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Livestock dung, discarded crop straws, and residual plastic film are the primary agricultural non-point sources of pollution. For livestock dung and discarded crop straw, the general treatment focuses on compost, animal fodder, industrial raw material, and new energy. The development of degradable mulch film is the main way to solve pollution from residual plastic film. However, an effective way to solve the above three types of pollution simultaneously and use them for ecological circular agriculture has been less studied. In this study, using cow dung and flax straw wastes as raw materials, we prepared natural, fibre-based paper mulch using the rapid-Kothen method and analysed the film-forming mechanism. Based on the Van Soest method, the cow dung and flax straw waste contain abundant cellulose fibres: 36.75% and 54.69%, respectively. The tensile strength and tear strength of fibre paper mulch are 1.87 kN/m and 19.91 N/mm, respectively. To enhance the adaptability of the fibre paper mulch in humid environments, the surface of the mulch was treated with alkyl ketene dimer (AKD). The AKD-coated fibre paper mulch displays hydrophobic properties, indicated by a contact angle of 128° ± 2°. It has a wet tensile strength of 0.64 kN/m and a wet tear strength of 8.23 N/mm. Additionally, it exhibits a dry tensile strength and a tear strength of 2.13 kN/m and 16.43 N/mm, respectively. Notably, the dry tensile strength is increased by 16.31%. In this way, the livestock dung and discarded crop straw can be reused, reducing dung pollution and straw burning in livestock farms, and the final products can alleviate the residual film pollution simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European paper mills are currently facing the question of whether recovered paper, their main raw material, will be available in sufficient quantities and an acceptable quality in the future. An alternative to recovered paper or wood fiber is the use of agricultural residues such as wheat straw. Sodium carbonate-based straw pulping processes have the advantage of not requiring recausticizing for chemical recovery, which reduces investment and operating costs. With the addition of oxygen, delignification can be significantly improved to provide pulps suitable for bleaching. This study compares the pulping of wheat straw using sodium carbonate, sodium carbonate + oxygen, and sodium carbonate + sodium hydroxide + oxygen. Pulping parameters such as temperature, retention time, and chemical charge were varied, and their influence on pulp properties was studied. The use of sodium carbonate alone produced pulps with high yields of up to 72% and comparably high burst and compressive strength. The addition of oxygen and small amounts of sodium hydroxide produced pulps with a high initial brightness of 42 %ISO and a low kappa number (18), still at high pulp yields of 62%. These pulps were two-stage bleached to achieve brightness levels of up to 73 %ISO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mulch has been considered effective for saving water and promoting plant growth. However, little has been investigated about the effect of mulch from recycled shredded paper under different soil moisture conditions on spinach growth. A pot-grown Komatsuna spinach experiment with a factorial design was conducted under two main conditions, with and without shredded paper mulch. Each of these conditions was treated with three different soil moisture levels (SWC) 20%, 25%, and 30%. The smallest evapotranspiration amount was in the mulch-only, no-plant treatment with SWC 20% (92.88 mm), and the largest was in the plant-only, no-mulch treatment (226.19 mm). All biomass yield attributions were negatively influenced by increasing the frequency of irrigation and SWC levels. SWC 20% with shredded mulch resulted in the largest dry matter, although it was statistically non-significant. But it resulted in taller plant heights and a larger leaf area index (LAI) compared to soil with no shredded mulch (p < 0.05). For SWC 25% and 30% treatments, Komatsuna spinach with no shredded mulch resulted in slightly superior plant dry matter and plant height, compared to mulched plants. These results suggest that SWC 20% with shredded paper mulch has the highest potential for saving water among all treatments for growing spinach under limited water availability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Target and off-target spray depositions determine the spray's effectiveness and impact on the environment. A decisive stage in the measurement of spray deposition and drift is selecting an appropriate sampling approach under field conditions. There are various approaches available for sampling spray deposition and drift, during the evaluation of ground sprayers used for the UAV sprayer assessment, under field conditions. In this study, two sampling approaches (water-sensitive paper, and glass strip collectors) were compared to analyze spray deposition in target and off-target zones. The results showed a variation in the estimation of the spray deposits among the two applied sampling methods. The results showed that the water-sensitive paper recorded the droplet deposition in the target zone with a range from 0.049 to 4.866 µLcm−2, whereas the glass strip recorded from 0.11 to 0.793 µLcm−2. The results also showed the water sensitive paper recorded an 80.3% higher deposition than that of the glass strip at zero position during the driving flight height 2 m and flight speed 2 ms−1 (T1 treatment). It can be concluded that variation in recorded depositing is due to the sampling material. It is recommended that the confident deposition results, measurement methods and sampling approaches must be standardized for UAV sprayers according to the field conditions and controlled within artificial assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents perennial grasses, without whose presence it is impossible to imagine the natural environment as well as agriculture, recreation, sport, and satisfactory aesthetics of the environment. Grasses have by far the widest distribution of all flowering families, grow on every continent, and are part of all the major biomes of the terrestrial world. They not only occur in almost all types of natural landscapes but also find a prominent place in the agricultural landscape. Grasses are not only a source of food for people (wheat, rice, maize, millet, etc.) and feed for livestock, but also a source of energy, building materials, a component of paper pulp, etc. Moreover, grasses have numerous uses to enhance the beauty of the surrounding landscape, bring relaxation, health, and comfort to people (i.e., gardens, parks, and sports facilities), and support land protection. This article describes just these, not often mentioned, and characterized grass uses, with an emphasis on the relationship between different species of perennial grasses and their functionality. The aim is to show the various aspects of the amenity use of grasses in the context of species diversity and their future under the conditions of a changing climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fast and accurate counting and positioning of flowers is the foundation of automated flower cultivation production. However, it remains a challenge to complete the counting and positioning of high-density flowers against a complex background. Therefore, this paper proposes a lightweight flower counting and positioning model, Light-FC-YOLO, based on YOLOv8s. By integrating lightweight convolution, the model is more portable and deployable. At the same time, a new efficient detection head, Efficient head, and the integration of the LSKA large kernel attention mechanism are proposed to enhance the model's feature detail extraction capability and change the weight ratio of the shallow edge and key point information in the network. Finally, the SIoU loss function with target angle deviation calculation is introduced to improve the model's detection accuracy and target positioning ability. Experimental results show that Light-FC-YOLO, with a model size reduction of 27.2% and a parameter reduction of 39.0%, has a Mean Average Precision (mAP) and recall that are 0.8% and 1.4% higher than YOLOv8s, respectively. In the counting comparison experiment, the coefficient of determination (R2) and Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of Light-FC-YOLO reached 0.9577 and 8.69, respectively, both superior to lightweight models such as YOLOv8s. The lightweight flower detection method proposed in this paper can efficiently complete flower positioning and counting tasks, providing technical support and reference solutions for automated flower production management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional DeepLabV3+ image semantic segmentation methods face challenges in pitaya orchard environments characterized by multiple interference factors, complex image backgrounds, high computational complexity, and extensive memory consumption. This paper introduces an improved visual navigation path recognition method for pitaya orchards. Initially, DeepLabV3+ utilizes a lightweight MobileNetV2 as its primary feature extraction backbone, which is augmented with a Pyramid Split Attention (PSA) module placed after the Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling (ASPP) module. This improvement enhances the spatial feature representation of feature maps, thereby sharpening the segmentation boundaries. Additionally, an Efficient Channel Attention Network (ECANet) mechanism is integrated with the lower-level features of MobileNetV2 to reduce computational complexity and refine the clarity of target boundaries. The paper also designs a navigation path extraction algorithm, which fits the road mask regions segmented by the model to achieve precise navigation path recognition. Experimental findings show that the enhanced DeepLabV3+ model achieved a Mean Intersection over Union (MIoU) and average pixel accuracy of 95.79% and 97.81%, respectively. These figures represent increases of 0.59 and 0.41 percentage points when contrasted with the original model. Furthermore, the model's memory consumption is reduced by 85.64%, 84.70%, and 85.06% when contrasted with the Pyramid Scene Parsing Network (PSPNet), U-Net, and Fully Convolutional Network (FCN) models, respectively. This reduction makes the proposed model more efficient while maintaining high segmentation accuracy, thus supporting enhanced operational efficiency in practical applications. The test results for navigation