On 8 December 2025 Jagonews24 published a piece by agriculture and environment specialist Samiran Biswas on spray drones, the small uncrewed aircraft that apply pesticide and fertiliser to crops. He argued that spraying by hand or with ground machines costs time, labour and money and makes even coverage hard. A drone flies at a set height and speed, he wrote, so it spreads the chemical evenly, wastes less pesticide and saves the farmer work, and it is especially useful on remote or waterlogged land.
What a spray drone does
A spray drone is a multi-rotor aircraft carrying a liquid tank and nozzles. In a 2018 book, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) listed farm uses of drones as cropping, early warning, plant monitoring, pest control, animal tracking and forest and environmental monitoring. The same publication warned that most developing countries lacked the laws and policy framework needed to regulate drones.
A 2022 review in Frontiers in Plant Science found that spray drones reduce the applicator's exposure, work efficiently and are not held back by slopes or soft ground. Their payload is limited, however, and because they spray from relatively high up and fly fast, some drift of the spray may be inevitable.
The market and efforts in Bangladesh
Citing one market study, Biswas put the global crop-spraying drone market at US$2.47 billion in 2024, possibly reaching US$10.86 billion by 2029. Another firm, IMARC Group, valued the agricultural drone market at US$2.706 billion in 2024. Because estimates differ between firms, he advised measured expectations. He added that demand is strongest in the Asia-Pacific region and that drone spraying is spreading on small and medium farms.
Bangladesh has experimented with farm drones before. In September 2016 Bangla Tribune reported that a Khulna University student, under a teacher's supervision, had built an autonomous pesticide-spraying drone that could carry 3 litres. Biswas wrote that the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) and several technology firms had begun research and training. The private efforts he listed included ACI Motors, the Syngenta Foundation, Iconic Engineering, and joint work by Genius Farms Limited and Flymec on field spraying and drone production. In his view drones were proving useful on rice, wheat, maize and vegetables, and joint work by government and the private sector would raise output and cut costs.
Rules and precautions
Flying a drone in Bangladesh is regulated. In September 2020 the cabinet approved the Drone Registration and Flight Operations Policy. According to The Daily Star's Bangla edition, government permission is needed for both commercial and non-commercial use, a drone heavier than 5 kg needs a no-objection certificate from the Ministry of Defence before import, and such drones must be registered.
Drift also needs attention. A 2023 study of rice fields in South Korea, published in Scientific Reports, found that pesticide drifting onto nearby crops fell as the buffer distance grew or when a windbreak such as maize stood in between, and that leafy vegetables picked up the most residue. In November 2024 the FAO and the World Health Organization published updated guidance on aerial application of pesticides, aimed at making application safer and more efficient. Farmers should ask their upazila agriculture officer which pesticide to use on which crop, and how much.
Photo: Shreesha Sharma / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sources: Jagonews24, FAO and ITU, Frontiers in Plant Science, Scientific Reports, World Health Organization, Bangla Tribune, The Daily Star Bangla
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