Tractor path following control usually suffers from the uncertainties and disturbances especially when tractors are faced with uneven soil. As the main actuator of path tracking control, a electro-hydraulic coupling system has parameter uncertainties and disturbances. Conventional methods pay little attention to the electro-hydraulic coupling system which can generate poor path tracking performance

This study investigated the rollover phenomenon of a self-propelled combine harvester during short-distance cross-region travel on a road. The mathematical model of the unsteady lateral multi-degree-of-freedom (multi-DOF) motion of the combine harvester was established with consideration to rear wheel steering, front wheel braking, wheel sideslip, and tyre lateral deflection. By carrying out complex

The feasibility of using a computer-vision (CV) system embedded in a hot-air dryer for non-destructive and real-time monitoring of the drying behaviour of organic apples was investigated in the present study. Apple cylinders were subjected to anti-browning treatments with different dipping solutions (water as control, trehalose (4% w/v) or trehalose + ascorbic acid (4% w/v and 1% w/v)) and dipping

Drip irrigation is one of the most efficient irrigation techniques, but it is susceptible to dripper clogging. This study proposes a novel and non-destructive method based on visible and near infrared (Vis/NIR) spectroscopy coupled with chemometric methods for the discrimination and thickness estimation of physical and chemical fouling in drip-irrigation systems. Four representative materials linked

A dynamic model describing the thermal balance of Holstein dairy cattle was developed. The model quantified the heat flow of five main nodes at the body core, top and bottom skin, and top and bottom coat of a dairy cow. Heat production by the animal and heat flows between the animal and the environment, including conduction, convection, evaporation and radiation, were calculated based on existing models

The increase in irrigated crop areas, especially in countries such as Spain and Italy, has led to an increase in technological solutions for monitoring the irrigation. Furthermore, the centre pivot irrigation systems used in these crops have facilitated the daily work of farmers in recent years, however, the monitoring of these systems and the reporting of problems in their operation has become a key

In recent years, the agricultural sector has taken advantage of real time monitoring, particularly in delicate systems such aquaculture plants. In this context there is a need to develop integrated systems for sustainable production of both vegetable crops and fish. Since a monitoring system able to collect all the involved metrics is not available on the market, a specific monitoring system called

In the search for a healthy indoor climate, chemical cleaning agents are replaced by bacillus strains to create an indoor ecosystem in which these harmless bacteria clean the surfaces by consuming the organic molecules in dust and dirt. To optimise these ecosystems, it is important to monitor the bacterial growth and activity, but the reference methods are time consuming and involve a serious time

Accurate soil moisture measurements are key for optimising field irrigation and for the precise monitoring of water flow in soil profiles or large watersheds. In recent decades, various soil moisture sensors (SMSs) have been widely used, and several studies have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the SMS technologies under different soil and field conditions. The soluble salt content in

Silos are used worldwide to store products of high commercial value. However, many questions remain unanswered regarding storage and estimation of pressures in silos. Furthermore, there are few full-scale experimental stations in the world to facilitate the study of silo pressures, hindering progress in this area. The aim of this paper is to describe the setup, calibration, and validation of a pilot-scale

Non-destructive quality assessment of the inner content of potatoes is a key challenge in automatic grading of agricultural quality, especially when potatoes have surface impurities. This study compares different partial least-square regression (PLSR) models for the prediction of soluble solid content (SSC) of potatoes under conditions of surface cleanliness and surface impurities. Smoothing and spectral

Recent trends in the application of deep learning techniques for crop disease classification is gaining international attention among experts of various domains. Many of the pioneering works have been carried out using the leaf images in laboratory condition with several shortcomings for implementation in field condition. Some of the other key issues are the presence of multiple disorders and the similarity

This study evaluated a novel smartphone-based soil image segmentation technique and subsequent machine learning (ML) optimization methodology with a set of soil images for rapidly predicting soil organic matter (SOM) with minimal soil processing. A smartphone and a custom-made box were used to capture images for 90 soil samples, collected from three different agroclimatic zones of West Bengal, India