path recognition accuracy reveal that the angle error between the navigation centerline extracted using the least squares method and the manually fitted centerline is less than 5°. Additionally, the average deviation between the road centerlines extracted under three different lighting conditions and the actual road centerline is only 2.66 pixels, with an average image recognition time of 0.10 s. This performance suggests that the study can provide an effective reference for visual navigation in smart agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accurate identification of crop aphids is an important aspect of improving agricultural productivity. Aphids are characterised by small targets and a body colour similar to their surroundings. Even the most advanced detectors can experience problems such as low detection accuracy and a high number of missed detections. In this paper, a multi-stream target detection model is proposed for fast and accurate detection of crop aphids in complex backgrounds. First, inspired by the human visual system, we propose a bionic attention (BA) approach. Unlike previous strategies, we do not improve the model but input additional category labels as bionic information streams into the network at the network input stage to support mainstream recognition, which improves the detection effect. In addition, through web crawling and manual screening, we construct an aphid dataset containing 2059 images, named IP_Aphids, based on IP102. In this paper, we combine the proposed BA with a number of classical target detection models, including YOLOv5s, YOLOv7-tiny, YOLOv8n, SSD, and faster R-CNN, and we also compare the BA with the classical attention mechanisms CBAM and SE. This approach allows the effectiveness of the method to be evaluated from multiple perspectives. The results show that combining the bionic information flow of BA with the original mainstream information flow as inputs to the five target detection models improves the mAP by 2.2%, 7%, 2.7%, 1.78%, and 1.12%, respectively, compared to the models using only the original inputs. In addition, the mAP of the YOLOv8n_BA model is higher than that of the YOLOv8n, YOLOv8n_CBAM, and YOLOv8n_SE models by 4.6%, 3.3%, and 2.7%, respectively. This indicates that the BA proposed in this study is significantly better than the classical attention to improve crop aphid detection, which provides a reference for crop aphid-related research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cotton is an important economic crop; therefore, enhancing cotton yield and cultivating superior varieties are key research priorities. The seedling stage, a critical phase in cotton production, significantly influences the subsequent growth and yield of the crop. Therefore, breeding experts often choose to measure phenotypic parameters during this period to make breeding decisions. Traditional methods of phenotypic parameter measurement require manual processes, which are not only tedious and inefficient but can also damage the plants. To effectively, rapidly, and accurately extract three-dimensional phenotypic parameters of cotton seedlings, precise segmentation of phenotypic organs must first be achieved. This paper proposes a neural network-based segmentation algorithm for cotton seedling organs, which, compared to the average precision of 75.4% in traditional unsupervised learning, achieves an average precision of 96.67%, demonstrating excellent segmentation performance. The segmented leaf and stem point clouds are used for the calculation of phenotypic parameters such as stem length, leaf length, leaf width, and leaf area. Comparisons with actual measurements yield coefficients of determination R 2 of 91.97%, 90.97%, 92.72%, and 95.44%, respectively. The results indicate that the algorithm proposed in this paper can achieve precise segmentation of stem and leaf organs, and can efficiently and accurately extract three-dimensional phenotypic structural information of cotton seedlings. In summary, this study not only made significant progress in the precise segmentation of cotton seedling organs and the extraction of three-dimensional phenotypic structural information, but the algorithm also demonstrates strong applicability to different varieties of cotton seedlings. This provides new perspectives and methods for plant researchers and breeding experts, contributing to the advancement of the plant phenotypic computation field and bringing new breakthroughs and opportunities to the field of plant science research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intelligent control of precision planting can detect and regulate the operation quality of the planter in real time, which plays an important role in improving the operation quality of the planter and the yield of the corn. In this paper, the control system of a corn precision planter is designed to realize the operating quality monitoring and electric driving of the seed-metering device. The planting quality is calculated by the time interval between the neighboring falling seeds, instead of the plant spacing, to improve the operational efficiency of the system. At the same time, the forward speed of the planter is obtained by radar, which is used to accurately match the speed of the seed-metering device with the forward speed of the planter. The velocity error of the radar is analyzed, and the relevant relationship of the radar output frequency and forward speed is established. Comparative test results of this system and the JPS-12 test bench show that the detection performance of the system is reliable, and the maximum detection error of the quality parameters is less than 2.88%. Field experiments were carried out to verify the operational performance of the control system. Two speed sensors, radar and GPS, were chosen to study the effect of speed measuring on the performance of the control system. We found that speed measuring has a significant effect on planting performance. The qualified parameters of radar were significantly higher than those of GPS, at a forward speed of 6–12 km/h. The qualification feeding index (QFI) of radar was 0.51%, 0.67%, and 2.05% higher than that of GPS at speeds of 6, 8, 10, and 12 km/h. The precision index (PREC) of radar was 17.60%, 5.44%, 16.81%, and 17.30% lower than that of GPS. Therefore, the control system based on the radar speed measurement developed in this paper can significantly improve the operating quality of the planter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant biomass in the form of waste materials and by-products from various industries can be a valuable material for the production of composts and growing media for urban gardening. In this study, pulp and paper mill sludge, fruit-vegetable waste, mushroom spent substrate and rye straw were used to produce compost that was further used as a medium component in container cultivation of tomato. The plants were grown in containers with a capacity of 3 dm3 filled with three types of compost-based growing media supplemented with high peat, fen peat, pine bark and wood fiber. The tomato plants grown in 100% peat substrate served as controls. The plants grown in the compost-enriched media had a higher leaf greening index and percentage of ripe fruit, and exhibited an increased content of total polyphenols and flavonoids, potassium, calcium, magnesium and copper in fruit as compared with the control. The tomatoes grown in a medium consisting of 25% compost, 30% high peat, 15% low peat, 20% pine bark and 10% wood fiber reached the highest fresh fruit weight, total polyphenol content and L-ascorbic acid levels. This study demonstrated that the compost produced from natural materials from various sources was a valuable potting medium supplement with positive effects on tomato yield and nutritional value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accessible literature covered in this paper commonly highlights psyllids as a significant group of insects affecting pear trees, posing a continual challenge for commercial orchards. With the development of modern pear cultivation systems, Cacopsylla pyri Linnaeus 1758 (Hemiptera: Psyllidae) has emerged as a major pest in pear orchards across many European countries, including those in the Western Balkans. For years, the agricultural sector has primarily relied on chemical insecticides to control pear psyllas, but these methods often fail to produce satisfactory results. This is largely due to C. pyri's rapid development of resistance to chemical treatments. Consequently, modern agriculture is increasingly shifting towards biological methods to manage C. pyri, involving the identification and conservation of its natural enemies. Although there is an abundance of research on the natural predators of C. pyri and their biocontrol applications across the globe, the Western Balkan region has conducted relatively few studies on the subject. Globally, various parasitoids, predators, and entomopathogenic fungi are often cited as effective against C. pyri. Specific species registered in the agroecological conditions of the Western Balkans include parasitic wasps such as Trechnites insidiosus Crawford, 1910 (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae) and Prionomitus mitratus Dalman, 1820 (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae), as well as the predatory bug Anthocoris nemoralis Fabricius, 1794 (Hemiptera: Anthocoridae). However, most Balkan countries have yet to fully utilise the potential of beneficial entomofauna or develop strategies for their commercial application at a national level. Considering that C. pyri is a major pest in pear cultivation and its natural enemies have not been thoroughly explored in most of the Western Balkans, this paper aims to review the literature data on available natural enemies of pear psyllas and to highlight and promote their undeniable potential in biological control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high cost of manual weed control and the overuse of herbicides restrict the yield and quality of soybean. Intelligent mechanical weeding and precise application of pesticides can be used as effective alternatives for weed control in the field, and these require accurate distinction between crops and weeds. In this paper, images of soybean seedlings and weeds in different growth areas are used as datasets. In the aspect of soybean recognition, this paper designs a YOLOv8nGP algorithm with a backbone network optimisation based on GhostNet and an unconstrained pruning method with a 60% pruning rate. Compared with the original