A Rule-Based Expert System for Pest Control in Maize Plant.

Author(s):  
Abdulsalami Baseerat Adebola ◽  
Akinsanya Barakat Jayeola

Maize crop (Zea Mays), also known as corn, is the most widely cultivated plant and popular cereal grains in Nigeria that had found its usage in every home either as food for human beings or feed for animals, and importantly, raw material for food processing industries. It grows across a range of agro-ecological zones in Nigeria. The incidence of crop pest had been one of the major challenges faced by the farmers, resulting in low yield of crop production, both in quality and quantity. Another major challenge is that majority of farmers lack key knowledge in identifying plant diseases. Awkwardly, such knowledge typically resides within a few experts and is not easily accessible to farmers. Farmers initially necessitate to useful advices for diagnosing the various pests and diseases confronting the crops, before being able to implement a suitable treatment or control measures. To make this knowledge more widely available, a rule-based Expert System (ES) was designed and implemented in this paper. The ES comprises of a diagnosis system that detects pest in maize plant; an information system that gives facts about maize and pests, with their control measures; and finally an expert advice on maize plant cultivation. To make the system more user-friendly, an image database was integrated with it. The system was developed using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and Bootstrap. The application can supply information on 17 pests that affect maize plant in Nigeria, and their respective treatments.

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-257
Author(s):  
Dianmita Ayu Putri ◽  
Arik Aranta

Rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the main commodities in Indonesia. One of the inhibitors of rice crop production is disease. Rice plant diseases can be caused by pathogens, host plants or bad environment. The process of diagnosing rice diseases requires expertise, knowledge and experience. This study aims to build an expert system that can diagnose 13 types of rice plant diseases from 43 symptoms based on the knowledge of 3 experts with forward chaining reasoning methods and mobile-based dempster shafer calculation methods. The testing technique used is black box testing, theoretical calculation testing, system accuracy testing and MOS (Mean Opinion Score) testing. The black box test results state that the expert system has 100% compatibility in terms of functionality. The theoretical calculation test results state that the expert system calculations are in accordance with the results of manual calculations. System accuracy testing results from 30 test cases get an accuracy of 81.11%. The results of MOS testing conducted on 30 respondents produced MOS of 4.2 from a scale of 5 categorized into a good system.


Author(s):  
Jayant Yadav ◽  
Poonam Jasrotia ◽  
Ajay Kumar Bhardwaj ◽  
Prem Lal Kashyap ◽  
Sudheer Kumar ◽  
...  

 Nanotechnology is a rapidly evolving field that has the potential to revolutionise food systems and counter the present-day challenge of food security. It envisages taking agriculture from the era of indiscriminate natural resource use and environmental degradation to the brave new world of advanced systems with enhanced material use efficiency and targeted applications to reduce crop losses caused due to abiotic-biotic stresses as well as to give due considerations to the environment. To manage plant diseases and insect pests, pesticides are inevitably used in agriculture. However, the higher dosage of these chemicals on a per hectare basis has resulted in many environmental and health hazards. To tackle the conventional pesticide related issues, a new field of science called nanotechnology has led to the development of nanopesticides that have less active ingredients, but better efficiency. The nanopesticides contain the carrier molecule or the active nanosized ingredient with a very high surface area to the volume property that provides them unique exploitable-advantages. Several formulations, viz., nanoemulsions, nanosuspensions, nanogels, metal compound-based nanopesticides, have been developed for different modes of action and vivid applications. The biggest advantage comes due to the small size of the particles that help in properly spreading the ingredients on the pest surface and, thus, producing a better action than conventional pesticides. The use of nanoparticles in the form of nanopesticides, nanofertilisers, and nano delivery systems is on the increase day by day due to their higher efficiency and reduced dosage requirements. However, human beings and other organisms are also getting exposed to the nano-entities during the application or afterwards. The interactions of these engineered nano-entities with biological systems are relatively unknown thus far. Therefore, before their wider usage in crop production and protection, a better understanding of their interactions, and adverse effects, if any, is also crucial for a sustainable transition.  


Author(s):  
Sreekantha Desai Karanam ◽  
Deepthi M. B.

India has the second largest area of arable (agricultural) land on this earth with heterogeneous agroclimatic regions across the country. India has the potential to grow a wide range of agricultural crops and varied raw material base for food processing industry. The paddy crop yield/hector of land is highest in Egypt is 9.5, while India is producing only 2.9. India's lower paddy crop productivity/hector and higher cost of production is a major concern for farmers. There are various reasons for India's low paddy crop yield, such as lack of mechanization, not adopting to modern method of farming, small land holdings, poor pests, and disease management. The recent survey discovered that there is huge gap in demand and supply in crop production and is likely to hit more than 15% by 2020, with the gap worsening to 20-25% by 2025. Researchers aimed to address this low crop yield issue by designing an expert system. This expert system helps the farmers by identifying and predicting the diseases for paddy crop to enhance crop yield and to reduce the supply and demand gap.


Author(s):  
Dimas Satria ◽  
Poningsih Poningsih ◽  
Widodo Saputra

The purpose of this paper is to create an expert system to detect oil palm plant diseases in order to help farmers / companies in providing accurate information about the diseases of oil palm plants and how to overcome them and to help reduce the risk of decreasing palm oil production. This system is designed to mimic the expertise of an expert who is able to detect diseases that attack oil palm plants. The method used is forward chaining that is starting from a set of data and proving a fact by describing the level of confidence and uncertainty found in a hypothesis. The results of this study are to diagnose diseases of oil palm plants and their computerization using web programming languages.


