INMATEH - Agricultural Engineering

11-20

Authors: Ye XIA, Xiaohui LEI, Andreas HERBST, Xiaolan LYU

Thinning is an important agronomic process in pear production, thus the detection of pear inflorescence is an important technology for intelligentization of blossom thinning. In this paper, images of buds and flowers were collected under different natural conditions for model training, and the images were augmented by data augmentation methods. Model training was performed based on the YOLOv5s network with coordinate attention mechanism added to the backbone network and compared with the native YOLOv5s, YOLOv3, SSD 300, and Faster-RCNN algorithms. The mAP, F1 score and recall of the algorithm reached 93.32%, 91.10%, and 91.99%. The model size only took up 14.1 MB, and the average detection time was 27 ms, which are suitable for application in actual intelligent blossom thinning equipment.

35-45

Authors: ZhongLing XIA, WeiHan CHEN, Hang ZHAO, WeiDong SONG, Ling YANG, MingJin YANG

In traditional Chinese Baijiu (white wine) brewing factory, most processes were usually done manually. In order to promote industrial automation in liquor brewing industry and alleviate highly repetitive manual labor, an industrial robot operating system equipped with machine vision was designed to accomplish caldron feeding process during the distillation of Chinese Baijiu. Firstly, Modified D-H method was used to establish robot kinematics model. Shovel actuators and peripheral devices were designed to spread and transport grains during caldron feeding process. After that, an online detection system based on machine vision and master computer were designed to control key parameters of caldron feeding process, including grains height, caldron pressure, robot speed and waiting time, etc. Finally, multiple brewing experiments were carried out on crushed grains and spent grains. The experimental results showed that robot system maximum working space was 3.15 m, which could feed 3 caldrons at the same time. During Chinese Baijiu distillation, air pressure average error in caldron was 8.28 %. High proportion of first-class liquor and second-class liquor was obtained, which met engineering production requirements.

55-64

Authors: Yujiang GOU, Huibo HE, Huaying LI, Daming WANG, Mian ZHANG

In order to solve the problems of low efficiency of fertilization and spraying in the hilly mountains of China, a vehicle-mounted fertilization and spraying machine was designed. The whole structure and working principle of the machine were described, and the key components of fertilization and spraying are designed. The kinetics and kinematics of fertilizer particles and droplets were modeled by theoretical analysis of their motion characteristics in the air. The fertilization and variable spraying control system based on the core controller MCU (Microcontroller Unit) was set up. And the system can adjust the rotational speed of the disc and can automatically change the spraying volume by real-time detection of forward speed to achieve a constant spraying volume per unit area. The test results showed that: when the disc speed was greater than 90 r/min, the uniformity coefficient of variation was less than 15%, which satisfied the operational requirements; the uniformity coefficient of variation reached the minimum value of 10.03% when the disc rotation speed was 180 r/min, and the best fertilization performance was achieved at this time. In the spraying system, the actual spraying volume increased with the increased forward speed, and the relative error between the theoretical flow rate and the actual flow rate was 6.25% at most, and the average error was 5.94%, which could achieve the purpose of variable spraying. The research results can provide technical reference for the design and development of fertilization and spraying machinery in hilly areas.

74-87

Authors: Junming HOU, Zhaotan REN, Liang ZHANG, Qijie SUN, Wei WANG

Mechanized harvesting of crops is very important in the field of agricultural engineering, then the brush harvesting is a common way. The comb brush device is divided into four types: comb tooth type, roller spring finger type, belt comb finger type, and rod comb finger type. The picking rate and breakage rate are the indexes to evaluate the effect of comb brush harvesting devices. How to improve the picking rate and reduce damage rate is of great significance to the popularization of the devices. To improve the picking rate, the design of comb teeth should conform to the growth characteristics of crops. In this study, the application of four comb brush devices in harvesting crops was introduced, then the working principles and results were summarized. Meanwhile, the research status of a variable finger spacing device was summarized. In addition, to study fruit damage caused by brush devices during harvesting, three common analysis methods were summarized. The application situations and key steps were listed, and the modeling methods of material fruit in simulation analysis were analyzed. The study is intended to provide a reference for improving the harvesting effect of comb brush device. In the future, with the deepening combination of agronomy and agricultural machinery technology, comb brush harvesters will be more widely applied.

99-108

Authors: Hongwen YAN, Zhiwei HU, Qingliang CUI

To explore the application of traditional machine learning model in the intelligent management of pigs, in this paper, the influence of Principal Components Analysis (this method is simply referred to as PCA) pre-treatment on pig face identification with Support Vector Machine (this method is simply referred to as SVM) is studied. By testing method, the kernel functions of two testing schemes, one adopting SVM alone and the other adopting PCA+SVM, were determined to be poly and Radial Basis Function, whose coefficients were 0.03 and 0.01, respectively. With individual identification tests carried out on 10 pigs respectively, the identification accuracy was increased to 88.85% from 83.66% by the improved scheme, also the training time as well as testing time were reduced to 30.1% and 20.97% of the original value in the earlier scheme, respectively. It indicates that PCA pre-treatment had a positive effect on improving the efficiency of individual pig identification with SVM. It provides experimental support for the mobile terminals and embedded application of SVM classifiers.