YOLOv8n, the YOLOv8nGP improves the Precision (P), Recall (R), and F1 metrics by 1.1% each, reduces the model size by 3.6 mb, and the inference time was 2.2 ms, which could meet the real-time requirements of field operations. In terms of weed recognition, this study utilises an image segmentation method based on the Normalized Excess Green Index (NExG). After filtering the soybean seedlings, the green parts of the image are extracted for weed recognition, which reduces the dependence on the diversity of the weed datasets. This study combines deep learning with traditional algorithms, which provides a new solution for weed recognition of soybean seedlings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diseases of tomato leaves can seriously damage crop yield and financial rewards. The timely and accurate detection of tomato diseases is a major challenge in agriculture. Hence, the early and accurate diagnosis of tomato diseases is crucial. The emergence of deep learning has dramatically helped in plant disease detection. However, the accuracy of deep learning models largely depends on the quantity and quality of training data. To solve the inter-class imbalance problem and improve the generalization ability of the classification model, this paper proposes a cycle-consistent generative-adversarial-network-based Transformer model to generate diseased tomato leaf images for data augmentation. In addition, this paper uses a Transformer model and densely connected CNN architecture to extract multilevel local features. The Transformer module is utilized to capture global dependencies and contextual information accurately to expand the sensory field of the model. Experiments show that the proposed model achieved 99.45% accuracy on the PlantVillage dataset. The 2018 Artificial Intelligence Challenger dataset and the private dataset attained accuracies of 98.30% and 95.4%, and the proposed classification model achieved a higher accuracy and smaller model size compared to previous deep learning models. The classification model is generalizable and robust and can provide a stable theoretical framework for crop disease prevention and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review paper addresses the importance of increasing agrobiodiversity to cope with climate change and, at the same time, providing a sufficient amount of healthy food. This is in agreement with the messages from ecology and medicine indicating the advantages of biodiversity in general and agrobiodiversity in particular for the planet and for our health. Plant breeding is considered to be one of the causes of the decline in agrobiodiversity, and therefore, this paper illustrates alternatives to the commonly used approach based on centralized selection. The first alternative is decentralized participatory breeding, which adapts crops to both different agronomic environments and client preferences, representing an "option by context" model of research. The second alternative is evolutionary breeding, which is a more dynamic strategy than participatory plant breeding because it merges the advantages of decentralization with the ability of dynamic mixtures and evolutionary populations to cope with biotic and abiotic stresses and evolve, thus adapting to climate change and to the associated changes in the spectrum of pests. A crop capable of evolving as the environment around it evolves appears to be the most ideal way of responding to climate change and increasing agricultural biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses the status of hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) technology and identifies barriers hindering its commercial viability. Conducting a global survey among HTC companies (with a total of 24 surveys sent), the research evaluates the current landscape, challenges, and future prospects of large-scale HTC operations. Furthermore, it presents a detailed global inventory of existing HTC facilities, illustrating geographical distribution and trends in application. Most of the companies are located in Europe, followed by Asia and North America. With substantial participation from HTC companies, exceeding 62% in the survey (15 companies), the study provides a comprehensive overview of diverse companies, their business models, regulatory challenges, and the overall state of HTC technology. The majority of companies in this study, approximately 80%, offer services in the field of waste management. This paper also explores the potential of HTC in transforming waste management practices, carbon sequestration methodologies, and the development of new materials. Employing a thorough SWOT analysis, the paper advocates for a broader adoption of HTC, emphasizing its transformative capacity in fostering sustainable management of urban, industrial, and agricultural residues, promoting circular economy principles, mitigating climate change, and offering a robust foundation for informed decision-making and sustainable development strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weeds compete with crops for water and nutrients and can adversely affect crop growth and yield, so it is important to research effective weed control methods. This paper provides an overview of the impact of weeds on crop yield and describes the current state of research on weed management in field herbaceous crops. Physical weed control mainly refers to thermal technologies represented by flame weed control and laser weed control, which can efficiently and accurately remove weeds. Mechanical weed control requires a combination of sensor technologies, machine vision technology, and high-precision navigation to improve weed control accuracy. Biological weed control relies heavily on plant extracts and pathogens to create herbicides, but it is costly, and some can be toxic to mammals. Chemical weed control is a common method, resulting in environmental pollution and weed resistance. To reduce the use of chemical herbicides, scholars have proposed integrated weed management strategies, which combine biological control, control of the seed bank, and improve crop competitiveness. Integrated weed management strategies are considered to be the future direction of weed management. In conclusion, physical, mechanical, biological, and chemical weed control methods are commonly used in weed management. Each method has its applicable scenarios, and the implementation of integrated weed management strategies can lead to better weed control, improving crop yield and quality. The main objective of this review is to organize the research progress on weed management methods for herbaceous crops in the field and to provide a reference for the agricultural sector to develop weed control strategies. Specifically, this paper categorizes weed management methods into four groups, discusses and presents the advantages and disadvantages of the aforementioned weed control methods, and discusses future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The precise estimation of sugarcane yield at the field scale is urgently required for harvest planning and policy-oriented management. Sugarcane yield estimation from satellite remote sensing is available, but satellite image acquisition is affected by adverse weather conditions, which limits the applicability at the field scale. Secondly, existing approaches from remote sensing data using vegetation parameters such as NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) and LAI (Leaf Area Index) have several limitations. In the case of sugarcane, crop yield is actually the weight of crop stalks in a unit of acreage. However, NDVI's over-saturation during the vigorous growth period of crops results in significant limitations for sugarcane yield estimation using NDVI. A new sugarcane yield estimation is explored in this paper, which employs allometric variables indicating stalk magnitude (especially stalk height and density) rather than vegetation parameters indicating the leaf quantity of the crop. In this paper, UAV images with RGB bands were processed to create mosaic images of sugarcane fields and estimate allometric variables. Allometric equations were established using field sampling data to estimate sugarcane stalk height, diameter, and weight. Additionally, a stalk density estimation model at the pixel scale of the plot was created using visible light vegetation indices from the UAV images and ground survey data. The optimal stalk density estimation model was applied to estimate the number of plants at the pixel scale of the plot in this study. Then, the retrieved height, diameter, and density of sugarcane in the fields were combined with stalk weight data to create a model for estimating the sugarcane yield per plot. A separate dataset was used to validate the accuracy of the yield estimation. It was found that the approach presented in this study provided very accurate estimates of sugarcane yield. The average yield in the field was 93.83 Mg ha−1, slightly higher than the sampling yield. The root mean square error of the estimation was 6.63 Mg ha−1, which was 5.18% higher than the actual sampling yield. This study offers an alternative approach for precise sugarcane yield estimation at the field scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As arid lands expand across the globe, scholars increasingly turn to the archaeological record for examples of sustainable farming in extreme environments. The arid north coast of Peru was the setting of early and intensive irrigation-based farming; it is also periodically impacted by sudden, heavy rainfall related to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. While the sociopolitical effects, technologies, and engineering expertise of these irrigation systems have been thoroughly examined and theorized, little is known about how farmers managed periods of water stress. The aim of this study is to test whether arid zone farming was supported by hybrid, intermittent flood and perennial water source systems in the prehispanic past. An arroyo in the Chicama Valley was selected for preliminary data collection, and these data are presented here: (1) drone photography of the arroyo capturing the aftermath of a recent (2023) rain event; and (2) potassium (K) soil test kit results from samples collected near suspected prehispanic check dam features in the same area. The paper combines these data with comparative examples from the literature to suggest that the prehispanic features functioned as water-harvesting infrastructure. The paper concludes that sustainable, arid zone farming can be supported by