The global population is growing by 200,000 people per day. In order to provide enough food for this growing populous sustainable intensification methods need to be adopted. The use of technology, and in particular UAVs, may be one of these methods. The use of UAVs for the completion of agricultural tasks such as fertilising and spraying may negate the need for tramlines in European tillage systems

One of the options for increasing the versatility of tractors is to use them as a part of a modular traction device (MTD). The model MTD-100 consists of a power-generator module and a technical module. The power-generator module is a tractor with a nominal traction force of 14–16 kN. The technical module is an additional axle with wheels driven by the power-generator module ground speed power take-off

To meet the high-efficiency and low-damage harvesting requirements for white asparagus, two novel types of end-effectors were designed to selectively harvest white asparagus. One is the transverse-cut end-effector (TCEE), while the other is the clip-cut end-effector (CCEE). To select the best harvesting scheme and achieve a suitable range in driving forces, we propose a discrete element method (DEM)-based

Passive dew collection could be a viable option as a source of irrigation water in arid areas. The plastic foil acting as a condensing surface plays a key role in the passive dew collection regime. A laboratory method for comparing various plastic foils for dew collection was prepared and tested. The focus was on creating a method for measuring the attributes affecting dew condensation and the flow

Clod identification and determination of aggregate size distribution have undeniable importance in tillage operations, it affects other missions in the field regarding the energy issue. The objective of the study is accurate identification of clods based on a state-of-the-art method entitled semantic segmentation. In this regard, a deep network in the domain of deep learning was used. As the shape

Farm-scale anaerobic digestion is increasingly regarded as a greenhouse gas emission reduction measure. To get a full picture of its emission reduction potential, greenhouse gas emissions from digestate storage need to be assessed. This work quantifies methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from farm-scale mono-digested dairy manure by continuous monitoring in an on-site digestate storage

The quantification and identification of ground cover plays a key role in erosion modelling, weed measurement, plant disease identification and other environmental applications. Currently, a variety of methods are used to mechanically classify digital images for ground cover. Only a few of these methods can distinguish green vegetation, straw/dormant vegetation, and exposed soil using only the Red-Green-Blue

This paper proposes and demonstrates the use of inverse methods to estimate grain properties during deep-bed drying. An inverse analysis was performed to estimate the bulk density, specific heat and initial moisture content of cereal grains, using only grain temperature measurements as inputs. Grain temperature data obtained from numerically solving the direct problem were used to generate the temperature

Poultry production significantly contributes to atmospheric ammonia (NH3) emissions, causing concerns over their environmental impacts and the effects on human and bird health inside the poultry houses. A model is needed to estimate NH3 emissions from poultry facilities in order to develop effective mitigation strategies and science-based regulations. The laboratory-scale mechanistic NH3 emission model

One of the most substantial and crucial parameters for irrigation in agriculture is water infiltration into the soil. Given the variability of soil properties, the infiltration characteristics also vary. The present study aims to model soil water infiltration using scaling. In the present research, a new approach for scaling the infiltration equation was developed and evaluated for 22 infiltration

The new advances in production methods have led to an increase in aquaculture production to the extent that the industry can now aid traditional fishing in meeting the growing global demand for fish within the context of the depletion of fisheries' resources. In this new context, market competition has increased and the complexity of managing industrial-scale production processes involving biological

Orchard operations such as mechanical pruning and spraying are heavily affected by tree architectures. Quantified inputs (e.g., cutting locations for mechanical pruning, and canopy distribution and density for variable-rate precision spraying) are necessary information for achieving precise control of these orchard operations. Even in planar orchard systems, trees grow differently. Therefore, it is

Monitoring pig drinking has been a topic of interest to pig researchers and producers for many years. However, challenges still remain due to the fact that pigs like to play with drinkers in nursery environments and that the drinking pig is often touching others. These factors negatively influence the performance of camera-based pig drinking detection algorithms. The aim of this study is to investigate

Accurate positioning of fruit is a key issue that has attracted much attention in the field of harvest robots. The complex environment and close proximity make the perception of dense crops in greenhouses a challenging problem. Different from various solutions proposed involving special equipment or other auxiliary information, we propose a novel positioning approach based on instance segmentation

