For my 1/3 acre orchard, I am still trying to convert between amount of pesticide per gallon from home product store formulations and amount per acre of ag/commercial formulations.
The Copilot AI told me that when Manzate Pro Stick fungicide is labeled for 6 pounds per acre, this means 6 pounds per acre of fruit tree canopy, not 6 pounds per acre of land area. It is estimating my 1/3 acre orchard has 1/6 acre of canopy, and it is recommending only 1 pound of agent per application rather than 2 pounds I am figuring.
I ran a Bing search on Windows asking if the per acre on an ag/commercial pesticide label is per land acre or per canopy acre, and it brought up Copilot, which responded this is per land, not canopy area unless indicated on the EPA label.
I started a thread back in 2018 on this, and I was told that the amounts I calculated from per land area, the minimum water rate of 50 gallons per acre (I am using a hand-pump tank sprayer, and I am limited in applied liquid by muscle power to work the charging handle), that those application rates were much higher than people here are using. I ran this by my extension agent who told me “Don’t adjust the rate downwards, follow the label” and since then I learned that ag/commercial pesticides are labeled at much higher rates than home product store formulations.
So is ounces per acre per acre of land of a dense orchard stand or acre of canopy as the AI thinks it is? Am I reasonable in estimating that I am applying spray at closer to the minimum rate of 50 gallons per acre using a hand-pump tank sprayer?
People are not going to want to measure their canopy, so it’s just land area meant there. AI’s can say some pretty stupid things as we are all learning. I did ask ChatGPT and it supports the per land area view. It says “per acre of TRV” sometimes is used for the other interpretation: per acre of tree row volume. Personally I’ve never seen that on any label, but that might have gotten your AI confused.
Often the labels also have a pounds per hundred gallons or the like recommendation and I usually follow that, just divide by 100. If not I do the acre guess thing. Did you look at the Spray amounts guide here?
This is based on my and others’ calculations and experiences.
BTW if any data are missing from there please edit to add them, it’s still a bit spotty. I should add a few things myself that I have been using recently.
I am a commercial grower and have always assumed treated area = planted area for the fungicides we use. Grapes are pretty two-dimensional though, so the actual difference isn’t huge. For something you are spraying in strips like herbicides, you definitely want to use the actual treated area and not the entire planted acreage, otherwise you are overapplying.