Design, Analysis and Development of Digging and Roller Chain Conveying System for Self-Propelled Onion Harvester

The history of Agriculture in India dates back to Indus Valley Civilisation. India ranks second worldwide in farm outputs. As of 2018, agriculture employed more than 50% of the Indian workforce and contributed 17–18% to the country's GDP. India has the largest net cropped area, followed by the US and China, yet mechanization in farming is comparatively low compared to developed countries. The lack of technological development and unaffordability of new and competent machines for the average farmer are the few of the reasons for this encumbrance. The development of the onion harvester intends that it will provide a reliable and affordable alternative to traditional farming practices. The digging and conveying systems are the integrated part of the onion harvester. The design of the blade and conveyor is made by using CATIA V5 and analysis of the parts are done using ANSYS Workbench. During design and analysis, severe factors are considered such as preventing the damage to onion bulbs, size of bulbs, soil condition, onion leaves at a predetermined height and roots of the crops to penetrate. This paper is intended to discuss the results of the design and analysis of the digging and conveying systems under the guidelines of the SAE TIFAN rulebook [1]. Keywords: Onion Harvester, Blade Design, Conveyor Design, FEA Analysis.

On the Efficacy of Handcrafted and Deep Features for Seed Image Classification

Computer vision techniques have become important in agriculture and plant sciences due to their wide variety of applications. In particular, the analysis of seeds can provide meaningful information on their evolution, the history of agriculture, the domestication of plants, and knowledge of diets in ancient times. This work aims to propose an exhaustive comparison of several different types of features in the context of multiclass seed classification, leveraging two public plant seeds data sets to classify their families or species. In detail, we studied possible optimisations of five traditional machine learning classifiers trained with seven different categories of handcrafted features. We also fine-tuned several well-known convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and the recently proposed SeedNet to determine whether and to what extent using their deep features may be advantageous over handcrafted features. The experimental results demonstrated that CNN features are appropriate to the task and representative of the multiclass scenario. In particular, SeedNet achieved a mean F-measure of 96%, at least. Nevertheless, several cases showed satisfactory performance from the handcrafted features to be considered a valid alternative. In detail, we found that the Ensemble strategy combined with all the handcrafted features can achieve 90.93% of mean F-measure, at least, with a considerably lower amount of times. We consider the obtained results an excellent preliminary step towards realising an automatic seeds recognition and classification framework.

Agricultural Expansion, Soil Degradation, and Fertilization in Portugal, 1873–1960: From History to Soil and Back Again

This research explains what happened to agricultural soil fertility during the “Campanha do Trigo” (Wheat Campaign) in Portugal, which began in 1929. It is commonly understood that the excessive expansion of wheat crops during the fascist “Estado Novo” (New State) regime led to the degradation of soils in the southern half of Portugal. This relationship, however, has never been questioned before. This article extends the narrative back into the last half of the nineteenth century in search of the origin of processes that gradually intensified throughout the country. In short, expansion of the cultivated area in association with the inadequate intensification of crop rotations over about 80 years, from the 1870s onward, including in non-wheat areas, strongly accentuated soil erosion and made organic fertilization progressively less effective. These transformations were only partially offset by chemical fertilization. Nitrogen and phosphorus were the key factors in this historical process. Focusing on the cultivation system and soil dynamics allows the successive integration of various kinds of historical evidence and sources. From an environmental question—why did agricultural soil degrade?—this article explores soil degradation over time and space, and assesses its social and biophysical impacts. At the same time, it addresses the history of agriculture in Portugal and its disciplinary foundations.

The Boutelou Brothers: From Gardening to Agronomic Practices, Education, and Travels in Spain at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

At the turn of the nineteenth century, agriculture in Spain was seen as an empirical know-how that was transmitted from generation to generation through practice. However, at the royal gardens the idea that agriculture was a scientific branch of knowledge was already germinating. Focusing on the two brothers—Claudio (1774–1842) and Esteban (1776–1812) Boutelou—this paper argues that these gardeners, profiting from their positions at the Spanish royal gardens, promoted agronomic development and education. In spite of the importance of the Boutelou family, a five-generation dynasty of gardeners, historiography has paid scant attention to them, as well as to the importance of agronomic travels and their reports. This paper aims at interweaving the boundaries between the history of science, history of agriculture, and gardens and landscape studies. Through the lenses of history of science and the application of Long's conceptual framework of ‘trading zones’ and Baldassarri and Matei's ‘gardens as laboratories’, we focus on the position of the Boutelou brothers in the gardens of the royal estates and the new Sanlúcar acclimatization garden. We then demonstrate how they were influenced by travels abroad and how Arthur Young, a Briton, became their role model. Moreover, we establish a relation between the Boutelou's network of experts and the rise of translations of English and French books and the appearance of the first agricultural teaching manuals in Castilian, often published in the context of agricultural societies. Finally, we show how this was fundamental to the renewal of agronomic practices and education in Spain.

FROM THE HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE DEVELOPMENT IN BUKHARA DURING AMIR TEMUR AND TEMURID

Based on the analysis of historical sources and literature, the article reveals the development of agriculture in the Bukhara oasis and the growth of the economic potential of the oasis during the reign of Amir Temur and the Temurids. The article also examines the factors influencing the development of agriculture in Bukhara during the reign of Amir Temur and the Temurids: the policy of centralization in the country, the construction of many beautiful administrative, educational and public buildings in the central cities of Movarounnahr and Scientifically studied that the construction of gardens, irrigation networks from rivers and streams, the development of thousands of hectares of nature reserves and gray lands, the expansion of irrigated agricultural land are directly related to the history of Bukhara’s agriculture

Hempseeds (Cannabis spp.) as a source of functional food ingredients, prebiotics and phytosterols

The history of agriculture gives evidence that hemp have been cultivated by farmers near the northern border of agriculture for seed and oil. Nowadays, hemp is a focus of interest as a source of prebiotics and functional food ingredients. This study was aimed at the evaluation of physiologically active metabolomic compounds in the seed of thirty-three Cannabis spp. accessions, representing industrial dual-purpose (fiber and seed), universal, breeding materials used for food, ruderal and recreational landraces grown the Northwest of Russia. Amounts of polyunsaturated fatty acids, polysaccharides, polyhydric alcohols, phytosterols and phytol in seeds were measured. The maximum of linoleic acid reached 4379.41 mg 100 g-1, linolenic acid 427.72, oleic acid 1711.19, polysaccharides 13111.28, polyhydric alcohols 2138.38, and sitosterol 79.36. Ruderal hemp was found abundant in phytol (3.46 mg 100 g-1). The food seed/oil material contained the maximum of campesterol and sitosterol. The evaluated hemp accessions may be used as sources of physiologically active and safe ingredients of healthy food and phytosterols as well as in breeding programs to develop hempseed cultivars.

Agricultural activities and the market for agricultural business products

Basically, there are not many farmers who can sell their own products to the market, both domestic and foreign markets, because these markets are generally too far away for them. Individual farmers cannot contact buyers in these markets because they do not have adequate means of transportation and do not have the necessary knowledge or facilities for various purposes, such as packaging, storage, processing and nothing else related to the marketing. Therefore, a good and efficient trading system for agricultural products is needed in supporting the success / success of the market for agricultural products. So that agriculture is not only viewed in a narrow sense, where the agricultural sector is very large and wide, it is necessary to convey the history of agriculture and its development for the advancement of agriculture and the application of technology in agriculture. Farmers need knowledge in terms of crop management and good management in the context of the welfare of the farmers, where we know that many farmers feel disadvantaged in the sale or marketing of their agricultural products.