Each enterprise considering its structure, requires different types of management to achieve the ... more Each enterprise considering its structure, requires different types of management to achieve the goals. Management of farmlands mechanized agricultural systems is one of the important factors to succeed farmers. In this research, a model was developed to select agricultural machinery fleet, particularly in multicropping systems. The Model was a linear integer optimization model for minimization of costs and performed under LP-ILP (QSB) program. Raw data for three crops of wheat, barley and potato were obtained from the Ahyai Agriculture Complex located in Hamedan city, and related analyses were performed. Finally, according to the constraints of working periods, optimal required machinery set was calculated and proposed. This optimal machinery set supplied machinery requirements of farms and also minimized machinery costs.
Regarding to suitable tillage system achievement for wheat production in rotation with chickpea c... more Regarding to suitable tillage system achievement for wheat production in rotation with chickpea cultivation, five different tillage methods were examined during the 5 years (2004-08) in Dryland Agricultural Research Institute (DARI) of Maragheh with four replicates in randomized complete block design (RCBD). The five tillage treatments were T1= moldboard plow + roller, T2= chisel plow + roller, T3= cyclotiler, T4= sweep + roller and T5= no-tillage. Soil physical and chemical properties accompanied with wheat production were measured. Results obtained by statistical analysis showed that the treatments had significant effects on bulk density (BD) and soil pH. T1 (1.23 gr/cm3 in average) had most effect on decrease of soil compaction although; the differences were not significant compared with T4 and T3. T5 (1.34 gr/cm3 in average) had Maximum BD. T5 (7.39 in average) had minimum pH in compared with other treatments. The treatments had no significant in Organic mater (OC), but T5 and reduced tillage (T2 and T4) tended to increase the OC. The treatments had no significant differences in soil moisture. The results showed that decreased of BD, tended to increase soil moisture. The combine analysis showed that the treatments had no significant differences in grain yield. According to result and advantages of different tillage methods, T2 and T4 could be suggested instead of T1.
Planning fieldwork pattern for in-field machinery operations using Colonial Competitive Algorithm
Transylvanian Review, 2017
Planning and control of a fleet of agricultural machines has always been one of the challenges fa... more Planning and control of a fleet of agricultural machines has always been one of the challenges facing farm managers. Implementation of appropriate fieldwork pattern is considered as one of the most important fundamental factors in a cost-effective and environmentally friendly farming. The aim of this study was to design and analyze a fieldwork pattern to handle tractor and implement movement. The work processes were described by using B-patterns approach and implemented using the MATLAB programming software. The optimization problem was formulated as a Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) and solved implementing the colonial competitive algorithmic approach. As the result, the presented algorithmic approach could improve the field efficiency of agricultural machines due to minimizing the non-working traveled distance. The proposed approach is capable to solve the small and medium to large sized instances with high performance in a reasonable computation time and iterative number.
Operations planning for agricultural harvesters using ant colony optimization
Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research, Jul 31, 2013
Because of insufficient effectiveness after herbicide application in autumn, bur chervil (Anthris... more Because of insufficient effectiveness after herbicide application in autumn, bur chervil (Anthriscus caucalis M. Bieb.) is often present in cereal fields in spring. A second reason for spreading is the warm winter in Europe due to climate change. This weed continues to germinate from autumn to spring. To prevent further spreading, a site-specific control in spring is reasonable. Color imagery would offer cheap and complete monitoring of entire fields. In this study, an end-to-end fully convolutional network approach is presented to detect bur chervil within color images. The dataset consisted of images taken at three sampling dates in spring 2018 in winter wheat and at one date in 2019 in winter rye from the same field. Pixels representing bur chervil were manually annotated in all images. After a random image augmentation was done, a Unet-based convolutional neural network model was trained using 560 (80%) of the sub-images from 2018 (training images). The power of the trained model at the three different sampling dates in 2018 was evaluated at 141 (20%) of the manually annotated sub-images from 2018 and all (100%) sub-images from 2019 (test images). Comparing the estimated and the manually annotated weed plants in the test images the Intersection over Union (Jaccard index) showed mean values in the range of 0.9628 to 0.9909 for the three sampling dates in 2018, and a value of 0.9292 for the one date in 2019. The Dice coefficients yielded mean values in the range of 0.9801 to 0.9954 for 2018 and a value of 0.9605 in 2019.