121-130

Authors: Viktor TROKHANIAK, Nadia SPODYNIUK, Taras LENDIEL, Petro LUZAN, Anatolii MISHCHENKO, Svitlana TARASENKO, Lucretia POPA, Claudia IONITA

One of the main factors in the poultry house is maintaining a standardized microclimate. The quality of the product output in the final result depends precisely on the quality indicators of the air parameters. Poultry during its maintenance requires significant efforts and technological solutions. In this regard, authors improved microclimate system in air environment of the poultry house by installing exhaust fans on the side wall in a total number of 8 units. CFD modeling using ANSYS Fluent is a powerful tool for predicting the air flow scheme in a poultry house and is considered an alternative to experimental studies. Based on the obtained results of CFD modeling, it was established that the valves located at a height of 330 mm from the ceiling work most efficiently. Pressure drop for the inlet valves is 45.85 Pa. Air velocity at the inlet of the supply valves is equal to 9.17 m/s. Air velocity at a height of 0.7 m from the floor level varies within 0.57 m/s, the temperature is 9.91 °С.

145-158

Authors: Yuan FU, Shiyi REN, Peng TANG, Yuancai LENG, Xiaohu CHEN, Xinye TU, Xiaorong LV

Aiming at the potato cropping pattern in the hilly area of southwest China, a small digging device for potato harvester was designed. First, the overall structure of the harvester was determined according to the soil physical characteristic and cropping pattern of the test site. Then, the digging shovel, the key components of harvester were designed and was analyzed the relationship between the inclination of the digging shovel and the power loss under the conditions of different digging speed, digging depth and soil bulk density by MATLAB software, and the mathematical models were established. Finally, the three-dimensional model of the whole machine was established by SolidWorks, and the simulation experiment was carried out with the model of soil particles, potato particles and potato ridges created by the discrete element (DEM) software. The simulation results show that when the working speed of the harvester is 1 m/s, the digging depth is 170 mm, and the potato expose rate is 87.3%. Under normal working conditions of the digging device, appropriately reducing the digging depth can reduce the resistance and wear of the digging shovels.

170-176

Authors: Mustaqimah MUSTAQIMAH, Syafriandi SYAFRIANDI, Andriani LUBIS, Nawawi JUHAN, Diswandi NURBA

This study aims to develop a fish grater machine to produce shredded fish on a household scale. The development of this fish shredder machine considers getting the maximum capacity, a minimum percentage of losses, a maximum percentage of the samples with short grade and middle grade size, and a maximum percentage of the samples with rough grade size with limited sources specified power. The method used in this research is the machine manufacturing and testing approach. Three types of shredder machine teeth (K-type, P-type, and B-type) are the main focus of this research to optimize the quality of the shredded material and the machine's performance. The machine capacity, the percentage of losses, and the optimal quality of the counting size of the developed machine can be achieved using K-type shredder machine teeth. Analysis of variance and the t-test are used simultaneously to determine the optimal performance of this machine. The results of this study suggest that using a K-type shredder machine teeth is the most appropriate shredder machine for shredded fish.

185-194

Authors: Zongwei JIA, Yi SHAO, Yijie HOU, ChenYu ZHAO, ZhiChuan WANG, Yiming HOU, Jinpeng QIN

The automatic detection of wheat ears in the field has important scientific research value in yield estimation, gene character expression and seed screening. The manual counting method of wheat ears commonly used by breeding experts has some problems, such as low efficiency and high influence of subjective factors. In order to accurately detect the number of wheat ears in the field, based on mobilenet series network model, deep separable convolution module and alpha channel technology, the yolov4 model is reconstructed and successfully applied to the task of wheat ear yield estimation in the field. The model can adapt to the accurate recognition and counting of wheat ear images in different light, viewing angle and growth period, At the same time, the model volume with different alpha parameters is more suitable for mobile terminal deployment. The results show that the parameters of the improved yolov4 model are five times smaller than the original model, the average detection accuracy is 76.45%, and the detection speed FPS is two times higher than the original model, which provides accurate technical support for rapid yield estimation of wheat in the field.

205-214

Authors: Zengcun CHANG, Dongjie LI, Shuqi SHANG, Xiaoning HE, Baiqiang ZUO, Cheng DONG, Xu LI, Dongwei WANG

A peanut harvest separation and conveying device was designed considering the shortage of peanut harvest machinery and poor harvesting effect in China. The interaction between mechanism and pod-soil mixture was analysed to obtain the motion state of peanut relative separation conveyor. ADAMS simulation was applied to obtain the spatial curve of peanut trajectory in the separation process. The study determined that the optimum operating parameters of the separation conveyor were a drum speed of 280 r/min and an inclination angle of 19°. This study provides a theoretical basis for the further design of efficient peanut harvesting device.

