Sustainability Evaluation for Pesticide Application in Oil Palm Plantation Integrated with Industry 4.0 Technology

Abstract

Pesticide application in oil palm plantation has been a crucial and labour-intensive operation. Rapid technological development for spray machine such as tractor and drone could improve the sustainability of the operation. This paper evaluates the sustainability performance of 3 types of pesticide spraying technologies, namely drone, tractor and knapsack. A total of 3 different modes of drone power source was considered, including grid, gasoline generator and solar panel. The sustainability performance was evaluated based on return on investment (ROI), carbon footprint from operation, and exposure time to pesticide. The result shows that spray drone powered by gasoline generator has the highest overall sustainability index of (0.834), with the ROI of (34), carbon footprint of 270.7 kg CO2/d and a total of 720 h/y exposure time to pesticide.