Eating your vegetables today? Nice that you have vegetables to eat. Crops and the agriculture industry has improved significantly over the last 60 years. Everything from better machinery, rotating crops, genetically modified (I hate GMO foods), crop optimization, and crop protection. Crop protection is important. Without proper crop protection many of the vegetables would be ruined by insects, fungus, and disease. Formulators that make crop protection agrosolutions for companies like Bayer, BASF and Dow use surface tension as a critical factor in making sure the formulation is correct. Otherwise the formulation may hit the target but not just slide off into the soil doing nothing for the crop.
Excerpt from Formulation vs. Generics
'To ensure that the product stays on the leaf is then a further challenge. Scientists add other substances to cushion the impact or reduce the surface tension. This ensures that the spray mist of droplets adheres firmly to the leaves and that, by creating large wet areas, the active substance can penetrate quickly.
"Without the right formulation, even the best active ingredient is useless," notes Dorin''
One device which has helped formulators in agrosolutions is the Kibron Delta-8. The surface tension of eight different solutions can be tested at once. This allows a high throughput and high impact solution so formulators can pinpoint one formulation that works. It saves time to go from research and developing a interesting formulation to actually spraying it on the vegetables that you eat.