225-236

Authors: Lili LI, Hua YANG, Bin WANG

Because of the high similarity of leaves of different Cerasus humilis varieties, it is difficult to identify them with the naked eye. In this study, the leaves of four different Cerasus humilis varieties collected in the field were used as the research objects, and a new leaf recognition model based on the improved lightweight convolution neural network model EfficientNet-B0 was proposed. Firstly, the performance of the network models Efficientnet-B0 and ResNet50, GoogleNet, ShuffleNet, and MobileNetV3 were compared based on two different learning methods. Then, the influence of different optimizers on model recognition accuracy was compared based on the optimal model. Finally, different learning rates were used to optimize the optimal model. The results show that the recognition rate of the proposed Efficientnet-B0 +Ranger+0.0005 model was up to 86.9%, which was 2.23% higher than that of the original Efficientnet-B0 model. The results show that this method can effectively improve the recognition accuracy of Cerasus humilis auriculate leaves, which can provide a reference for the deployment of the leaf identification model of Cerasus humilis variety on the mobile terminal.

245-259

Authors: Ye ZHANG, Qing JIANG, Liangyuan XU, Chao HUANG, Huasheng GAN

Shell-and-tube heat exchangers are widely used in many research fields and industrial production processes, but little research has been conducted on the use of heat exchangers for drying crops. This study conducted a numerical simulation of the temperature, velocity, and pressure fields based on the shell-and-tube fluids of a heat exchanger in a biomass particle hot-blast stove. The correctness of the simulation results was verified by test data before simulation, and the mesh was verified to be irrelevant. The application of a multi-objective genetic algorithm in heat exchanger design and optimization was explored, considering five design variables, such as hot tube diameter, transverse pitch, longitudinal pitch, cold flow velocity, and hot flow velocity for optimization. The Nusselt number, friction factor, and comprehensive performance coefficient were used as objective functions for 2D and 3D response surface analysis. The final design variables P1=74.91 mm, P2=104.23 mm, P3=121.37 mm, P4=4.83 m/s, and P5=8.48 m/s were obtained to improve the comprehensive performance coefficient by 16.11%. The heat transfer performance was improved by 9.55% and the resistance performance was reduced by 15%

269-284

Authors: Dewanto HARJUNOWIBOWO, Anif JAMALUDDIN, Yudi RINANTO, Fajar PRASETYA

The betel vine, a species of Piper, has organic impacts on human health through its secondary metabolites. Historically, it has been used to treat various illnesses including liver and stomach problems, inflammation, and as an antioxidant, antipyretic, and antimicrobial. Despite its medicinal benefits, the black betel vine (Piper betle var. Nigra) is not widely cultivated. This review summarises traditional and advanced methods of betel cultivation, including the habitats and diseases affecting Piper Betle L. There are two cultivation systems: closed-type and open-type, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The modern method of propagation through callus induction is gaining popularity, but requires specialised knowledge and is more costly. Traditional cultivation is less complicated, but exposes young plants to disease. Implementing smart farming practices, maintaining optimal growth conditions, and utilizing a screen house with artificial shading and lighting may lead to higher-quality crops with reduced losses. Before planting, the cuttings should be soaked in a fungicide mixture and grown as individual plants to avoid bacterial leaf blight from occurring.

295-304

Authors: Bin WANG, Lili LI, Shilin LI, Hua YANG

The key to diagnosing the types and degree of apple leaf diseases is to correctly segment apple leaf disease spots. Therefore, in order to effectively solve the problem of poor segmentation of leaves and diseased areas, the U2Net semantic segmentation network model was used in the research of apple leaf disease identification and disease diagnosis, and compared with the classic semantic segmentation network model DeepLabV3+ and UNet. In addition, the effects of different learning rates (0.01, 0.001, 0.0001) and optimizers (Adam, SGD) on the performance of U2Net network model were compared and analyzed. The experimental results showed that the learning rate is 0.001 and the optimizer is Adam, the average pixel accuracy (MPA) and mean intersection over union (MIoU) of the research model for lesion segmentation reach 98.87% and 84.43%, respectively. The results of this study were expected to provide the theoretical basis for the precise control of apple leaf disease.

