Agriculture technology company XAG has initiated its Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) spraying operation, 'Take Off for Harvest Time', in China's Xinjiang region for the third consecutive year. 

Since late August, over 1500 drone pilots and 1000 crop protection teams with approximately 3000 sets of XAG P Series Plant Protection UAS have convened in Xinjiang to help local cotton growers spray defoliant and boost crop yields, the company says.

According to XAG, this is the world's largest cotton defoliation operation that involves the use of fully autonomous drones. The operation aims to ensure a cost-effective, eco-friendly machine harvest. 

Up to mid-September, one million hectares of cotton fields have been defoliated with XAG's crop spraying drones, the company says; XAG estimates the accumulated service record of this year's operation will exceed 1.3 million hectares. This would be a 200% increase compared with 2018, when the XAG initiative covered approximately 0.45 million hectares.

Drones use real-time kinematic (RTK) navigation and an intelligent rotary atomisation spraying system to deliver pesticides and fertilisers. The atomisation spraying system atomises liquids into micro-level droplets. 

The first 'Take Off for Harvest Time' was in 2017, when XAG deployed over 1000 plant protection drones from all across China.

Photo credit: XAG