hybrid, intermittent flood and perennial water source systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Droplet collectors are commonly utilized to gauge the effect of pesticide deposition on crops. However, the varying surface characteristics of these collectors can lead to disparate data outcomes. Notably, water-sensitive paper is limited in humid environments, hindering rapid droplet deposition evaluation. Consequently, the selection of appropriate droplet collectors based on the environmental conditions is imperative. This study involved the use of five typical droplet collectors to establish a method for the swift and accurate evaluation of spray effectiveness, employing various spray liquids. It was observed that the surface free energy of five widely used droplet collectors was measured as follows: 35.11 mN m−1 for semigloss paper, 33.81 mN m−1 for coated paper laminated with polyvinyl chloride, 48.38 mN m−1 for kromekote paper (KP), 33.90 mN m−1 for polyvinyl chloride cards, and 39.95 mN m−1 for water-sensitive paper. When comparing the outcomes of deposition tests across these five collectors, it was noted that the results pertaining to droplet density were minimally influenced by the surface properties of the collectors with droplet coverage following. The volume of deposition was found to be the most susceptible to the surface characteristics of the collectors. Therefore, in the context of collecting and processing droplets, prioritizing droplet density as the metric for evaluation proved to be more reliable than using the other indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the global population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, the agricultural sector faces the challenge of achieving an increase of 60% in food production without using much more land. This paper explores the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to bridge this "land gap" and mitigate the environmental implications of agricultural land use. Typically, the problem with using AI in such agricultural sectors is the need for more specific infrastructure to enable developers to design AI and ML engineers to deploy these AIs. It is, therefore, essential to develop dedicated infrastructures to apply AI models that optimize resource extraction in the agricultural sector. This article presents an infrastructure for the execution and development of AI-based models using open-source technology, and this infrastructure has been optimized and tuned for agricultural environments. By embracing the MLOps culture, the automation of AI model development processes is promoted, ensuring efficient workflows, fostering collaboration among multidisciplinary teams, and promoting the rapid deployment of AI-driven solutions adaptable to changing field conditions. The proposed architecture integrates state-of-the-art tools to cover the entire AI model lifecycle, enabling efficient workflows for data scientists and ML engineers. Considering the nature of the agricultural field, it also supports diverse IoT protocols, ensuring communication between sensors and AI models and running multiple AI models simultaneously, optimizing hardware resource utilization. Surveys specifically designed and conducted for this paper with professionals related to AI show promising results. These findings demonstrate that the proposed architecture helps close the gap between data scientists and ML engineers, easing the collaboration between them and simplifying their work through the whole AI model lifecycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of paper bagging of grape bunches on the morphological, mechanical, and chemical characteristics of berries of three table grapes varieties as an environmentally-friendly technique for protecting clusters from biotic and abiotic agents. Clusters of Italia, Autumn Royal, and Regal Seedless grape cultivars were bagged and compared to a not-bagged control. Air temperature inside and outside the bags was monitored. Bunch weight and length, number of berries per bunch, berry longitudinal and transversal diameter, berry mass, number of seeds per berry (normal in size and aborted), soluble solid content, titratable acidity, and skin color by CIEL*a*b* parameters were determined on four points of each berry. Berries were evaluated using texture analysis, and the main texture profile analysis parameters were compared. The air temperatures around not-bagged clusters were slightly higher than inside the bags. In all the cultivars under evaluation, bagged bunches were heavier compared with not-bagged ones. In Autumn Royal and Regal Seedless, these differences were mainly owing to the higher number of berries and higher berry weight of the bagged bunches. Regarding mechanical properties, in seedless varieties, the bagging treatment increased berry hardness (related to the berry firmness) and decreased berry cohesiveness and resilience, whereas an opposite behavior was found in cv. Italia. Berry skin break force was lower in the bagging treatment in all the analyzed varieties, indicating a softer and easier-to-chew berry skin. The findings demonstrate that the bagging technique affected the three variety parameters to different extents. The main differences were found in the seedless varieties in terms of berry size and bunch characteristics. For all varieties, bagged bunches achieved the quality level required by the market, confirming the suitability of this technique. However, the bag industry is proposing many different bag types (differing in material, shape, color, and closing system); therefore, further studies are needed to obtain more complete and exhaustive technical information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes PestNet, a lightweight method for classifying crop pests, which improves upon MobileNet-V2 to address the high model complexity and low classification accuracy commonly found in pest classification research. Firstly, the training phase employs the AdamW optimizer and mixup data augmentation techniques to enhance the model's convergence and generalization capabilities. Secondly, the Adaptive Spatial Group-Wise Enhanced (ASGE) attention mechanism is introduced and integrated into the inverted residual blocks of the MobileNet-V2 model, boosting the model's ability to extract both local and global pest information. Additionally, a dual-branch feature fusion module is developed using convolutional kernels of varying sizes to enhance classification performance for pests of different scales under real-world conditions. Lastly, the model's activation function and overall architecture are optimized to reduce complexity. Experimental results on a proprietary pest dataset show that PestNet achieves classification accuracy and an F1 score of 87.62% and 86.90%, respectively, marking improvements of 4.20 percentage points and 5.86 percentage points over the baseline model. Moreover, PestNet's parameter count and floating-point operations are reduced by 14.10% and 37.50%, respectively, compared to the baseline model. When compared with ResNet-50, MobileNet V3-Large, and EfficientNet-B1, PestNet offers superior parameter efficiency and floating-point operation requirements, as well as improved pest classification accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With global climate change, flooding events are becoming more frequent. However, the mechanism of how waterlogging stress affects crop roots needs to be studied in depth. Waterlogging stress can also lead to soil nitrogen and phosphorus loss, resulting in agricultural surface pollution. The aim of this study is to clarify the relationship between soil nitrogen and phosphorus distribution, root growth characteristics, and nitrogen and phosphorus loss in runoff water under waterlogging stress during the winter wheat seedling stage. In this paper, Zhengmai 136 was selected as the experimental material, and two water management methods (waterlogging treatment and non-waterlogging control treatment) were set up. Field experiments were conducted at the Wudaogou Hydrological Experimental Station in 2022 to assess the nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in runoff water under waterlogging stress. The study also aimed to analyze the nitrogen and phosphorus content and the root distribution characteristics in different soil layers under waterlogging stress. The results showed as the following: 1. Waterlogging stress increased the characteristic parameters of winter wheat roots in both horizontal and vertical directions. Compared with the control treatment, the root length increased by 1.2–29.9% in the waterlogging treatment, while the root surface area and volume increased by an average of 3.1% and 41.9%, respectively. 2. Nitrogen and phosphorus contents in waterlogged soils were enriched in the 0–20 cm soil layer, but both tended to decrease in the 20–60 cm soil layer. Additionally, there was an inverse relationship between the distribution of soil nutrients and the distribution of wheat roots. 3. During the seedling stage of winter wheat, nitrogen loss was the main factor in the runoff water. In addition, nitrate nitrogen concentration averaged 55.2% of the total nitrogen concentration, while soluble phosphorus concentration averaged 79.1% of the total phosphorus concentration. 