In agricultural production, silicone oil is considered a "performance booster" for pesticides and fertilizers. By optimizing the properties of the liquid, silicone oil significantly improves farming efficiency, especially in pesticide enhancement, foliar fertilizer absorption, and resistance to rainwater wash-off.
After traditional pesticide spraying, due to the high surface tension of the leaves, most of the solution rolls off, resulting in an absorption rate of less than 30%. However, agricultural silicone oil reduces surface tension to 21 mN/m (compared to water's 72 mN/m), allowing the liquid to spread and penetrate leaf pores rapidly, increasing absorption to over 80%. For example, when controlling aphids, adding 0.1% silicone oil to the insecticide increases the killing rate from 60% to 95%. In Shouguang, Shandong, the effectiveness of controlling gray mold in tomato greenhouses increased from 70% to 92% after using silicone-based pesticides.
Silicone oil also plays a crucial role in promoting the rapid absorption of trace elements, such as calcium and boron, from foliar fertilizers into the leaf cells. When applying silicone-calcium fertilizer before bagging apples, the incidence of bitter pit decreases from 15% to 3%, and the fruit's texture becomes crispier and sweeter.
Silicone oil forms a durable hydrophobic film after spraying, effectively resisting rainwater wash-off, ensuring the pesticide's efficacy remains intact. In citrus orchards in Yunnan, this method reduced pesticide costs by 30% and improved control effectiveness by 50%. In drone pesticide spraying, adding silicone oil increased the droplet deposition by 60%, improving operational efficiency by 30%.