315-324

Authors: Gennadii GOLUB, Oleg KEPKO, Olexander PUSHKA, Zoia KOVTUNIUK, Timofii KOTLIAR

Economic efficiency of greenhouse vegetable growing depends quite significantly on the cost of energy carriers, which is why the introduction of energy-saving technologies in greenhouse vegetable growing is an urgent issue. One of the ways to save energy resources can be the use of a closed ventilation system of the "plant greenhouse - mushroom greenhouse" type, which is based on the opposite type of respiration of plants and mushrooms. A closed ventilation system includes air exchange between the greenhouse with growing plants and the cultivation room for growing mushrooms. The closed ventilation system allows you to save energy by reducing the heating of the incoming air, as well as increasing the yield of vegetable products due to the increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the air that flows from the cultivation room for mushrooms to the greenhouse and mushrooms due to the increased concentrations of oxygen in the air that flows into the cultivation room for mushrooms from the greenhouse. Mathematical modeling of the process of heat transfer between greenhouses makes it possible to simulate transitional processes between rooms in order to assess the quality and accuracy of regulation, as well as to evaluate the parameters of the object in transitional modes. Mathematical modeling of dynamic processes is the basis for the formulation of transfer functions for the automatic control system. As a result of the study, mathematical models of the temperature dynamics of the substrate of mushrooms and greenhouse vegetables were obtained due to the analytical solution of the system of differential equations. The adequacy of the solution was verified by the Runge-Kutta method and compared with experimental data. The difference between the theoretical and experimental values is not significant and amounted to -3 % for the substrate temperature and -3.2 % for the air temperature.

335-348

Authors: Tikuneh DESSYE, Woldesenbet LAIKE

The domestic rice industry of Ethiopia is constrained by low productivity, poor quality, and old processing machines. The rice production system is done by hand or with rudimentary tools, and only 2% of households have access to tractors. It takes 175 labor days to weed and 66% of the total farm operations. Rice harvesting and threshing are done manually using a serrated sickle and animal trembling respectively. Farmers are responsible for most of the pre-milling operations and store paddy for household consumption in local stores. Challenges include fragmented farm holdings, poor marketing channels, and a lack of awareness of post-harvest utilization. The prospects for rice mechanization development include improving the rice mechanization research system, training local entrepreneurs, providing repair and maintenance services, promoting custom hiring centers, local manufacturing of farm implements, organizing agricultural cooperatives, landholding, and land ownership structures, assessing foreign experience, linking importers and service providers, and encouraging investments in the rural infrastructure.

359-368

Authors: Dadang Dayat HIDAYAT, Ari RAHAYUNINGTYAS, Diang SAGITA, Maulana FURQON, Arie SUDARYANTO, Dadang GANDARA, Taufik YUDHI, Nandang JAENUDIN

In this study, a fluidized coffee roaster has been successfully designed, constructed, and tested. This prototype has a capacity of 500 grammes per batch to aid small-scale coffee shops in roasting coffee beans. This fluidized coffee roaster is easy to use, cheap and has an appropriate capacity for the small business requirements. The coffee roasting components of the machine consisted of a blower (600 watts), a heat exchanger, a jet burner, a cylindrical roasting chamber, a chaff and dust collector, and a frame. At a range of airflow of 4-6 m/sec, the average temperature increase in the furnace and roasting chamber was 26 °C and 7.8 °C per minute, respectively. Performance tests revealed that the developed fluidized coffee roaster had been able to roast Robusta and Arabica coffee to light, medium, and dark roasting levels. For Robusta coffee, the time required to achieve light, medium, and dark levels were 8.18, 9.85, and 12.03 minutes, respectively, with final roasting temperatures for each level of 209 °C, 220 °C, and 248°C. For Arabica coffee, the time required was 5.32, 7.67, and 11.72 minutes, respectively with the final roasting temperatures of 207 °C, 210 °C, and 218 °C.

379-388

Authors: Adel AL-GEZAWE, Mokhtar COTTB, Fatma ABD EL GAWAD, Mahmoud AWAD, Osama FOUDA, Mahmoud OKASHA

Fruit branch pruning is still done manually, resulting in high labor costs, ergonomic hazards, and low efficiency and productivity. Furthermore, there are some limitations with imported agricultural machines because of their high prices and inappropriate local conditions. Hence, the present study aims to manufacture a local device for fruit branch pruning based on validating the correct stem-cutting position using a branch guide. The manufactured device comprises a 60 W electric motor, a formed base, a teethed pruning disc, a telescopic tube made up of the picker-cutting mechanism of the device, and a 12–Volt rechargeable dry battery. The device was made from local and light materials to allow a telescopic tube to reach the high position of the citrus fruit branches and consider ergonomic aspects. Field trials were executed on sour oranges trees to assess the pruning device’s performance as a function of change in cutting disc speeds (9.81, 13.74, 17.66, and 21.59 m/s), cutting disc teeth numbers (60, 80, and 100 teeth), different groups of branches diameters {A (from 5 mm to less than 10 mm), B (10 mm to less than 20 mm), C (from 20 mm to less than 30 mm) and D (from 30 mm to less than 40 mm)}. The manufactured device was assessed in terms of device productivity, pruning efficiency, pruning damage, power requirements, specific energy, and operating cost. The results indicated that the highest device productivity and pruning efficiency were 780, 218, 100 and 65 branch/h; and 96.0, 94.0, 92.0 and 90.5%, while the lowest pruning branch damage were 4.0, 6.0, 8.0 and 9.5%, specific energy were 0.0447, 0.1645, 0.4050 and 0.700 Wh per branch, for the groups of branches diameters A, B, C, and D respectively. The current investigation recommended that the optimal operational conditions were using the manufactured device for pruning citrus trees at 17.66 m/s pruning disc speed with a pruning disc teeth number of 60 teeth.