4. The results of redundancy analysis demonstrated that available phosphorus in the soil was the key environmental factor affecting the water quality of runoff water. Total phosphorus and dissolved phosphorus in the water were identified as the dominant factors influencing root growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planting cover crops can improve soil health and help to sustain agricultural crop yields. In northern climates where corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max L.) are grown, cover crop biomass production can be low. This has led to people investigating the potential of interseeding cover crops into the growing main crop. This paper sought to determine biomass production and the benefit to grain yields, weed control and soil properties from interseeding cover crops into corn and soybean. This review included 70 studies published prior to 15 March 2024. Interseeded cover crops that were winter-hardy such as cereal rye (Secale cereale L.) produced more biomass in the spring (1.04 Mg ha−1 average biomass production) than any of the interseeded cover crops did in fall (0.35 Mg ha−1 average biomass production), primarily at crop row spacings of 76 cm. Factors that affected cover crop biomass production were crop stage, planting method, tillage practice, irrigation and row spacing. There was not a consistent widely planted cover crop species that produced the most biomass. Interseeded cover crops reduced weed biomass by 46% compared to weed control and generally did not affect crop grain yields when planted after V4 crop stage. Interseeded cover crops reduced soil nitrate concentration but generally did not affect other soil properties including soil water content. However, most of these studies planted cover crops at the same site for less than three years. Early interseeded cover crops generally did not perform better than interseeded winter-hardy cover crops planted around crop physiological maturity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adverse effects of long-term usage of synthetic fertilizers such as eutrophication, weed infestation, opportunistic diseases, and declining yields have been established. However, the fact that soil fertility declines because of continuous cropping to meet the demand for feeding the ever-growing population, coupled with the high cost of chemical fertilizers, has left little option. This mainly affects resource-poor smallholder farmers, who heavily depend on their production for sustenance and economic well-being. Current research efforts have underscored the urgency of mitigating this trend by seeking a cost-effective and eco-friendly alternative to avert impending global food crises. Biochar has gained attention as a possible alternative to meet the soil requirements on many fronts, such as improving soil functioning and restoring degraded lands. Biochar is also known to reduce heavy metal mobility and inorganic contaminants, mitigating salinity and drought stress as well as greenhouse gas emissions associated with agriculture. However, these studies need to be harmonized to draft a more pragmatic approach to policy formulation and establish an enhanced paradigm. In this paper, we review several studies on biochar and synthesize its possible use as an alternative or supplement to synthetic fertilizers to enhance crop productivity under standard and stressful growing conditions. The ability of biochar to sequester carbon and its impact on soil properties are highlighted. We emphasize its potential for soil nutrient management and the possibility of adopting it as an alternative to synthetic fertilizer in smallholder farming. We also point out several critical research gaps that call for attention and serve as pointers for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is a fundamental crop essential for both human and animal consumption. Addressing the challenge of enhancing wheat yield involves sophisticated applications of molecular genetics and genomic techniques. This review synthesizes current research identifying and characterizing pivotal genes that impact traits such as grain size, number, and weight, critical factors influencing overall yield. Key genes including TaSPL17, ABP7, TaGNI, TaCKX6, TaGS5, TaDA1, WAPO1, TaRht1, TaTGW-7A, TaGW2, TaGS5-3A, TaSus2-2A, TaSus2-2B, TaSus1-7A, and TaSus1-7B are examined for their roles in these traits. The review also explores genes responsive to environmental changes, which are increasingly significant under current climate variability. Multi-trait regulatory genes and quantitative trait loci (QTLs) that contribute to these traits are discussed, highlighting their dual influences on grain size and yield. Furthermore, the paper underscores the utility of emerging technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9, Case13, and multi-omics approaches. These innovations are instrumental for future discoveries and are poised to revolutionize wheat breeding by enabling precise genetic enhancements. Facing unprecedented challenges from climate change, the identification and utilization of these candidates is crucial. This review aims to be a comprehensive resource for researchers, providing an integrative understanding of complex traits in wheat and proposing new avenues for research and crop improvement strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pests have caused significant losses to agriculture, greatly increasing the detection of pests in the planting process and the cost of pest management in the early stages. At this time, advances in computer vision and deep learning for the detection of pests appearing in the crop open the door to the application of target detection algorithms that can greatly improve the efficiency of tomato pest detection and play an important technical role in the realization of the intelligent planting of tomatoes. However, in the natural environment, tomato leaf pests are small in size, large in similarity, and large in environmental variability, and this type of situation can lead to greater detection difficulty. Aiming at the above problems, a network target detection model based on deep learning, YOLONDD, is proposed in this paper. Designing a new loss function, NMIoU (Normalized Wasserstein Distance with Mean Pairwise Distance Intersection over Union), which improves the ability of anomaly processing, improves the model's ability to detect and identify objects of different scales, and improves the robustness to scale changes; Adding a Dynamic head (DyHead) with an attention mechanism will improve the detection ability of targets at different scales, reduce the number of computations and parameters, improve the accuracy of target detection, enhance the overall performance of the model, and accelerate the training process. Adding decoupled head to Head can effectively reduce the number of parameters and computational complexity and enhance the model's generalization ability and robustness. The experimental results show that the average accuracy of YOLONDD can reach 90.1%, which is 3.33% higher than the original YOLOv5 algorithm and is better than SSD, Faster R-CNN, YOLOv7, YOLOv8, RetinaNet, and other target detection networks, and it can be more efficiently and accurately utilized in tomato leaf pest detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blueberry fruit phenotypes are crucial agronomic trait indicators in blueberry breeding, and the number of fruits within the cluster, maturity, and compactness are important for evaluating blueberry harvesting methods and yield. However, the existing instance segmentation model cannot extract all these features. And due to the complex field environment and aggregated growth of blueberry fruits, the model is difficult to meet the demand for accurate segmentation and automatic phenotype extraction in the field environment. To solve the above problems, a high-precision phenotype extraction model based on hybrid task cascade (HTC) is proposed in this paper. ConvNeXt is used as the backbone network, and three Mask RCNN networks are cascaded to construct the model, rich feature learning through multi-scale training, and customized algorithms for phenotype extraction combined with contour detection techniques. Accurate segmentation of blueberry fruits and automatic extraction of fruit number, ripeness, and compactness under severe occlusion were successfully realized. Following experimental validation, the average precision for both bounding boxes (bbox) and masks stood at 0.974 and 0.975, respectively, with an intersection over union (IOU) threshold of 0.5. The linear regression of the extracted value of the fruit number against the true value showed that the coefficient of determination (R2) was 0.902, and the root mean squared error (RMSE) was 1.556. This confirms the effectiveness of the proposed model. It provides a new option for more efficient and accurate phenotypic extraction of blueberry clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nitrogen application rate (NAR) has a significant effect on the contents of wheat grain protein and its composition. There is still no consensus regarding the appropriate NAR, given the differences in studied conditions and influence of factors such as geographical location, climate, and soil nutrient contents. In this study, 66 papers related to wheat grain protein and its composition published from 1984 to 2021 were selected for meta-analysis in comprehensively evaluating the response of wheat grain protein content and composition to NAR in China. The results reveal that NAR significantly increased total protein content by 9.49–28.6%, gliadin by 9.13–30.5%, glutenin by 12.9–45.4%, albumin by 5.06–15.8%, and globulin by 8.52–24.0% of wheat grain in China, respectively, compared to no nitrogen application. The optimal NAR is 240–300 kg ha−1 when specific planting conditions are not being considered. Under different growing conditions, the NAR that provided the greatest increase in wheat grain protein and its composition varied as follows: 180–240 kg ha−1 in Northwest China and at >100 m altitudes; >300 kg ha−1 in North China and at <100 m altitudes and lower soil base nutrient levels; 240–300 kg ha−1 in Southeast China, with higher soil nutrients levels and for all average annual temperatures and precipitation ranges. In conclusion, the results of the present study reveal that it is feasible to systematically enhance the contents of wheat grain protein and its related fractions by appropriate NAR under different cropping conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a computational approach for quantifying soybean defects through seed classification using deep learning techniques. To differentiate between good and defective soybean seeds quickly and accurately, we introduce a lightweight soybean seed defect identification network (SSDINet). Initially, the labeled soybean seed dataset is developed and processed through the proposed seed contour detection (SCD) algorithm, which enhances the quality of soybean seed images and performs segmentation, followed by SSDINet. The classification network, SSDINet, consists of a convolutional neural network, depthwise convolution blocks, and squeeze-and-excitation blocks, making the network lightweight, faster, and more accurate than other state-of-the-art approaches. Experimental results demonstrate that SSDINet achieved the highest accuracy, of 98.64%, with 1.15 M parameters in 4.70 ms, surpassing existing state-of-the-art models. This research contributes to advancing deep learning techniques in agricultural applications and offers insights into the practical implementation of seed classification systems for quality control in the soybean industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural development is one of the most essential needs worldwide. In Norway, the primary foundation of grain production is based on