The Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA) is pleased to announce that the system for locating pesticide sensitive crops in Nebraska is now Driftwatch, a national service maintained by Purdue University. This system provides more benefit to commercial growers and pesticide applicators alike. The main advantages are as follows:

• Applicators can register a “business area” and receive e-mail notifications when new locations are added in that geographic area.
• Growers are able to draw their own property or field boundaries, leading to more accurate and informative locations.
• Driftwatch uses Google Maps TM technology, which is easy to use and becoming more familiar to a large number of people. A map view, satellite view, and combination view are available. • County, section, and township boundaries can be turned “on,” if desired.
• In addition, aerial applicators or other applicators doing business in more than one state, can access those states, if available, from the same web site.
• This system will be easier to administer for NDA.
• New information and technologies may be available as need warrants.

NDA is hopeful this will greatly expand in the next few months as word gets out, and encourages all applicators to use this resource and plan your pesticide applications accordingly to reduce pesticide drift, crop damage, and potential liability.

Nebraska’s data can be seen at this link: http://nebraska.agriculture.purdue.edu/. All states in the system can be accessed at http://www.driftwatch.org/.