’s newest product is “EnhanceCoverage,” which is a special nozzle that “cloaks” chemical droplets with adjuvants to dramatically improve their ability to stick to plants. By leveraging wetting dynamics, the researchers create cloaked droplets that consist of an ultra-thin food and environmentally safe oil layer (<1% by volume) that encapsulates water droplets.
Jayaprakash explains that when untreated chemical droplets hit the surface of most plant leaves, they bounce away. But when the researchers coated the surface of the droplets with a tiny amount of oil—making up less than 1% of the droplet’s liquid—the droplets spread out and then stayed put. The treatment improved the droplets’ “stickiness” by as much as a hundredfold.
Funny enough, the team initially used soybean oil, thinking this would be a familiar and widely available material for farmers. They quickly learned that this was not the case, even for farmers growing soybeans, and began exploring the use of surfactants and adjuvants instead.
While many farmers already use these products as a way to enhance spraying effectiveness, most are mixing it with a water solution. Jayaprakash says for it to have any effect, they had to use much more of these materials, risking causing burns to the plants. The new coating system reduces the amount of these materials needed, while improving their effectiveness.
In field tests conducted by AgZen, “we doubled the amount of product on kale and soybeans just by changing where the adjuvant was,” from mixed in to being a coating, Jayaprakash says. It’s convenient for farmers because “all they’re doing is changing their nozzle. They’re getting all their existing chemicals to work better, and they’re getting more product on the plant.”
AgZen has recently raised $10 million in venture financing to support rapid commercial deployment of these technologies that can improve the control of chemical inputs into agriculture. Learn more about the technology at AgZen’s website HERE.