As a non-destructive technology for detection, hyperspectral imaging has potential for phenotyping plant diseases and providing information for plant protection. Currently, most studies based on hyperspectral imaging technology primarily focus on leaf diseases and less on stalk diseases. In this study, a set of automatic detection and diagnosis methods, combined with spectral and image analyses, was

Bentleg furrow openers can significantly reduce soil disturbance and reaction forces relative to conventional narrow point openers used in no-tillage farming. The effect of bentleg opener geometry on soil disturbance and reaction forces in a cohesive soil was assessed in a virtual soil bin using the discrete element method. Soil disturbance and reaction forces at an operating depth and a speed of 100 mm

Identifying gaps within sugarcane rows is an effective strategy to optimise inputs using site-specific approaches. This work aimed to compare four different sensor-based techniques to identify and measure sugarcane gaps.Specifically, it was analysed three strategies with sensors (vegetative index, ultrasonic, photoelectric) mounted on a tractor, and one strategy using an RGB camera on-boarded to a

We propose a 3D colour point cloud processing pipeline to count apples on individual apple trees in trellis structured orchards. Fruit counting at the tree level requires separating trees, which is challenging in dense orchards. We employ point clouds acquired from the leaf-off orchard in winter period, where the branch structure is visible, to delineate tree crowns. We localise apples in point clouds

The electrical impedance spectra of fresh and naturally aging rice seeds were measured to develop a non-destructive method for measuring the vigour of such seeds. To this end, three frequencies were selected using the coefficient of variation method within various frequency domains. A prediction model was then established using Fisher linear discriminant analysis, with the impedance, phase angle, and

A novel photonics-based multivariate pattern recognition technique is presented to segregate bison meat samples based on muscle type, ageing, and retail display period. The technique uses color attributes obtained from visible to near-infrared hyperspectral images (400–1000 nm) to predict the stability of bison muscle samples. Unsupervised and supervised classification methods were implemented with

Delivering pesticide droplets accurately to a target has always been a challenge for crop spraying. Pesticide spray that drifts or runs-off the crop are major sources of soil and groundwater pollution and encourage pesticide overuse. This study optimised an agricultural air-induction nozzle to overcome these difficulties. Various configurations were designed and manufactured to investigate the geometrical

Although optimal control has been used extensively for greenhouse climate management, its application to plant factories is still in its infancy. In this paper, profitability of growing lettuce in a Chinese plant factory is investigated by means of optimal control computations. To that end, first, a lettuce growth model is adapted to fit a plant factory environment. Next, this model is calibrated and

This paper presents a receding horizon optimal control (RHOC) method with an economic objective function for balancing the cost of resources (resource use×cost) with income through yield (yield×product price). This paper considers the two elements that determine the income through yield. The first element is yield and associated fruit development. A new, computationally viable, approach to model the

Carrot grading plays a crucial role in producing high-competitive carrot products. However, carrot grading mainly depends on manual work nowadays, and this unreliable situation leads to high labor consumption, low efficiency, and unstable standard. In this study, a lightweight model (CarrotNet) based on machine vision with DCNN was proposed with the inspiration of several classic CNNs. The optimizations

Poultry houses are one of the major sources of agricultural particulate matter (PM) emissions into the environment. Litter properties, poultry activities, and indoor climate of poultry houses are the main parameters that influence the dust emission, but precise quantitative effects and their interactions are hardly known. The objective of this study was to gain quantitative insight into the dust spreading

Estimating the plant population after the emergence of plants seems to be the most accurate way to make a fair judgment about the quality of the sowing across a field. A pixel-level classification model based on deep learning methods was used to predict each pixel in the image to recognise the location and population of plants. A U-Net based model was developed to determine two-class pixels of the