geological and biological features. Existing research is limited to regional-scale yield predictions using artificial intelligence (AI) models, which provide a holistic overview of crop growth. In this paper, the authors propose detecting several field-scale crop types and use this analysis to predict yield production early in the growing season. In this study, the authors utilise a multi-temporal satellite image, meteorological, geographical, and grain production data corpus. The authors extract relevant vegetation indices from satellite images. Furthermore, the authors use field-area-specific features to build a field-based crop type classification model. The proposed model, consisting of a time-distributed network and a gated recurrent unit, can efficiently classify crop types with an accuracy of 70%. In addition, the authors justified that the attention-based multiple-instance learning models could learn semi-labelled agricultural data, and thus, allow realistic early in-season predictions for farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many cool-season pastures in the southeastern U.S. are dominated by a competitive cool-season grass, tall fescue (Schedonorus arundinaceus), and lack substantial plant diversity. Planting native warm-season grasses (NWSGs) and wildflowers (WFs) into these pastures could provide summer forage for cattle and more floral resources for pollinators. This paper summarizes field experiments designed to evaluate different spatiotemporal planting arrangements of NWSGs and WFs to improve their establishment success. The study was conducted from April 2021 to October 2023 in central Virginia (USA). Planting treatments included NWSG and WF mixtures planted: (1) together in the same space, (2) spatially separated in space (i.e., side by side), or (3) temporally separated where NWSGs and WFs were planted in difference sequences. Results showed few differences in forage mass, floral production, and botanical composition as well as stand density in 2021 and 2022. In 2023, NWSG abundance was greater where grasses were planted first or mixed with WFs. Similarly, the WF component was favored when they were planted before NWSGs. Overall, planting NWSG and WF mixes separately, either spatially or temporally, favors successful establishment and could offer more flexibility for using selective herbicides to suppress the heavy weed pressure that often accompanies these plantings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use practices face significant pressure due to increased demand and conflicting needs. Several factors contribute to this trend, such as the ever-increasing human population, the increased demand for food production, and the expansion of industrial and agricultural areas. This paper, focused on the cultivation patterns and investigating changes in land use of maize and soybean over time (i.e., both genetically modified and non-genetically modified) in two South African provinces. The objective was to determine whether there was a net increase or decrease in land cover age for these two crops between 2006 and 2017 in the selected study areas. Hence, the study utilized ArcGIS (10.8.1) software to quantify and map the land used for the cultivation of maize and soybean from 2006 to 2017 in Free State and North West provinces. The results show both provinces to have minimal expansion or change in cultivation areas for both maize and soybean between 2006 and 2017. We concluded that both maize and soybean cultivation areas in these provinces, did not expand beyond the current agricultural areas (space), and did not encroach onto new land areas. As a result, both maize and soybean do not currently pose a threat to the surrounding landscape (i.e., natural vegetation) and are not in direct competition with other neighboring land use practices. We recommend that data on the annual planting or cultivation area be consistently gathered, analyzed, and mapped to monitor any alterations that could influence the current findings. This will also assist with any land use planning and management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document discusses the importance of microbial communities in agriculture and the use of metagenomic analysis to understand and utilize the agricultural microbiome. Microorganisms in the soil, such as bacteria and fungi, play a crucial role in nutrient cycling, plant growth promotion, disease control, and resilience to environmental stresses. The document highlights various research papers that explore the impact of microorganisms on crop management, disease dynamics, and soil health. The findings emphasize the potential of metagenomic technologies in advancing sustainable farming practices and promoting ecological sustainability. The document also provides links to a special issue on the topic and invites further research contributions. [Extracted from the article]

Avocado production has boomed worldwide in recent years, and Spain, including the Canary Islands, has been no exception. The number of avocado growers in the region has increased significantly as growers recognize the potential of this crop. However, several species of spider mites (Tetranychidae) pose a risk to this crop, with the genus Oligonychus being the most diverse and having the greatest economic impact. In particular, Oligonychus perseae (Tuttle, Baker and Abbatiello) has been reported as the one mainly responsible for the economic damage in major avocado-producing regions worldwide. In this paper, we aim to present an overview of the studies conducted and the measures implemented to mitigate the impact of O. perseae after its arrival in the Canary Islands. Our objective is to provide a detailed description of the current status of this pest (O. perseae), with special attention to its situation 17 years after its first appearance in avocado crops in the Canary Islands. In doing so, we aim to provide valuable insights and knowledge to understand and manage better the challenges posed by O. perseae in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to achieve fast and accurate detection of Gannan navel orange fruits with different ripeness levels in a natural environment under all-weather scenarios and then to realise automated harvesting of Gannan navel oranges, this paper proposes a YOLOv5-NMM (YOLOv5 with Navel orange Measure Model) object detection model based on the improvement in the original YOLOv5 model. Based on the changes in the phenotypic characteristics of navel oranges and the Chinese national standard GB/T 21488-2008, the maturity of Gannan navel oranges is tested. And it addresses and improves the problems of occlusion, dense distribution, small target size, rainy days, and light changes in the detection of navel orange fruits. Firstly, a new detection head of 160 × 160 feature maps is constructed in the detection layer to improve the multi-scale target detection layer of YOLOv5 and to increase the detection accuracy of the different maturity levels of Gannan navel oranges of small sizes. Secondly, a convolutional block attention module is incorporated in its backbone layer to capture the correlations between features in different dimensions to improve the perceptual ability of the model. Then, the weighted bidirectional feature pyramid network structure is integrated into the Neck layer to improve the fusion efficiency of the network on the feature maps and reduce the amount of computation. Lastly, in order to reduce the loss of the target of the Gannan Navel Orange due to occlusion and overlapping, the detection frame is used to remove redundancy using the Soft-NMS algorithm to remove redundant candidate frames. The results show that the accuracy rate, recall rate, and average accuracy of the improved YOLOv5-NMM model are 93.2%, 89.6%, and 94.2%, respectively, and the number of parameters is only 7.2 M. Compared with the mainstream network models, such as Faster R-CNN, YOLOv3, the original model of YOLOv5, and YOLOv7-tiny, it is superior in terms of the accuracy rate, recall rate, and average accuracy mean, and also performs well in terms of the detection rate and memory occupation. This study shows that the YOLOv5-NMM model can effectively identify and detect the ripeness of Gannan navel oranges in natural environments, which provides an effective exploration of the automated harvesting of Gannan navel orange fruits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a renewable and sustainable resource, lignocellulosic biomass serves as a crucial raw material for the production of biofuels, biochemicals, and various value-added products. This paper aims to develop and optimize a mild alkaline treatment of sawdust assisted by ultrasound, along with enzymatic hydrolysis of the pretreated material. The alkaline sonochemical pretreatment emerged as the optimal approach to enhance the susceptibility of cellulose to subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis to improve the yield of reducing sugars. A comparative study was performed using various ultrasonic applicators (horn and bath) and conventional assisted alkaline pretreatment. The ultrasonic-assisted pretreatment revealed a higher delignification of 68% (horn) and 57% (bath) compared with conventional pretreatment. Processes were optimized using a statistical analysis based on a 23 factorial design. The ratios between sawdust and alkaline solution (RSL = 0.5–1.5 g/100 mL), US amplitude (A = 20–60%), and working temperature (t = 30–50 °C) were selected as process factors. The optimal operating conditions to maximize the reducing sugar yield (138.15 mg GE/gsubstrate) were found as follows: a solid/liquid ratio of RSL,opt = 1.25 g/100 mL, US amplitude of Aopt = 60%, and pretreatment temperature of topt = 50 °C. The overall outcomes clearly confirmed the intensification of delignification by ultrasound-assisted alkaline pretreatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The kale crop is an important bulk vegetable, and automatic segmentation to recognize kale is fundamental for effective field management. However, complex backgrounds and texture-rich edge details make fine segmentation of kale difficult. To this end, we constructed a kale dataset in a real field scenario and proposed an UperNet semantic segmentation model with a Swin transformer as the backbone network and improved the model according to the growth characteristics of kale. Firstly, a channel attention module (CAM) is introduced into the Swin transformer module to improve the representation ability of the network and enhance the extraction of kale outer leaf and leaf