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This paper presents the tests results of three types of hay mowing machines (later in text: mowers), namely a self-propelled oscillatory mower-conditioner and two tractor-mounted mowers with oscillatory and rotary blades, used to mow alfalfa grown under dry land conditions in the region of central Serbia during three seasons in 2014, 2015 and 2016. Although characterized by older design, they are still commonly used at smaller and medium size farms in this region. Therefore, their optimal exploitation parameters are still of large importance for hay quality and production efficiency and sustainability. The exploitation parameters of all three mowers generally increased linearly with higher speeds, having high R2 values (over 0,8), with rare exceptions. The regression coefficients b clearly showed that the self-propelled mower-conditioner achieved maximum increase in production performance (b = 0,3606), compared with the oscillatory (b = 0,1158) and rotary mowers (b = 0,1414). Mower design had a significant (p ≤ 0,001) effect on cutting and chopping losses, production performance, and specific fuel consumption (p ≤ 0,05). The tests confirmed the superiority of the self-propelled mower over the two mowers aggregated with tractors.

One of the technical factors from agricultural nozzles and overall plant protection is droplet diameter, which exclusively depends on working pressure, ISO number and nozzle type. Therefore, this paper was aimed to describe mathematical model for droplet size distribution. Through field exploitation experiment, data was used from three ISO numbers of nozzles (hollow cone 80 015; 02 and 03), two air-assisted sprayers (axial and radial fan) and two permanent crops (vineyard and an apple orchard). Water sensitive papers were used for evaluation of droplet diameters, and digital image analysis with Image J software was used for data processing. Mathematical model through homogenous diffusion equation and simplified differential equation shows that droplet size distribution had exponential function of modelling. Theoretical mathematical model was confirmed in experimental results, where coefficient of determination of exponential regression model for 80 015 nozzles was 0.93 with 5.15 of RMSE. The same coefficient for 80 02 nozzles was 0.96 with 2.88 of RMSE and for 80 03 nozzle R2 was 0.93 with 3.25 of RMSE. In addition, it is proved that droplet diameter depends on operating pressure with very high negative correlation (80 03 nozzles: r = −0.98; 80 02 nozzles: r = −0.97; 80 015 nozzles: r = −0.95). This data will help future researchers in their papers to facilitate and describe similar models for plat protection processes, and all agricultural producers to determine optimal operating pressure which is immensely important in economic, biologic, technical and ecologic aspect.