Showing papers in "Biosystems Engineering in 2003"

TL;DR: In this article, the effect of water content and bulk density on the specific heat, volumetric heat capacity, and thermal diffusivity of some sieved and repacked soils was investigated through laboratory studies.

TL;DR: In this paper, various physical properties of hemp seed were determined as a function of moisture content, such as sphericity, surface area and thousand seed mass, and the static and dynamic coefficients of friction on various surfaces, namely, rubber, plywood and galvanised metal also increased linearly with increase in moisture content.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors report on the machine vision techniques developed at the Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias for the on-line estimation of the quality of oranges, peaches and apples, and evaluate the efficiency of these techniques regarding the following quality attributes: size, colour, stem location and detection of external blemishes.

TL;DR: In this article, the dielectric properties of six commodities along with four associated insect pests were measured between 1 and 1800 MHz using an open-ended coaxial-line probe technique and at temperatures between 20 and 608C.

TL;DR: In this article, the difference in spectral reflectance between healthy and diseased wheat plants infected with Puccinia striiformis (yellow rust) was investigated using a spectrograph mounted at spray boom height.

TL;DR: The authors review biosensor technology and discusses the different bio-receptor systems and methods of transduction, including the hand-held glucose meter used by diaberics and the main reasons for the slow technology transfer to the marketplace are reported.

TL;DR: In this article, a calibrated Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was verified for a small watershed (Nagwan) and used for identification and prioritisation of critical sub-watersheds to develop an effective management plan.

TL;DR: Physical properties of quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) seeds were determined as a function of moisture content as mentioned in this paper, and all properties showed moisture dependence according to linear relationships with correlation coefficients higher than 0·90.

TL;DR: In this article, a quantitative analysis of yield data from four fields over 6 years was carried out to identify the spatial and temporal trends, and the results showed that the significant spatial variability found within each individual yield map cancelled out over time, leaving a relatively homogenous spatial trend map.

TL;DR: In this paper, an autonomous harvesting robot for cucumbers was developed and tested in a greenhouse in autumn 2001, and the results of the field test of the harvesting robot are reported and analyzed in view of the performance criteria mentioned above.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reviewed techniques for mapping soil physical and chemical condition, topography and the weed status of fields from a practical and economic perspective, and concluded that it is possible to target sample the soil characteristics of fields and locate areas of high weed density following the use of inexpensive, non-invasive techniques electromagnetic induction (EMI) aerial digital photography (ADP) and radiometry.

TL;DR: In this article, a simple climate model is proposed which incorporates the effect of ventilation rate, roof shading and crop transpiration on greenhouse air temperature, and the model is calibrated by fitting temperatures in the middle and at the end of the greenhouse.

TL;DR: This paper extracted 230 features from high-resolution images of kernels of five grain types [barley, Canada Western Amber Durum (CWAD), Canada Western Red Spring (CWRS) wheat, oats, and rye] and five broad categories of dockage constituents [broken wheat kernels, chaff, buckwheat, wheat spikelets (one to three wheat kernels inside husk), and canola (rapeseed with low erucic acid content in the oil and low glucosinolate content in meal)].

TL;DR: In this article, the biological activity of seed tissues has been inferred from quantitative and qualitative measurements of their speckle activity, and the authors show that the biospeckle technique has a potential as a methodology to assess seed viability.

TL;DR: In this paper, two experimental methods are proposed for the determination of the optimal field strength E in the case of pulsed electric field treatment of different plant tissues: apple (Golden Delicious), potato (Agata), cucumber (Straight Eight), aubergine (Black Beauty), pear (Conference), banana (Dwarf Cavendish) and carrot (Nantaise).

TL;DR: In this paper, the effect of surfactants, commonly found in detergents, on the hydraulic properties of soils was explored. And the results showed that Sulphonic, the anionic surfactant, had a significant effect on hydraulic properties.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focused on the operational characterisation of a fogging system in combination with forced ventilation for cooling greenhouses and found that uniform air temperature and relative humidity of 28°C and 80% were maintained during the summer at midday.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the ventilation of a Spanish parral greenhouse using three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and verified the results by tracer gas measurements.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed and evaluated an algorithm at simplified lighting conditions for identifying damaged maize plants by the fall armyworm using digital color images, which correctly classified 94·72% of the images.

TL;DR: In this article, the ventilation rate, the emissions of ammonia (NH 3 ) and methane (CH 4 ), the temperature and the relative air humidity were determined in four naturally ventilated dairy houses with an eave to ridge ventilation.

TL;DR: In this paper, an environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) procedure is constructed to compare the total emissions from different techniques for managing livestock wastes, and the methodology is extended to include the uncertainty in the estimates in order to indicate the significance of differences between techniques.

TL;DR: In this paper, an inertia type limb shaker was designed and constructed for the mechanical harvesting of apricots, and the results were analyzed according to the maximum fruit removal percentage.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the spatial variation of crop yields in three trial cereal fields in England from 1994 through 1997 and found that up to 50% of the yield variation was within the tramline spacing distance (20-24m).

TL;DR: Aci Findik, Cakildak, Tombul, and Guney Karasi varieties of hazelnut were loaded between two parallel plates to determine the specific deformation, rupture force, and rupture energy required to initiate shell and kernel rupture as mentioned in this paper.

TL;DR: Seeds were separated from tomato waste by sedimentation and dried in cabinet/fluidised bed dryers at 50, 70 and 90 o C using tray load of 4, 8 and 12 kg −2 as discussed by the authors.

TL;DR: In this paper, a commercial boiler was converted to biogas and combustion exhaust gases rich in carbon dioxide were purified to remove phytotoxic residues, and a CO2 supplementation technique using these purified exhaust gases was tested.

TL;DR: In this paper, the storage behavior of four varieties of almonds, three Spanish and one native to and imported from California (USA), was investigated at two temperatures (8 and 36°C), two packaging atmospheres (air and N2) and two treatments (raw and roasted) throughout several months, in order to study the storage behaviour.

TL;DR: The results from alternative spatial nitrogen application studies are analysed in economic terms and compared to the costs of precision farming hardware, software and other services for cereal crops in the UK as mentioned in this paper.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated to what extent linear auto regressive models with external input (ARX) and autoregressive moving average (ARMAX) could be used to describe the inside air temperature of an unheated, naturally ventilated greenhouse under Western European conditions.