bulb information; secondly, the extraction accuracy of kale target edges is improved in the decoding part by designing an attention refinement module (ARM); lastly, the uneven distribution of classes is solved by modifying the optimizer and loss function to solve the class distribution problem. The experimental results show that the improved model in this paper has excellent performance in feature extraction, and the average intersection and merger ratio (mIOU) of the improved kale segmentation can be up to 91.2%, and the average pixel accuracy (mPA) can be up to 95.2%, which is 2.1 percentage points and 4.7 percentage points higher than the original UperNet model, respectively, and it effectively improves the segmentation recognition of kale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coupling coordination of agricultural technology innovation with food security is of great significance for high-quality agricultural development. By identifying the coupling coordination relationship between the two systems and the influencing factors, this paper aims to promote the virtuous cycle of coordinated development between regional agriculture and technology, as well as accelerate the realisation of high-quality development of Chinese agriculture. Therefore, this paper explores the spatial and temporal coupling characteristics of the two using the entropy value method, coupling coordination degree model, and exploratory spatial data analysis, and it screens for important influencing factors using the grey correlation model. The main results show that ① the coupling coordination relationship between agricultural technology innovation and food security in China is at a dissonant stage, but the value of the coupling coordination degree increases from 0.2076 to 0.3437 during the period of study, and the level of coordination gradually improves. ② The degree of coupling coordination in the provincial space exhibits a distribution pattern of "high in the east and low in the west". The areas of high value are primarily situated in the provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu, and other provinces along the southeastern coast of China, while the areas of low value are mainly located in the provinces of Qinghai, Ningxia, and other provinces in inland northwest China. ③ The Moran's index of provincial coupling coordination is greater than 0, showing a certain positive correlation, and there is a significant pattern of spatial aggregation. ④ The correlation coefficients between the influencing factors and the degree of coupling coordination are all greater than 0.35, indicating a moderate or high correlation, but the significance of technological support capacity and food distribution security increased over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Potato diseases and pests have a serious impact on the quality and yield of potatoes, and timely prevention and control of potato diseases and pests is essential. A rich knowledge reserve of potato diseases and pests is one of the most important prevention and control measures; however, valuable knowledge is buried in the massive data of potato diseases and pests, making it difficult for potato growers and managers to obtain and use it in a timely manner and to develop the potential of knowledge. Therefore, this paper explores the construction method of a knowledge graph for automatic knowledge extraction, which extracts the knowledge of potato diseases and pests scattered in heterogeneous data from multiple sources, organises it into a semantically related knowledge base, and provides potato growers with professional knowledge and timely guidance to effectively prevent and control potato diseases and pests. In this paper, a data corpus on potato diseases and pests, called PotatoRE, is first constructed. Then, a model of ALBert-BiLSTM-Self_Att-CRF is designed to extract knowledge from the corpus to form a triplet structure, which is imported into the Neo4j graph database for storage and visualisation. Furthermore, the performance of the model constructed in this paper is compared and verified using the datasets PotatoRE and People's Daily. The results show that compared to the SOTA models of ALBert BiLSTM-CRF and ALBert BiGRU-CRF, the accuracy of our model has been improved by 2.92% and 3.12%, respectively, using PotatoRE. Compared to the Bert BiLSTM-CRF model on two datasets, our model not only improves the accuracy, recall, and F1 values, but also has a higher efficiency. The model in this paper solves the problem of the difficult recognition of nested entities. On this basis, through comparative experiments, the TransH model is used to effectively represent the constructed knowledge graph, which lays the foundation for achieving inference, extension, and automatic updating of the knowledge base. The achievements of the thesis have made certain contributions to the automatic construction of large-scale knowledge bases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The environmental temperature and humidity are crucial factors for the normal growth and development of arbor tree cuttings by altering their hormone levels and influencing their physiological activities. Developing a temperature and humidity environmental model for arbor tree cuttings serves as a key technique to improve the adjustment performance of environmental parameters in facility agriculture systems and enhance the rooting rate of cuttings. This paper provides a comprehensive summary of current research on the inherent characteristics of cuttings and the factors influencing environmental temperature and humidity. It explores the mechanisms of interaction between the inherent characteristics of cuttings and the factors influencing environmental temperature and humidity. This paper investigates the interactive relationships among the factors affecting environmental temperature and humidity. It analyzes methods to improve the efficiency of constructing temperature and humidity environmental models for arbor tree cuttings. To enhance the transferability of the environmental model, the necessary physiological activities under the influence of plant hormones are generalized as common physiological traits in the growth and development of cuttings. In addition, this paper explores the factors influencing the air and substrate temperature and the humidity in facility agriculture systems as well as two types of facilities for controlling environmental temperature and humidity. Furthermore, it reviews the research progress in environmental models from both mechanistic and data-driven perspectives. This paper provides a comparative analysis of the characteristics associated with these two model categories. Building upon this, the paper summarizes and discusses methods employed in constructing temperature and humidity environmental models for arbor tree cuttings. In addition, it also anticipates the application of deep learning techniques in the construction of temperature and humidity environmental models for arbor cuttings, including utilizing machine vision technology to monitor their growth status. Finally, it proposes suggestions for building physiological models of fruit tree-like arbor cuttings at different growth stages. To enhance the transferability of environmental models, the integration of physiological models of cuttings, environmental models, and control system performance are suggested to create an environmental identification model. This paper aims to achieve control of the common physiological activities of cuttings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The non-judicious use of water at the farm level in traditional irrigation application methods is a present-day concern across the world that can be resolved by enhancing application efficiency through the adoption of advanced irrigation techniques. Sprinkler irrigation is a method that has high application efficiency, which can be further increased when coupled with automation toward precision irrigation. The objectives of this review are to summarize the main aspects of sprinkler and precision irrigation and their development, scope, and future prospects specifically in Asian countries. In this paper, a modified methodology, inspired by PRISMA guidelines, was used to explore the available literature to summarize the existing knowledge in the field. Regarding the technological aspects of the analyzed works, it became evident that sprinkler systems are an efficient method to not only irrigate crops (with 39% water saving) but also for the application of fertilizers with higher efficiency (>35%) and water productivity (>14.1%) compared with gravity irrigation systems. Moreover, this paper highlights the prominent features of precision irrigation for maximizing agricultural productivity. The use of sprinkler irrigation with precision applications using automation with a sensor-based mechanism for field data collection, data transformation, data analysis, and operation of IoT-based automatic solenoid valves can save 20–30% more irrigation water and increase crop yield by 20–27%. An analytical understanding and knowledge of the field were used to draw conclusions that are thought-provoking for scientists, researchers, and other stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the importance of crop tolerance to both abiotic and biotic stresses in agricultural research. Abiotic stresses include environmental factors like drought and extreme temperatures, while biotic stresses involve pests, diseases, and pathogens. Understanding and enhancing crop tolerance to these stresses is crucial for global food security and sustainable crop production. The article highlights various research papers from different countries that focus on topics such as abiotic stress (salinity, drought) and biotic stress (pests, diseases). The research papers explore different strategies, including breeding and genetic engineering, to enhance crop tolerance. [Extracted from the article]