399-408

Authors: Min FU, Xiaoqing CHEN, Zefei GAO, Chengmeng WANG, Bing XU, Yilin HAO

For the problem of lacking reliable parameters during simulation analysis of the crushed corn stalk (CCS) micro-comminution process with gas-solid coupling method, the simulation parameters are calibrated using a combination of physical measurements and virtual experiments with CCS as the research object. The intrinsic parameters of CCS are obtained by physical experiment, and the stacking test is carried out by cylinder lifting method, and the actual angle of repose(AoR) is obtained as 44.12° by fitting the boundary line with Matlab software; the discrete element model of CCS is established, and the virtual stacking test is carried out by EDEM software; CCS-CCS dynamic friction coefficient, CCS-CCS static friction coefficient and JKR (JohnsonKendall-Roberts) surface energy are identified as the parameters with significant effects on the AoR by Plackett-Burman test; the steepest climb test is leveraged to determine the center of response surface analysis; the quadratic polynomial regression model of the simulation parameters and the AoR is established by the Box-Behnken test using the AoR as the evaluation index, and the optimal combination of the significant parameters are obtained as follows: the CCS-CCS dynamic friction coefficient is 0.14, the CCS-CCS static friction coefficient is 0.55, and the JKR surface energy is 0.12; the AoR verification test is conducted based on the optimal combination of the significant parameters. The results show that the AoR of the CCS is 43.82°, which is 0.68% of the actual AoR, indicating that the parameter combination is reliable. The data obtained in this research can provide corresponding simulation parameters for CCS discrete element simulation and the development of straw micro-crushing equipment.

417-426

Authors: Irfan ARDIANSAH, Ryan Ganesha CALIBRA, Nurpilihan BAFDAL, Awang BONO, Edy SURYADI, Siti NURHASANAH

Because hydroponic plant nutrient is dissolved in the water, water quality management is essential for growing healthy plants. Taking care of the total dissolved solids (TDS) and the pH (water acidity) is essential. The purpose of this research is to create a IoT-based water quality monitoring device. The average TDS after 30 days of automation with an Arduino UNO was 1162.82 ppm, and the gadget kicked on the nutrient pump whenever the TDS fell below 1000 ppm or the EC fell below 2. The mechanism self-adjusts the pH when it falls below 5.5 or rises above 6.5, with a mean of 6.17.

437-448

Authors: Shuchang LU, Xiawen LI

Dry direct seeding cultivation technology of rice is an important aspect of rice production and management. Six treatments were designed in this paper, and that is, T1 (conventional irrigation), T2 (conventional irrigation + conditioner), T3 (30% water-saving irrigation), T4 (30% water-saving irrigation + conditioner), T5 (50% water-saving irrigation), T6 (50% water-saving irrigation + conditioner). The results showed that in the three separate irrigation treatments, 30% water-saving irrigation was conducive to the growth of dry direct seeding rice at the tillering stage, jointing and booting stage, and 50% water-saving irrigation was more conducive to the growth of rice at grain filling stage. Compared with no application of amendments, all kinds of treatments could significantly promote the growth of dry direct seeding rice. Under the condition of water-saving irrigation of 30%, higher dry matter quality, yield and nutrient absorption can be obtained. The total dry matter quality and rice yield of T4 treatment with 30% water-saving irrigation and conditioner were the highest, which were 99.90 g/pot and 37.76 g/pot respectively, compared with conventional treatment (T1) was 37.60% and 45.96% higher, and this treatment had obvious effect on nitrogen and potassium absorption. In terms of quality impact, water saving was 30% Irrigation conditions are conducive to the improvement of rice processing quality, appearance quality and nutritional quality, especially after the application of conditioner, the overall rice quality is improved. This study has a certain reference value for water-saving irrigation, promoting nutrient utilization, stable yield and high quality of dry direct seeding rice.