Revegetation is a widely used way to minimise aeolian sediment transport in desertified land. An optimal vegetation density and planting pattern reduces the economic investment for revegetation and competition for limited water resources. This study aimed to ascertain the effects of vegetation density and planting pattern on aeolian sediment transport at the regional scale. A series of wind tunnel

In this study, the effects of hot air-infrared drying methods, including inlet air temperature, air velocity, and infrared power, are investigated on physical (color indices ΔL∗, Δa∗, and Δb∗, shrinkage, and unit density), mechanical (resistance to penetration), chemical (concentration of vitamin C and lycopene content), and thermal (effective moisture diffusivity coefficient) properties of compressed

The growth and the harvestability of a broccoli crop is monitored by the size of the broccoli head. This size estimation is currently done by humans, and this is inconsistent and expensive. The goal of our work was to develop a software algorithm that can estimate the size of field-grown broccoli heads based on RGB-Depth (RGB-D) images. For the algorithm to be successful, the problem of occlusion must

Quantity and quality of grain are both closely related to national development and social stability. Grain is lost during storage due to mildew and insects. Detection of damaged grain kernels not only can reduce the loss of grain, but also protect human beings from diseases caused by damaged grain. Therefore, research on the automatic detection of damaged grain is of continued urgency. In this paper

Water quality (WQ) is a key factor that affects harvest outcome from freshwater ponds. Irregular or aperiodic variations of different WQ variables can influence the growth, survival, and yield of aquatic livestock in the ponds. In this research, WQ and harvest data collected from an Australian prawn farm over a whole grow-out season is used to investigate how the variations of WQ influence the harvest

In aquaculture, the dissolved oxygen (DO) content of a water body is important for the growth of aquatic products and thus needs to be precisely controlled. For this purpose, through an open-loop experiment of DO aeration under different airflow rates, empirical transfer function models that can fully describe the dynamic response relationship between aeration flow rate and DO content were established

The effect of considering cultivar differences in stomatal conductance (gs) on relative air humidity (RH)-related energy demand was addressed. We conducted six experiments in order to study the variation in evapotranspiration (ETc) of six pot rose cultivars, investigate the underlying processes and parameterise a gs-based ETc model. Several levels of crop ETc were realised by adjusting the growth environment

To prevent mechanical damage during the feeding and conveying process for leafy greens when roots harvesting, it is necessary to redesign the clamping mechanism in consideration of the rheological properties of leafy greens under the mechanical compression. This study takes spinach, a typical representative of leafy greens, as the research object. Firstly, the rheological constitutive equation for

Lentil and field pea are each commonly marketed as split and dehulled product. For plant-breeding programmes, the genetic improvement in split-yield is a targeted trait. However, the standard laboratory method for assessment of split-yield requires milled grain to be manually sorted into split and dehulled fractions. This process is time-consuming and impacts the number of germplasm lines that can

The dynamics of oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations were characterized in corn (Zea mays L.) seed hermetically stored in glass jars at 15, 25 and 35 °C and 14.3, 16.5 and 18.3% moisture content. Gas concentration curves were modeled with linear and exponential correlations and the respiration rate was calculated for each temperature and MC combination as storage time progressed and

Dose–response modelling was performed for several infectious disease viruses using the exponential, exact beta-Poisson, and approximate beta-Poisson models using existing datasets of animal infections. The exact beta-Poisson model was found to provide the best fit of the three models. The aerosol transmission route was found to require the lowest dose to cause infection compared to the intra-nasal

Successful use of an auto-guided agricultural machine in paddy fields depends on the ability to generate a full-coverage path consisting of inner and outer-work paths adapted to various field shapes in the presence of an enclosing field boundary. To enhance the performance of a coverage path planner (CPP) developed in our previous study, this article describes the development of a complete CPP for

Agricultural nets are considered as an efficient means of crop protection with various types of agricultural nets designed and used for specific applications. The efficiency of an agricultural net depends on its functionalities and the design of the protecting system. Insect-proof nets, mainly due to their dense mesh structure, may particularly adversely affect the microclimate of the protected cultivation