Compaction-induced soil degradation is of growing importance as field machinery continues to increase in power and mass. Approaches to managing the impacts of soil compaction include minimisation (reduce load), remediation (tillage) and confinement (control traffic). Integrated ‘swarms’ of low-mass autonomous machinery have recently been suggested as a means of reducing compaction and an alternative

The discrete element method (DEM) has become popular for modelling the behaviour of grain kernels during agricultural production, processing, and transportation. DEM simulations provide both qualitative and quantitative information on particle flow, which helps improve the understanding, design, and optimisation of grain handling equipment. The accuracy of the DEM models is greatly affected by the

Sand media filters are a key component of micro-irrigation systems since they help preventing emitter clogging, which greatly affects the system performance. Dissolved oxygen is an irrigation water quality parameter related to organic matter loading. Low values of dissolved oxygen can cause crop root hypoxia and, therefore, agronomic problems. Thus, an accurate prediction of dissolved oxygen values

Apple trees tend to bear an excess of young fruits (fruitlets). Chemical thinning with an application of bioregulators early in the season is currently the most common solution to adjust fruit load. However, the results of this approach are highly inconsistent between seasons. In the present study, we identified the most informative bands in the visible-near infrared range for forecasting fruitlet

Variations in the moisture content (MC) of grains strongly influence machine performance analysis during crop harvesting and post-harvest grain handling operations. For experimental or numerical methods such as discrete element method (DEM) technique to include the effect of MC on physical and mechanical properties, comprehensive study was conducted to investigate the effect of maize MC on single kernel

A novel technique for enabling robotic weed control in a commercial processing tomato field having densely populated weeds is described. It is necessary to accurately locate the stem emerging points (SEPs) of crop plants for the successful application of a mechanical weeding actuator to remove weeds during automated weeding. However, it is a difficult and challenging task to locate the SEPs in complex

Ground based forest harvesting machines are being used on steeper slopes with the aid of tethers to help maintain traction and stability. It is common to position a base machine containing the tether winch above the forest harvesting machine. This configuration is termed a live tether. The live tethers may be run around rub trees to reduce the time required to reposition the tether. This study developed

To understand the complex continuous microwave drying of germinated brown rice (GBR) and clarify the drying characteristics, the heat and mass transfer of GBR under continuous microwave drying was investigated numerically and experimentally. A three-dimensional model of coupled multi-physics fields involving the transmission of microwave field, heat transfer and mass (moisture) transfer was developed

Environmental controls in a greenhouse improve microclimates, thereby enhancing photosynthesis, but they create spatiotemporal non-uniformity of photosynthesis, with implications for unstable crop production. However, there has been no research focussing on the spatiotemporal variability of photosynthesis arising from greenhouse environmental controls. Here we visualise spatiotemporal distributions

A geostatistical methodology is presented to optimise the dosage of plant protection products (PPP) in vineyards with spatial variability. Sprayers are commonly used in viticulture to apply a constant volume rate per unit ground area (l ha−1). This can be a problem in vineyard plots with remarkable spatial variability in vine vigour, being necessary guiding winegrowers through a decision-making tool

As a typical harmful social behaviour, tail biting is considered to be a welfare-reducing problem with economic consequences for pig production. Taking a computer-vision based approach, in this study, we have developed a novel method to automatically identify and locate tail-biting interactions in group-housed pigs. The method employs a tracking-by-detection algorithm to simplify the group-level behaviour

Hyperspectral remote sensing data have great potential for plant classification, monitoring, and mapping due to their considerable spectral information. A spectral library can be used for the automatic interpretation of remote sensing data, which is an efficient tool for the classification of plant species. Given that similar spectral signatures are usually found among different plant species, it is

In this paper, a visual detection method by a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) was proposed to detect green mangoes on the surface of the tree crown rapidly and meet the need of estimating the number of mango fruits in orchards. The YOLOv2 model was used for quick detection of mango images captured by a UAV. First, mango images were collected by a UAV. These images were marked manually and used to build