461-470

Authors: Huabiao LI, Qihuan WANG, Jie MA, Yanan WANG, Dong YUE, Duanyang GENG

In order to solve the problem of high broken rate and impurity rate in the direct harvesting of corn kernels in China, a flexible threshing element with variable stiffness consisting of a conical spring and rasp bar was developed on the basis of the existing horizontal axial-flow flow corn threshing cylinder structure to achieve low loss harvesting of corn kernels. Through mechanical analysis of the key components of the threshing element, its structure and operating parameters were determined. Then, orthogonal tests were carried out using the feed amount, threshing clearance and cylinder speed as the test factors, and the broken rate and impurity rate of the corn kernels as the test indicators. The results showed that the feed amount, threshing clearance and cylinder speed had a significant effect on the broken rate and impurity rate of corn kernels; the optimum parameters for the corn variable stiffness flexible threshing device were feed amount 6.1 kg•s−1, threshing clearance 40 mm and cylinder speed 392 r•min−1. The broken rate of corn kernels was 1.67% and impurity rate 1.03%. The test results fully met the requirements of the national standards for corn harvesting operations. This study provides a technical basis for the application of the axial flow corn flexible threshing device in the corn direct harvesting combine.

481-491

Authors: Haihua JING, Jing ZHANG, Kebao DONG, Jiaqi MA, Zexu JIN

Water scarcity has been a critical constraint to economic development in semi-arid areas of China, so optimizing irrigation scheduling has become essential. This study obtained quantitative relationships between crop yield, crop water consumption, and irrigation quantity based on the Hydrus-2D and Stewart models. Different irrigation scheduling scenarios were evaluated to obtain the best irrigation scheduling based on the principle of simultaneous water conservation and crop productivity improvement with the evaluation indicators of crop yield, water use efficiency (WUE), irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE), and Critic-Topsis method. Taking drip irrigation under mulch as an example, the problem of optimizing the irrigation scheduling for different typical years was calculated. The optimization results showed that in the wet, normal, dry, and very dry years the annual irrigation quantity should be 49.68 mm, 49.68 mm, 85.38 mm, and 123.72 mm, when the WUE as well as IWUE, increases significantly, which had less impact on the crop yield and can save irrigation quantity by 30.00%, 30.00%, 35.00%, 27.00%. This study used Hydrus-2D to make a new attempt in irrigation scheduling optimization, giving full play to the model's high accuracy in soil water transport simulation and flexibility in boundary condition simulation. The optimization results can provide a reference for achieving accurate control of irrigation quantity during the crop growth period and reasonable irrigation scheduling formulation for regional crops.

501-510

Authors: Hui LI, Xin YANG, Aiqian YANG

The spring finger collection mechanism is a core component of balers. It is usually used to collect soft straw crops (corn straw, wheat straw, green forage), and rarely used for hard stem crops (such as branch pruning residues). Due to different biophysical characteristics of hard stem crops and soft straw crops, the collection mechanisms are also different. In China, branch pruning residues in apple orchards are collected manually. It is a heavy labor task. To this end, this article uses an improved spring finger mechanism to collect pruning residues in apple orchard branches, effectively replacing manual collection operations. A dynamic motion trajectory simulation platform is developed by analyzing each action using pitchforks or other agricultural tools throughout the entire collection process, and combined with the structure of the spring finger collection mechanism. The platform of the spring finger collection mechanism is improved to collect orchard branches, and redesign and manufacture the core components of the collection mechanism. In addition, comparative tests were performed on4 different placement orientation sunder the conditions of R=40±2 r/min and V=0.9-1.1 m/s. That is, 1) messy, 2) transverse, 3) portrait orientation (the treetop firstly contacts the collection device), and 4) portrait orientation (the thick stems of the branches first touch the collection device). The results indicate that 1) and 2) have similar success rates in picking branches, while 3) and 4) have lower success rates, especially with 4) being the lowest). The analysis found that some branches were directly inserted into the spring finger gap and moved under the machine, resulting in a large amount of losses. This study aims to improve the success rate of picking branches in the bundling machine and verify the relationship between different placement directions and the success rate of picking branches.

520-526

Authors: Dragoș MANEA, Gheorghe STROESCU, Lucreţia POPA, Alexandru IONESCU, Alexandru ZAICA

This paper presents the results obtained by INMA Bucharest, following a research project, in which a technology for harvesting and storing industrial hemp was developed. The equipment for harvesting green hemp stalks intended for this technology was tested in an experimental plot grown with Dacia - Secuieni hemp. Operating indices (actual torque at the power take-off, traction force at drawbar, total effective power to operate the equipment, working speed, effective working capacity) and working qualitative indices (stalk cutting height at lower knife and upper knife, degree of stalk cutting, stalk diameter, the average length of the stalk cut without inflorescence). As a result of the analysis of the values obtained for the operating indices and qualitative working indices, a series of pertinent conclusions and observations resulted, which will help guide harvesting and storage practices to ensure quality requirements for hemp fibre production are met.

