fitted with spraying booms
Aerial seed sowing The first known aerial application of agricultural materials was by John Chaytor, who in 1906 spread seed over a swamped valley floor in
Wairoa, New Zealand, using a
hot air balloon with mobile tethers. Aerial sowing of seed still continues to this day with cover crop applications and rice planting.
Crop dusting The first known use of a heavier-than-air machine to disperse products occurred on August 3, 1921. Crop dusting was developed under the joint efforts of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture and the
U.S. Army Signal Corps' research station at
McCook Field in
Dayton, Ohio. The first test was considered highly successful. by Huff-Daland Crop Dusting, which was co-founded by McCook Field test pilot Lt. Harold R. Harris.
Purpose-built aircraft In 1951, Leland Snow designed the first aircraft specifically built for aerial application, the S-1. In 1957, The
Grumman G-164 Ag-Cat was the first aircraft designed by a major company for agricultural aviation. Currently, the most common agricultural aircraft are the
Air Tractor,
Cessna Ag-wagon,
Gippsland GA200,
Grumman Ag Cat,
PZL-106 KRUK,
M-18 Dromader,
PAC Fletcher,
Piper PA-36 Pawnee Brave,
Embraer EMB 202 Ipanema, and
Rockwell Thrush Commander, but multi-purpose
helicopters are also used.
Unmanned aerial application , a
UAV commonly used for aerial application in Japan Since the late 1990s,
unmanned aerial vehicles have also been used for agricultural spraying. This phenomenon started in Japan and South Korea, where mountainous terrain and relatively small family-owned farms required lower-cost and higher-precision spraying. , the use of UAV crop dusters, such as the
Yamaha R-MAX, is being expanded to the United States for use in spraying at vineyards. == Concerns ==