Aerial application is the practice of delivering crop inputs — sprays, seeds, or beneficial amendments — from an unmanned aerial vehicle flying a precise, pre-mapped path over a field. For California growers, drone-based aerial application fills a growing gap left by traditional ground rigs and manned aircraft: it reaches wet, steep, or tightly planted ground that tractors cannot enter, and it does so with far lower drift, lower water use, and lower cost per acre than a full-scale aerial operator.
Virelo offers three core aerial application services across the Central Valley. Spray delivers liquid crop-protection and nutrition products with targeted, altitude-controlled nozzles that maintain even droplet distribution and minimize off-target drift. Seed applies cover-crop and specialty seed from the air, establishing ground cover on fields that are too soft or too irregular to drill conventionally. Scan pairs each flight with high-resolution aerial imagery so the grower can verify coverage, track crop response, and build a field record that holds up to compliance review.
Every Virelo flight is logged during live operations and conducted under a CADPR license (No. 47312) and FAA operating standards. That matters because California agricultural compliance is unforgiving: applications must be documented, buffer zones respected, and product records kept. A drone that cannot produce a defensible flight and application record is a liability, not a tool. Virelo's workflow builds that record into every pass — the imagery, the flight path, and the product applied are captured together, so what flew over the field and what landed on the crop are the same story.
For almond, pistachio, and specialty-crop operators in Fresno, San Joaquin, Kern, Kings, Tulare, and Madera counties, the practical result is a service that puts precision in the air and profit on the ground: timely passes when the ground is too wet for a rig, even coverage on irregular terrain, and an imagery record that turns each application into evidence the grower can use. That is the standard Virelo was built to meet, and it is why every clip on this site is real flight footage, not a render.