The automatic detection of postures and posture changes in sows using a computer-vision system has substantial potential for learning their maternal abilities, enhancing their welfare and productivity, and reducing the crushing risk to piglets. The objectives of this study are to (1) detect frame-level sow postures, (2) temporally localise posture change actions, and (3) generate spatio-temporally

Consumers increasingly desire ready-to-eat avocado fruit, yet if supplies fall short of customer expectations, complaints follow, incurring considerable cost and waste. In the avocado sector, wastage due to destructive testing and inaccurate assessment of firmness is significant. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether non-destructive laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV) was capable of assessing avocado

Aerosols are essential indicators of indoor air quality in livestock houses. An investigation was conducted in a dairy calf house into the relationships between the concentration of aerosol number and the concentrations of the airborne aerobic bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), Escherichia coli (E. coli), and Salmonella spp. examining their dependence on air temperature and relative humidity

When a rice combine harvester operates in the field, its frame vibrates significantly under multi-source excitation forces which can cause complex vibration and structural deformation. The vibration response of combine harvester frame under multi-source excitation was deduced. Based on the multi-source excitation of combine harvester, the chassis frame and the threshing frame were assembled into a

Industrial-scale simulation of the interaction between rice grains and equipment using the discrete element method (DEM) is limited due to the high computing power requirement. Volume-based scaled-up modelling of DEM rice particle and calibration of DEM input parameters were investigated as an alternative approach towards realising industry scale simulation-based design support of rice grains flow

A greenhouse climate-crop yield model was adapted to include additional climate modification techniques suitable for enabling sustainable greenhouse management at high latitudes. Additions to the model were supplementary lighting, secondary heating and heat harvesting technologies. The model: 1) included the impact of different light sources on greenhouse air temperature and tomato production 2) included

Body condition scoring (BCS) gives a relative measure of subcutaneous body fat available as energy reserves in the dairy cow. It is an important management tool for maximising milk production and reproduction efficiency while reducing the incidence of metabolic and peripartum diseases. The feasibility of estimating the BCS by computer vision has been demonstrated in recent research. However, the techniques

The effects of compaction pressures at 50, 130, and 210 kPa on airflow resistance on different classes of paddy rice (long thin, long, and short) were evaluated. The pressure drop was analysed by fitting the Shedd, Ergun, and Hukill & Ives models to the experimental data. The results indicated that differences in the mass compaction percentages were due to the compaction pressure rather than the distinct

Visual monitoring of behaviour on-farm is mostly challenging due to the number of animals to be observed and the time required. However, behavioural problems such as cannibalism in turkeys may be preceded by subtle changes in behaviour. Machine learning techniques allow automatic behavioural monitoring of livestock to be carried out under different farming conditions. The aim of this study was to develop

The study extracts representative features to train a model with supervised machine learning (ML) to detect powdery mildew (Sphaerotheca macularis f. sp. fragariae) on the strawberry leaves. Powdery mildew (PM) is a fungal disease that greatly affects the production of strawberry and usually infects under conditions of warming temperatures and high humidity. In this research, we report robust models

This research was aimed at determining the effect of optical variables for a single integrating sphere system, coupled with the inverse adding-doubling method, on estimating the reduced scattering coefficient (μs′) of turbid media. Integrating sphere measurements were performed on a total of 36 liquid samples and two solid samples. The results demonstrated that the system had good accuracy, with average

Leaf image recognition has been actively researched for plant species identification. However, it remains unclear whether leaf patterns can provide sufficient information for cultivar recognition. This paper reports the first attempt on soybean cultivar recognition by joint leaf patterns. In this paper, we propose a novel multiscale sliding chord matching (MSCM) approach to extract leaf patterns that

Accurate and timely detection of diseases and pests in rice plants can help farmers in applying timely treatment on the plants and thereby can reduce the economic losses substantially. Recent developments in deep learning-based convolutional neural networks (CNN) have greatly improved image classification accuracy. Being motivated by the success of CNNs in image classification, deep learning-based

