 Thank you for having me today. So we're gonna talk about water pH and pesticide efficacy. There are many factors that can affect pesticide efficacy, pesticide type, the age of that pesticide, the timing, the weather application rate, frequency and how often you apply and of course the pest that you're applying it to as well. But we're just gonna talk about today, pH and how that affects the efficacy when applying pesticides. So when you're looking and talking about water quality, the ways that water quality can affect pesticide performance varies. Of course, they may degrade pesticides, may clog filters and nozzles. They can come from various sources such as wells and ponds and rivers of course. And then of course, water varies depending on the amount of dissolved minerals, the organic matter and pH as well. Now, pH stands for Potential Hydrogen. It's a measure of concentration of hydrogen ions and hydroxide ions in a solution. And it's based off the logarithmic scale of zero to 14. And that scale is basically what they use to measure pH. If you see the scale here to the right, for some examples of what that looks like, a pH of six is six times more acidic than a pH of seven and a pH of five is a hundred times more acidic than a pH of seven. So that's kind of what that means when we're talking about a logarithmic scale. Okay, so looking at that pH, we have here the pH scale here. A lower pH is more acidic. So that's below seven, with seven being neutral as we see here. A higher pH is more alkaline. So that's anything above seven. And one of the key things to kind of look at just even from our last speaker, how she was talking about sanitizers and different things like that. She was talking about alkaline sanitizers. So the benefit of those sanitizers is also to continuously break down any chemicals or any products that are on your plants and things like that. Or for instance, we use ammonia sometimes to break down pesticides to remove them from tanks. And also we use bleach as well to neutralize a lot of pesticides. And of course we use vinegar as well in some cases depending on the product. So all that stuff ties in together when we're talking about pH. Now water with the pH higher than seven creates alkaline conditions that can cause some weakly acidic pesticides to undergo degradation or chemical breakdown, a process known as alkaline hydrolysis. This can be measured in terms of half life. Now we've heard of half life before and we'll talk a little bit about that on the next slide. But in general, insecticides are more susceptible to hydrolysis than our fungicides, herbicides, defoliants or growth regulators. This is why you wanna stay within a four to 6.5 range. Organophosphate and carbamate insecticides are more susceptible than chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides. Somehow retros exhibit susceptibility to hydrolysis as well. Now we're talking about that half life. A half life is the time it takes for a certain amount of pesticide to be reduced by half. It occurs as it dissipates or breaks down in the environment. In general, a pesticide will break down to 50% of the original amount after a single half life. And then of course it goes on to after the second half life. So if we're talking about an hour after an hour, for instance, it could be 50% and then after another hour, it can be 25% for that second half life, so on and so forth. Now, if the pH is higher than 7.5, consider lowering it. The recommended pH is between four and seven. So you gotta remember it. Now, the best set is if you have between 5.5 and 6.5. So if you can fine tune it, that is very important. That is the ideal. That's what you want it at. Always refer to the pesticide label for your specific product because there are some labels that specify what your pH. You may find some variation in recommended target pH. These are guidelines and recommendations. The label will have the best information specific to each product. A few pesticides and materials should not be acidified. For example, sulfonylurea herbicides, those contain a fixed copper fungicide lime and lime sulfur. These may become more soluble at a lower pH and may become phototoxic to crops. The product label will have your directions as well. These active ingredients are known to degrade when mixed with alkaline water. So you wanna make sure that you understand how weak acids play into degradation as well. That will render them ineffective. So you've wanna make sure that you know and you understand that this can be issues where there are limestone aqua fire. So when you're talking about weak alkalines, they degrade when mixed with slightly acidic water. pH is less than seven. Sulfonylurea herbicides, you wanna make sure that you understand those as well. And you may want neutral to slightly basic water when you're dealing with some other alkalines as well. So when you're talking about looking at the different labels, there are some labels that are out there that do show what the pH should be at. And for instance, here's two examples of some labels. You have malathion. It shows here, it says that compatible with most insecticides and fungicides except alkaline materials, okay? And then there's another label here that I found with imidan 70-wetable powder. And it shows here in the underline that it's compatible with most commonly used insecticides and fungicides, but it's incompatible with alkaline materials such as spray limes, sulfur, and Bordeaux mixtures. So you wanna make sure that you read your label because it will tell you on your label if it has an issue with pH or if you wanna make sure that you use the right type of pH within