537-548

Authors: Weipeng ZHANG, Bo ZHAO, Guangrui LI, Liming ZHOU, Kang NIU, Shengbo GAO

In response to the seasonal surge in the number of agricultural machinery failures in the service area caused by cross regional operations of agricultural machinery, agricultural machinery and equipment manufacturing enterprises have established emergency service networks to compensate for the insufficient service capacity of service providers. This paper proposes a method for locating and allocating emergency service vehicles based on a set coverage model, which aims to minimize the total cost of vehicle scheduling schemes and comprehensively consider the service scope and service capabilities of emergency service vehicles. An improved genetic algorithm is designed to solve the emergency service vehicle configuration problem, determine the scheduling location and number of emergency service vehicles, and verify its effectiveness through practical cases. Provide effective guarantee for agricultural machinery maintenance services for agricultural machinery enterprises in the cluster operation process, and improve the efficiency of maintenance services.

559-568

Authors: Changxi LIU, Jun HU, Yufei LI, Wei ZHANG, Qingda LI

Conical wind field anti-drift spray is an innovative form of anti-drift operation using auxiliary air flow, which can resist the generation of vortex, and has the characteristics of reducing the droplets loss with wind at the vertical height. In order to explore the characteristics of spray flow field and droplet deposition performance under conical wind field, the structure and working principle were analyzed based on the basic principle of proton dynamics. Spraytec and PDPA system were used to explore the distribution characteristics of spray flow field. Box-Behnken experimental design was used to analyze the droplet deposition performance. The optimum combination of the working parameters with spray height is 0.46 m, the spray pressure was 0.34 MPa, the conical wind speed was 16.16 m/s, and the droplet deposition amount was 3.39µL·cm-2. The droplet deposition amount was optimal.

579-588

Authors: Lili SUN, Yaoyu LI, Yuzhi WANG, Weijie SHI, Wuping ZHANG, Xiaoying ZHANG, Huamin ZHAO, Fuzhong LI

As one of the ancient cultivated crops in China, millet has the characteristics of high nutritional value, drought resistance and barrenness. It also plays an important role in ensuring the supply of food in our country. At present, most of the millet breeding work uses manual extraction of phenotypic information, which is labor-intensive and inefficient. Therefore, the development of an automated, efficient and accurate millet phenotype detection method has practical significance for the extraction of the millet genome. In this study, a combination of sparse reconstruction based on Structure from Motion (SfM) and Patch-based Multi-View Stereo (PMVS) was used to select three different varieties of millet. A total of 81 samples of 9 samples in each period were reconstructed to obtain a 3D model of millet. The combination of conditional filtering and statistical filtering is used to remove the noise points generated during the photographing process, and finally the obtained point cloud data is used to measure the agronomic traits of millet such as plant height and leaf area. The results show that the interval angle of 5° is the best reconstruction angle of millet. The coefficient of determination R2 of point cloud measurement results and manual measurement data regression analysis is higher than 0.94, indicating that the method used for 3D reconstruction has high applicability to different millet in different periods and high-throughput measurement of millet by the method in this paper is feasible. This study provides a theoretical basis for a millet phenotypic information measurement device.

597-608

Authors: Iulian UTA, Valentin APOSTOL, Horatiu POP, Viorel BADESCU, Constantin PAVEL, Claudia IONITA

In this paper the evaporator from the air handling units (AHU) is being studied, this being connected to an air conditioning installation with mechanical compression of vapors, existing within the Thermodynamics department. In a previous analysis, the heat exchanger (HEX) was checked to see if it complied with the cooling capacity relative to the heat exchange surface by finding the specific criteria equations. A follow-up to the previous article is to calculate based on the thermodynamic cycle, what happens if the refrigerant is replaced with other new refrigerants in the field of air conditioning in order to improve the performance of the air conditioning system (ACS), finding the refrigerant with a low Global warming potential (GWP) and with an appropriate flammability class. The moisture content of seeds is one of the most important storage parameters affecting their quality. In order to obtain the desired effect, the temperature and humidity of the air must be maintained in the warehouse with an air treatment unit. In this study, it is desired to replace the refrigerant and preserve the refrigerating power from the evaporator, by changing the degree of sub-cooling from the condenser. Due to the fact that the temperature in the ambient environment changes substantially during a calendar year and the condenser of the air conditioning installation has the same configuration, thus the decrease in the ambient temperature will result in the appearance of the sub-cooling process and an increase in the performance of the installation.

617-625

Authors: Hongbin BAI, Xuying LI, Fandi ZENG, Qiang SU, Ji CUI, Junyue WANG, Yongzhi ZHANG

To accurately simulate the interactions between the plug seedlings and the planter during the planting process and explore the damage mechanism of the plug seedling substrate block, the bonding parameters of plug seedlings substrate block were calibrated by the discrete element method. The physical puncture test showed that the average of maximum force of the cone indenter on substrate block measured by texture analyzer was 4.633 N. A Hertz-Mindlin with the bonding model was established for the substrate block in EDEM software. A virtual calibration experiment was designed with the puncture force of substrate block as the evaluation index. The two-level factorial test and the steepest climbing test were used to screen out the significant parameters and the optimal interval. Then, the Box-Behnken test and the optimization solution were used to obtain the optimal bonding parameter combination of the substrate block particles. Finally, the optimal parameter combination was simulated and verified. The relative error of the maximum puncture force between the simulated value and the measured value was 1.88 %, which indicated that the bonding parameters of the substrate block obtained by calibration were accurate and reliable.