Excretion of urinary nitrogen (N) from cattle is the main source of N leaching loss from grazed pasture systems. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the suitability of non-invasive acoustic sensors to detect the time and duration of urination events from grazing cattle. The acoustic sensor identified the spectral acoustic patterns with a urination event like spectral signature and had an F1 = 0

It is necessary to examine the aerodynamic behaviour of leaves in wind in order to understand wind-induced tree disasters. The effect of the wind deflection angle on the aerodynamic characteristics of leaves remains relatively unexplored. Thus, the reconfiguration, vibration and wake characteristics of the Betula platyphylla Sukaczev leaves at various wind deflection angles and vegetative Cauchy numbers

The structural response of small diameter (<300 mm) corrugated high-density polyethylene (HDPE) drainage pipes installed on agricultural lands, has not been thoroughly examined. Additionally, characteristics of imposed wheel loads from agricultural field machinery are not adequately represented in conventional structural design practises for buried pipes. This study investigates the response of single-wall

The article describes a new modelling approach and module for soil salinity management. The two major objectives of the module are to simulate the seasonal course of the salinity of the soil solution in the active root zone of drip-irrigated crops to assist irrigators to optimise irrigation and salt leaching, and to help evaluate the salt fluxes in the deep percolating water for assessing the longer-term

Batches of grain are accepted or rejected based on average mycotoxin concentrations in a composite grain sample. Spatial analysis of mycotoxins in two grain bulks was performed to determine the spatial distribution of toxins, whether they were co-located and the proportions of grain over legislative limits. The 2D distribution of deoxynivalenol (DON) and ochratoxin A (OTA) in a truck load of wheat

Relaxation tests were performed to determine the viscoelastic properties of intact Chinese cabbage under transverse and longitudinal loading using Maxwell models. The differences in the relaxation properties for different compression directions were evaluated and a variety of macroscopic deformation characteristics was described using a stereomicroscope. It was found that Chinese cabbage showed rheological

Oil-based emulsions are been widely used to apply agricultural sprays and they are often delivered through flat-fan spray nozzles mounted on booms. Perforations are one of the typical structures of found during the atomisation of oil-based emulsions, and they are investigated here using visualisation. The generation, development and coalescence of perforations in an expanding liquid sheet are comprehensively

The aim was to develop a virtual reality (VR) simulator to help educate greenhouse farmers and consultants. In this second paper a VR simulator that visualises the aerodynamic environment inside greenhouses was developed using VR technology. The three-dimensional greenhouse simulated was designed following the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) computed cases of Kim et al. (reference required). Specifically

This study attempted to develop a virtual reality (VR) simulator to educate greenhouse farmers and consultants. In this first of two papers, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was used to analyse the aerodynamic environment inside the greenhouse for growing the tomato crop. Representative aerodynamic problems that can occur in winter and summer seasons inside greenhouses in Korea were derived

Monitoring the quality attributes of grapes is a practice that allows the state of ripeness to be checked and the optimal harvest time to be identified. A non-destructive method based on hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technology was developed. Analyses were carried out directly in the field on a ‘Sangiovese’ (Vitis vinifera L.) vineyard destined for wine production, by using a Vis/NIR (400–1000 nm) hyperspectral

The biochemical reactions of aerobic microbial respiration (AMR) suggest that silage temperature (Tsi) rise, oxygen (O2) consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission may be equally useful as indicators of silage deterioration during feed-out, but only temperature has been used extensively to assess aerobic stability. Here we extend the study of aerobic stability to incorporate AMR of silage by developing

Understanding the process of the sugarcane milling is important for improving sugar extraction. The Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian algorithm within LS-DYNA was successfully used for the first time to simulate the dynamic process of milling. The predictions of the numerical model were validated using experimental crushing data from a previous study and dynamic process of milling was examined in detail