your water when you're measuring that. So the solution to the problem is to lower the pH of the water to the optimal range of four to seven before mixing with the pesticide. Do this by adding the recommended amount of buffering or acidifying agent. Buffering does not affect the residual activity of the pesticide. The buffering effects start at the time of the mixing, continues during the storage and the tank. It does not stop until the water has evaporated from the spray droplet. Some materials such as fixed copper, fungicides include basic copper sulfate, copper oxide, and other Bordeaux mixtures should not be buffered as the acid solution may make the metal soluble and produce a phytotoxic effect when sprayed on plants. To determine how much buffering agent to add to the tank, an applicator must know the pH of the water, the volume needed to treat, and the buffering agent used. Applicators should follow all buffering agent directions to determine exactly how much adjuvant to add to the tank. If a buffering agent isn't used to adjust the pH to an ideal range, then the applicator should remember to use spray mixtures as soon as possible. This will minimize the amount of time for degradation to occur. A lot of times people will mix a mixture in a tank and they may leave it overnight. And that can actually be detrimental to that product being effective the next day. So if you wanna test the pH of a spray mix water, the water should be representative of the water used for spraying. So let's run the water low enough to flush out the water that was standing in the holes in the pipes. That's the first step you wanna do. You wanna collect a sample of the water in a clean glass jar or something that's non-reactive. You don't wanna use plastic or anything like that. And then you wanna check the pH using a pH tester meter or test strips. Now, the most accurate way to measure pH is using an electronic pH meter. You can purchase one of these from 40 or 50 to $400 or more depending on what it does. Now, of course they can get more extensive than that. However, soil test kits and pH paper are adequate and less expensive, but they may not be as accurate. So to adjust that pH, follow the label directions on the adjuvant, for example, using eye dropper to add three drops of buffering agent to a pint of water, stir well and recheck that pH. Repeat steps in one and two until the pH is satisfactory. For every 100 gallons of water in a spray tank, add two ounces of buffer for each three drops of buffer used when adjusting that pint of water. Mix tank and then check to ensure that the pH is correct in the tank. You wanna make sure that you wear appropriate PPE. Most pesticide solutions, our suspensions are stable between 5.5 and seven, but we said we want four and 6.5 to make sure we get a perfect solution. Pesticide solutions above seven are the greater risk of degrading or breaking down. Acidifiers are adjuvants that lower the pH of the water in the spray tank. Although they do not necessarily maintain a constant pH level, buffers tend to stabilize the pH at a relatively constant level. So conditioning or water softening agents reduce problems caused by hard water and hard water minerals, especially calcium and magnesium ions, bind with active ingredients of some pesticides which may decrease pesticide performance. Before using a buffer or conditioning agent, consider the specific pesticide requirements and test the water for your pH and for hardness. So buffers containing phosphoric acid or a salt of phosphoric acid, which will lower the pH of the water and stabilize the pH and acceptable value. The efficacy of any buffer product depends on the concentration of the phosphoric acid and the degree of alkalinity of the mixing water that has been neutralized. The more alkaline the water, the greater amount of buffer that will be needed. Some products give directions indicating the amounts of buffering agent to use. And it depends on that different alkalinity, but not all of them do. So research shows that acidifiers tested reduced pH values of about eight down to 5.5 or six, which is what we want. We want that range when used at one to two pints per 100 gallons. Buffers increase the residual life of the insecticides, different insecticides about two-fold and can result in reducing the number of spray applications per season. Now, muric acid, buffer eggs, or vinegar were not effective when tests were concluded. And roughly, kind of in summary, you wanna make sure that you read and follow that pesticide label to determine pH requirements. That is essential. Test water pH routinely to monitor changes throughout the growing season. They can vary, of course, if you're near an aqua fire, limestone aqua fire, you wanna make sure that you're constantly testing your water and of course other areas as well. Apply pesticide spray solutions as soon as possible. After mixing, the spray solution or mixture should be used within six hours to avoid any problems. That's key. Adjust water pH with buffers or water conditioning agents to prevent alkaline hydrolysis and maintain the pH within a desired range. And just remember, if you follow your label and you review your label to see if there are any requirements that can constantly test your water, you should be fine in basically determining whether or not you have the required or the best pH to reduce degradation of your pesticide. These are the acknowledgements. I want to thank these individuals for assisting me with this presentation today. And here is my contact information and the QR code links to our website. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me. Thank you.