Fermentation ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Michele Sellitto ◽  
Severino Zara ◽  
Fabio Fracchetti ◽  
Vittorio Capozzi ◽  
Tiziana Nardi

From a ‘farm to fork’ perspective, there are several phases in the production chain of fruits and vegetables in which undesired microbial contaminations can attack foodstuff. In managing these diseases, harvest is a crucial point for shifting the intervention criteria. While in preharvest, pest management consists of tailored agricultural practices, in postharvest, the contaminations are treated using specific (bio)technological approaches (physical, chemical, biological). Some issues connect the ‘pre’ and ‘post’, aligning some problems and possible solution. The colonisation of undesired microorganisms in preharvest can affect the postharvest quality, influencing crop production, yield and storage. Postharvest practices can ‘amplify’ the contamination, favouring microbial spread and provoking injures of the product, which can sustain microbial growth. In this context, microbial biocontrol is a biological strategy receiving increasing interest as sustainable innovation. Microbial-based biotools can find application both to control plant diseases and to reduce contaminations on the product, and therefore, can be considered biocontrol solutions in preharvest or in postharvest. Numerous microbial antagonists (fungi, yeasts and bacteria) can be used in the field and during storage, as reported by laboratory and industrial-scale studies. This review aims to examine the main microbial-based tools potentially representing sustainable bioprotective biotechnologies, focusing on the biotools that overtake the boundaries between pre- and postharvest applications protecting quality against microbial decay.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 762
Author(s):  
Lei Han ◽  
Rui Chen ◽  
Zhao Liu ◽  
Shanshan Chang ◽  
Yonghua Zhao ◽  
...  

The environment of the urban fringe is complex and frangible. With the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization, the urban fringe has become the primary space for urban expansion, and the intense human activities create a high risk of potentially toxic element (PTE) pollution in the soil. In this study, 138 surface soil samples were collected from a region undergoing rapid urbanization and construction—Weinan, China. Concentrations of As, Pb, Cr, Cu, and Ni (Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry, ICP-MS) and Hg (Atomic Fluorescence Spectrometry, AFS) were measured. The Kriging interpolation method was used to create a visualization of the spatial distribution characteristics and to analyze the pollution sources of PTEs in the soil. The pollution status of PTEs in the soil was evaluated using the national environmental quality standards for soils in different types of land use. The results show that the content range of As fluctuated a small amount and the coefficient of variation is small and mainly comes from natural soil formation. The content of Cr, Cu, and Ni around the automobile repair factory, the prefabrication factory, and the building material factory increased due to the deposition of wear particles in the soil. A total of 13.99% of the land in the study area had Hg pollution, which was mainly distributed on category 1 development land and farmland. Chemical plants were the main pollution sources. The study area should strictly control the industrial pollution emissions, regulate the agricultural production, adjust the land use planning, and reduce the impact of pollution on human beings. Furthermore, we make targeted remediation suggestions for each specific land use type. These results are of theoretical significance, will be of practical value for the control of PTEs in soil, and will provide ecological environmental protection in the urban fringe throughout the urbanization process.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 404-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehrdad Alizadeh ◽  
Yalda Vasebi ◽  
Naser Safaie

AbstractThe purpose of this article was to give a comprehensive review of the published research works on biological control of different fungal, bacterial, and nematode plant diseases in Iran from 1992 to 2018. Plant pathogens cause economical loss in many agricultural products in Iran. In an attempt to prevent these serious losses, chemical control measures have usually been applied to reduce diseases in farms, gardens, and greenhouses. In recent decades, using the biological control against plant diseases has been considered as a beneficial and alternative method to chemical control due to its potential in integrated plant disease management as well as the increasing yield in an eco-friendly manner. Based on the reported studies, various species of Trichoderma, Pseudomonas, and Bacillus were the most common biocontrol agents with the ability to control the wide range of plant pathogens in Iran from lab to the greenhouse and field conditions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 2282
Author(s):  
Masudulla Khan ◽  
Azhar U. Khan ◽  
Mohd Abul Hasan ◽  
Krishna Kumar Yadav ◽  
Marina M. C. Pinto ◽  
...  

In the present era, the global need for food is increasing rapidly; nanomaterials are a useful tool for improving crop production and yield. The application of nanomaterials can improve plant growth parameters. Biotic stress is induced by many microbes in crops and causes disease and high yield loss. Every year, approximately 20–40% of crop yield is lost due to plant diseases caused by various pests and pathogens. Current plant disease or biotic stress management mainly relies on toxic fungicides and pesticides that are potentially harmful to the environment. Nanotechnology emerged as an alternative for the sustainable and eco-friendly management of biotic stress induced by pests and pathogens on crops. In this review article, we assess the role and impact of different nanoparticles in plant disease management, and this review explores the direction in which nanoparticles can be utilized for improving plant growth and crop yield.


Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 386
Author(s):  
Natalia Matłok ◽  
Józef Gorzelany ◽  
Adam Figiel ◽  
Maciej Balawejder

The study presents the effects of fertilisation on selected quality parameters of the dried material obtained from plants of lovage and coriander. During the crop production process, the plants were treated with two fertilisers containing substances potentially acting as elicitors. The dried material was obtained in course of a drying process carried out in optimum conditions and based on the CD-VMFD method which combines convective pre-drying (CD) at a low temperature (40 °C) with vacuum-microwave finish drying with the use of 240 W microwaves (VMFD). The quality of the dried material was evaluated through measurement of the total contents of polyphenols, total antioxidant potential (ABTS and DPPH method), and the profile of volatile compounds (headspace-solid phase microextractio-HS-SPME) as well as assessment of the colour. It was found that by applying first fertilisation (with organic components) it is possible to significantly increase the contents of both bioactive compounds and volatile substances responsible for the aroma. It was determined that the higher content of bioactive compounds was related to the composition of the first fertiliser, presumably the extract from common nettle. The study showed that the application of the first fertiliser contributed to enhanced quality parameters of the raw material obtained.


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