A model simulating an autonomous battery electric vehicle system for agricultural field use was created, assuming a 200-ha conventional cereal farm in Swedish conditions. The different subsystems were verified against sources in the literature, field experiments and general common practice. The model was used to compare two different charging systems (conductive charging and battery exchange) for battery

Recognition of diseased Pinus trees in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) images is beneficial to the dynamic monitoring and control of Pinus tree diseases in large areas. However, the low resolution and complex backgrounds of UAV images limit the accuracy of traditional machine learning methods in recognising diseased Pinus trees. This study presents a method for recognising diseased Pinus trees that combines

Automated weed management tools in vegetable crops are needed to reduce or eliminate hand-weeding because of labour shortages and cost. Distinguishing crop plants from weeds in complex natural scenes of crop-weed mixtures remains a challenge for weed management automation. This paper presents a novel solution to the weed control problem by employing crop signalling technology: a novel systems approach

To counteract heat stress in dairy cows, a more reliable and efficient method for monitoring the activity of dairy cows and ambient environmental conditions should be developed. This research presents a cost-effective embedded imaging system that is capable of monitoring the drinking behaviour of dairy cows, while ambient temperature and humidity are simultaneously and continuously recorded with the

The knowledge of bioenergetics and building ventilation rate in intensive livestock housing is important for efficient design and operation of modern animal production facilities. However, information is limited about ventilation performance and house-level heat and moisture production rates of laying hens in contemporary cage-free facilities. Therefore, the objectives of this study were: (i) to determine

Behaviour and physiological responses (e.g. respiratory rate and cloacal temperature) could be an indication of the thermal comfort or discomfort of broilers chicks. This study aimed to estimate the cloacal temperature (CT) of chicks in response to different intensities and durations of thermal exposure during the first week of life using a fuzzy inference system (FIS) and a fuzzy genetic algorithm

Ammonia and carbon dioxide are the most relevant among the harmful gases present in broiler houses and their effects on animal health depend on concentration and exposure time. Inside these houses, increasing ventilation is the most common strategy adopted to control the concentration of these gases. This strategy is effective but increases electrical energy consumption (for fan operation) and thermal

Thresholds of heat stress are identified by determining the values of thermal comfort indices with significant change of animal responses. However, published thresholds may lead to inaccuracy when dealing with specific climate conditions, animal breeds and production factors. Thus, determining dynamic thresholds might provide better assessment of heat stress, with self-calibration capabilities. In

Thermal comfort indices (TCIs) have been developed to assess heat stress and model the relationship between thermal parameters (e.g. dry-bulb temperature) and animal responses (e.g. daily milk yield, DMY). The published models typically include temperature humidity index (THI), black globe humidity index, environmental stress index, equivalent temperature index, heat load index, respiration rate index

Currently the temperature humidity index (THI) is a common method of evaluating the risk of heat stress in cows by employing climatic parameters. However, the THI is a general and indirect indicator that fails to consider individual cows. Various studies have used animal-related parameters to account for the heat load of individual cows. This review provides an overview of different heat stress indicators

The sequence pattern mining method aims to identify frequent sequences that exceed a user-specified support threshold. The present study uses the same approach based on sequential standards to estimate the heat stress of broilers from a resulting behavioural pattern. Experimental data were recorded in a climate chamber where the behaviour of broilers was recorded under thermoneutral (comfort) conditions

Heat stress of broilers in commercial broiler-houses decreases their productivity and thus farm profitability. Climate control systems use sensors measuring the temperature around the broilers, which can be different from the actual body temperature of the broilers. In this research, a method estimating the body temperature of an individual broiler was designed and validated for commercial broiler-houses

As availability of skilled harvest labour is in decline, the sustainability of fresh market apple production in the USA is threatened. A mass mechanical harvesting of apples offers an alternative and promising solution. In addition to harvester design elements, it is important to understand the key canopy parameters of apple trees as they are closely integrated and interact with each other during the

Flower and fruitlet thinning can be an effective method of improving the yield and quality of fruit. Automatic detection flowers and fruits at different growth stages is essential for the intelligent management of apple orchards. The further segmentation of blossom areas contributes to extracting detailed growth information of apple flowers. However, the precise detection and segmentation of blossom