635-644

Authors: Yuanyuan SUN, Xuchang WANG, Kaixing ZHANG

Aiming at the problems of low precision, strong subjectivity, and continuous measurement in the current measurement methods of corn phenotypic traits, a method of measuring corn phenotypic traits with high precision, low cost, easy carrying and continuous measurement was proposed. Firstly, the three-dimensional scanning device Kinect 2.0 is used to collect corn information and process and reconstruct the collected point cloud. Then, the stem and leaf point clouds were segmented by straight-through filtering, ellipse fitting and region growth segmentation. Finally, the phenotypic parameters of corn were obtained by triangulation and plane fitting for the segmented corn leaves, and the accuracy was analyzed. The results showed that the accuracy of corn plant height was 97.622 %, the average relative error of stem long axis was 9.46 %, the average relative error of stem short axis was 11.17 %, and the accuracy of leaf area was 95.577 %. Studies have shown that this method provides a new method for continuous measurement of phenotypic traits in corn.

655-664

Authors: Haichao WANG, Zheying ZONG, Yi QIN, Yingjie DU, Zhen WANG, Chunhui ZHANG

Tree whitewash has the functions of parasite prevention and cold protection and is therefore commonly used in the maintenance and management of trees. At present, tree whitewash mainly relies on manual operation, which has the problems of low efficiency, poor quality, and uneven distribution of the whitewash agent. To address this issue, this study developed a smart tree whitewash device based on human–computer interaction. The device was controlled mainly by a programmable logic controller (PLC). Once the trunk information collected by sensors was received by the PLC, it would control the up and down motions of the ball screw to manipulate the mechanical arm for whitewash. In addition, a Mitsubishi GT12 touch screen was adopted to facilitate system operation. Subsequently, a whitewash experiment was performed on poplar trunks with lengths of 10–35 cm using three different whitewash devices, i.e., a backpack sprayer, a semi-automatic tree sprayer, and the proposed smart tree whitewash device; the efficiency and the amount of whitewash agents used were compared. The results suggested that as the tree diameter at breast height increased, the amount of required whitewash agent elevated accordingly. In this case, the time required by the backpack sprayer and the semiautomatic tree sprayer to complete the job both increased, whereas that required by the smart tree whitewash device remained almost identical. In terms of work efficiency, the time required by the smart whitewash device to whitewash a tree was 109.89 s, which was approximately 1/2 of the time required by the backpack sprayer or 2/3 of that required by the semiautomatic tree spraying device. Meanwhile, the amount of whitewash agent required by the smart whitewash device to whitewash a tree was 140.23 g, which was approximately 0.46 of the amount required by the backpack sprayer or 0.74 of that required by the semiautomatic tree spraying device. Therefore, it was concluded that the proposed smart tree whitewash device could not only improve the work efficiency of tree whitewash but also greatly reduce the amount of whitewash agent required, thereby decreasing the cost and minimising environmental pollution. This study provides theoretical guidance and technical support for future research on smart tree whitewash devices.

673-680

Authors: Xin DU, Cailing LIU, Changqing LIU, Meng JIANG, Hao YUAN

Currently, maize production in China suffers from many problems, such as excessive fertilizer application, inefficient fertilizer use, and insufficient agricultural labour. The effect of one-time mechanical point-applied fertilization of controlled-release compound fertilizer in the root-zone on yield and nutrient uptake was investigated to explore efficient fertilization patterns for fertilizer decrease and yield increase in maize. The selected fertilizer was a controlled-release granular fertilizer (24-6-10 for N-P2O5-K2O) with six treatments in the application program: 1) no fertilizer (CK); 2) application of a one-time banding fertilizer (BDP) 5 cm off the seeds between rows and 10 cm deep; 3) application of a one-time point-applied fertilization (RZF) 5 cm off seed in the row and 10 cm deep; 4) application of a one-time point-applied fertilization (90% RZF) 10% fertilizer reduction 5 cm off seed in the row and 10 cm deep; 5) application of a one-time point-applied fertilization (80% RZF) 20% fertilizer reduction 5 cm off seed in the row and 10 cm deep; 6) application of a one-time point-applied fertilization (70% RZF) 30% fertilizer reduction 5 cm off seed in the row and 10 cm deep. The results showed that RZF increased yield by 5.84% over BDP, and the difference was significant, indicating that mechanized point-applied fertilization of fertilizer can replace manual point-applied fertilization application operations and achieve increased crop yield. The agronomic utilization rate of fertilizer of 12.35% and the bias productivity of 5.31% were higher in RZF than in BDP, and the differences were significant, indicating that one-time mechanical point-applied fertilization in the root zone significantly improved fertilizer utilization and reduced fertilizer loss.