Micro-irrigation pipe network systems are commonly utilized for water transmission and distribution in agricultural irrigation. They effectively transport and distribute water to crops, aiming to achieve water and energy conservation, increased yield, and improved quality. This paper presents a model for the scaled micro-irrigation pipeline network system and provides a comprehensive review of the fundamental concepts and practical applications of optimization techniques in the field of pipeline network design. This paper is divided into four main sections: Firstly, it covers the background and theoretical foundations of optimal design for scaled micro-irrigation pipeline network systems. Secondly, the paper presents an optimal design model specifically tailored for scaled micro-irrigation pipeline networks. And then, it discusses various optimization solution techniques employed for addressing the design challenges of scaled micro-irrigation pipeline networks, along with real-world case studies. Finally, this paper concludes with an outlook on the ongoing research and development efforts in the field of scaled micro-irrigation pipeline network systems. In addition, this paper establishes a fundamental model for optimizing pipeline networks, to achieve minimum safe operation and total cost reduction. It considers constraints such as pipeline pressure-bearing capacity, maximum flow rate, and diameter. The decision-making variables include pipeline diameter, length, internal roughness, node pressure, future demand, and valve placement. Additionally, this paper provides an extensive overview of deterministic methods and heuristic algorithms utilized in the optimal design of micro-irrigation pipeline networks. Finally, this paper presents future research directions for pipeline network optimization and explores the potential for algorithmic improvements, integration of machine learning techniques, and wider adoption of EPANET 2.0 software. These endeavors aim to lay a strong foundation for effectively solving complex and challenging optimization problems in micro-irrigation pipeline network systems in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shiitake mushrooms are an important edible fungus, and their nutrient content is related to their quality. With the acceleration of urbanization, there has been a serious loss of population and shortage of labor in rural areas. The problem of harvesting agricultural products after maturity is becoming more and more prominent. In recent years, deep learning techniques have performed well in classification tasks using image data. These techniques can replace the manual labor needed to classify the quality of shiitake mushrooms quickly and accurately. Therefore, in this paper, a MobileNetV3_large deep convolutional network is improved, and a mushroom quality classification model using images with complex backgrounds is proposed. First, captured image data of shiitake mushrooms are divided into three categories based on the appearance characteristics related to shiitake quality. By constructing a hybrid data set, the model's focus on shiitake mushrooms in images with complex backgrounds is improved. And the constructed data set is expanded using data enhancement methods to improve the generalization ability of the model. The total number of images after expansion is 10,991. Among them, the number of primary mushroom images is 3758, the number of secondary mushroom images is 3678, and the number of tertiary mushroom images is 3555. Subsequently, the SE module in MobileNetV3_large network is improved and processed to enhance the model recognition accuracy while reducing the network size. Finally, PolyFocalLoss and migration learning strategies are introduced to train the model and accelerate model convergence. In this paper, the recognition performance of the improved MobileNetV3_large model is evaluated by using the confusion matrix evaluation tool. It is also compared with other deep convolutional network models such as VGG16, GoogLeNet, ResNet50, MobileNet, ShuffleNet, and EfficientNet using the same experimental conditions. The results show that the improved MobileNetV3_large network has a recognition accuracy of 99.91%, a model size of 11.9 M, and a recognition error rate of 0.09% by the above methods. Compared to the original model, the recognition accuracy of the improved model is increased by 18.81% and the size is reduced by 26.54%. The improved MobileNetV3_large network model in this paper has better comprehensive performance, and it can provide a reference for the development of quality recognition and classification technologies for shiitake mushrooms cultivated in greenhouse environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Short-season cotton is a type of cotton variety characterized by its abbreviated cycle, rapid development, and concentrated flowering and boll setting. Compared with full-season cotton, short-season cotton facilitates an easier attainment of desirable maturation even when sown relatively late. This advantage of late sowing and early maturation eliminates the necessity for plastic film mulching, thereby creating opportunities for diversified double cropping, such as cotton–wheat, cotton–garlic, cotton–rape, and cotton–triticale systems. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the morphological, physiological, and molecular biological mechanisms underlying early maturity in short-season cotton. Furthermore, the significance and application of short-season cotton is discussed in relation to optimizing planting patterns and methods, promoting its cultivation in saline fields, developing machine-harvested cotton, and encouraging plastic mulch-free cotton planting. Based on these analyses and discussions, the paper proposes future strategies aimed at enhancing the breeding and cultivation of short-season cotton. These findings serve as valuable references for global breeding and cultivation research, and application of short-season cotton in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The yield and quality of rice are closely related to field management. The automatic identification of field abnormalities, such as diseases and pests, based on computer vision currently mainly relies on high spatial resolution (HSR) images obtained through manual field inspection. In order to achieve automatic and efficient acquisition of HSR images, based on the capability of high-throughput field inspection of UAV remote sensing and combining the advantages of high-flying efficiency and low-flying resolution, this paper proposes a method of "far-view and close-look" autonomous field inspection by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to acquire HSR images of abnormal areas in the rice canopy. First, the UAV equipped with a multispectral camera flies high to scan the whole field efficiently and obtain multispectral images. Secondly, abnormal areas (namely areas with poor growth) are identified from the multispectral images, and then the geographical locations of identified areas are positioned with a single-image method instead of the most used method of reconstruction, sacrificing part of positioning accuracy for efficiency. Finally, the optimal path for traversing abnormal areas is planned through the nearest-neighbor algorithm, and then the UAV equipped with a visible light camera flies low to capture HSR images of abnormal areas along the planned path, thereby acquiring the "close-look" features of the rice canopy. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can identify abnormal areas, including diseases and pests, lack of seedlings, lodging, etc. The average absolute error (AAE) of single-image positioning is 13.2 cm, which can meet the accuracy requirements of the application in this paper. Additionally, the efficiency is greatly improved compared to reconstruction positioning. The ground sampling distance (GSD) of the acquired HSR image can reach 0.027 cm/pixel, or even smaller, which can meet the resolution requirements of even leaf-scale deep-learning classification. The HSR image can provide high-quality data for subsequent automatic identification of field abnormalities such as diseases and pests, thereby offering technical support for the realization of the UAV-based automatic rice field inspection system. The proposed method can also provide references for the automatic field management of other crops, such as wheat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document, titled "Smart Strategies and Technologies for Sustainability and Biodiversity in Herbaceous and Horticultural Crops," discusses the current trends in modern farming systems that focus on improving the sustainability and biodiversity of agroecosystems. The document highlights various innovative agronomical strategies and new technologies that can help farmers reduce chemical inputs, preserve soil and water quality, decrease emissions, prevent pollution, and lower energy demand. The special issue presented in the document includes 12 papers, with 5 focusing on tree crops/orchards and 7 on herbaceous crops. The papers cover topics such as innovative techniques for tree crops, weed control methods, conservation agriculture, organic farming, cover crops, intercropping, and precision farming technologies. The document concludes that these strategies and technologies can effectively enhance sustainability and biodiversity in herbaceous and horticultural crops in different farming scenarios. [Extracted from the article]

In order to search for bio-rational and eco-friendly pest control agents to protect crops from insect infestation, while avoiding the toxic hazards of chemical pesticides, essential oils (EOs) were hydrodistilled from Juniperus procera and Thymus vulgaris and analyzed using gas chromatography–flame ionization detection (GC–FID), and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS). Eugenol (71.3%), β-caryophyllene (11.8%), and α-pinene (6.1%) were isolated as the major components of J. procera EO, whereas thymol (58.1%), p-cymen (10.3%), and carvacrol (8.3%) were the main terpenes in T. vulgaris EO. The EOs and terpenes exhibited considerable bioactivity against the khapra beetle using the contact and fumigation bioassays, where T. vulgaris EO was superior in bioactivity. Among the terpenes tested, carvacrol and eugenol were superior. Regarding contact toxicity using impregnated filter paper and after 24 h of exposure, the LC50 values ranged between 21.4 and 77.0 µL/cm2 against larvae and between 16.1 and 69.6 µL/cm2 against adults. After 48 h, these values decreased remarkably. Upon fumigation and after 48 h of exposure, the LC50 values ranged between 23.0 and 65.3 µL/L against larvae, and from 14.2 to 56.4 µL/L against adults. The botanicals effectively inhibited the acetylcholinesterase activity of the larvae; however, they were safe for the earthworm E. fetida and did not alter the viability of wheat grains. There is a potential for using these botanicals to control T. granarium. However, further investigations are needed to confirm the safety of these phytochemicals before use as grain protectants on a commercial scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]