Aerial topdressing is the spreading of fertilisers such as superphosphate over farmland with the use of aircraft. Aerial topdressing was developed in New Zealand in the 1940s and was rapidly adopted elsewhere in the 1950s.
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.
The first known use of a...
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Aerial topdressing is the spreading of fertilisers such as superphosphate over farmland with the use of aircraft. Aerial topdressing was developed in New Zealand in the 1940s and was rapidly adopted elsewhere in the 1950s.
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.
The first known use of a heavier-than-air machine occurred on 3 August 1921 when as the result of advocacy by Dr Coad, a USAAC Curtiss JN4 Jenny piloted by John MacReady was used to spread lead arsenate to kill catalpha sphinx caterpillars near Troy, Ohio in the United States. The first commercial operations were attempted in the US in 1924 and use of insecticide and fungicide for crop dusting slowly spread in the Americas and, to a lesser extent, other nations. Crop dusting poisons enjoyed a boom in the US and Europe after World War II until the environmental impact...
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