International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, Jul 1, 2019
Musculoskeletal injuries are well-known disorders among the agricultural tractor operators. Overe... more Musculoskeletal injuries are well-known disorders among the agricultural tractor operators. Overexertion is a critical factor which can agitate these injuries. Physical body characteristics should be measured for an ergonomically best-fit-optimal design for the operators. In this study, a designed setup was employed to derive the applied forces by tractor operators on the control tools. The different muscle strengths including leg/foot strength, hand push/pull strength, and torque strength applied by both hands were measured. A comparison was made for the obtained values for different strengths by considering the effects of hand dominance. The obtained data were used to estimate the maximum allowed forces in these tools. In contrast to the previous studies, the minimum allowed actuating forces of the pedals were calculated using reasonable assumptions. These values could provide more comfort and less exhaustion for the tractor operators. The obtained ranges were benchmarked against corresponding recommended values in some standards (ISO, ISIRI, and ASABE family). The results revealed the unsuitability of evaluated standards for a proper design and the excessive overestimation of those recommended values (in some cases more than 3 times). In all of the design procedure, a suitable attention was paid to accommodate it with more than 90% of target population. Relevance to industry: A prosperous industry which considers ergonomic factors in the design of agricultural machine workplace can overcome the disorders and generate more comfort. Evaluating more exact mechanical forces can result in a suitable design of workplace. As the exerted force exceeded PWL, the Job-Mediated Risk (JMR) increased logarithmically. The availability of the data related to the physical characteristics of tractor operators is crucial to recognize PWL and consequently for a proper design. Recently, investigation over the physical characteristics of people has received a considerable attention among researchers (
Abstract. A 3-point mounted 4-row John Deere 7300 planter was used to plant corn at two locations... more Abstract. A 3-point mounted 4-row John Deere 7300 planter was used to plant corn at two locations in Oklahoma with two soil conditions, no-till and strip till, at each location. Each soil condition was treated as an individual experiment and treatments were not compared across these or locations. The experiment was a split-plot design with down force setting (three levels in no-till and four levels in strip till) replicated three times and four randomized ground speeds (4.8, 8.0, 11.2, and 14.4 kph) for each down force pass. The planter was instrumented to measure down force, vertical acceleration, and seed spacing in the seed tube on the two center rows, ground speed, and vertical acceleration of the toolbar. After emergence was complete, 25 plant spacings were measured in each of the two center rows within each plot to determine mean plant spacing, multiples, misses, and spacing variability. The standard deviation in seed spacing in the tube was correlated with the plant spacing standard deviation for three of the five conditions. Ground speed was correlated with seed spacing standard deviation in the seed tube and plant spacing precision for all five seeding conditions. The relationship between down force and spacing measurements, whether in the seed tube or plants after emergence, was inconsistent.
Seed-metering system is an important component in row-crop planters in terms of uniform seed dist... more Seed-metering system is an important component in row-crop planters in terms of uniform seed distribution. Numerous field and laboratory methods have been developed and used for evaluation of planter performance; each method having its own advantages and shortcomings. In the present study, a digital camera (Nikon, D70) was used for laboratory evaluation of vertical-rotor seed-metering device performance, indices such as multiple planting, feeding quality, miss planting and seed space uniformity being the major criteria. To validate the results from image processing method, the more conventional, grease-belt method, was used. The experiments were conducted on the basis of factorial randomized complete design with two types of seed-metering devices, with different numbers of cells and four levels of seed-metering speeds in three replications. Captured images were transferred to the computer via USB port and were processed by program written in MATLAB software environment. The results from two methods, namely, image processing and grease belt methods were in good agreement and analysis of variances showed that seed-metering device with 15 cells in 40 rpm performed better than seed-metering device with 21 cells and in other speeds. Comparison of the number of spaces that fell in normal domain in different seed-metering speeds showed that image processing method had higher value than grease-belt method. Since the initial falling velocity of seed and angle of its exit from metering device was unknown, thus the precision of space index was different in two methods.
Detecting and measuring mass flow is fundamental to many applications in agricultural engineering... more Detecting and measuring mass flow is fundamental to many applications in agricultural engineering. Material handling, food processing, fertilizer spreading, and yield monitoring in combines are examples where mass flow measurement is needed. Methods for measuring material flow have used load cells, optical sensors, radiometric sensors, and many other techniques. The objective of this study was to develop a system to measure material (grain) flow using a laser line scanner. A laser line scanner measures the distance between the sensor and objects based on the time-of-flight principle. In this study, it was used to measure grain flowing from a stationary bin. A sliding gate at the bottom of the bin was used to adjust the grain flow. Experiments were conducted at six grain flow rates with three replications. The results showed the ability to detect the grain flow and measure grain flow rates up to approximately 5 kg s-1 for 45 cm of flow width (with R 2 = 0.97). Measurement of flow rates greater than 5 kg s-1 was not possible. We found a linear relationship between grain flow rate and the RMSE of the laser line scanner signal (R 2 = 0.91).
Considering to insufficient distribution of time and spatial of atmospheric raining and the low e... more Considering to insufficient distribution of time and spatial of atmospheric raining and the low efficiency of agricultural irrigation, water is the most limiting factor in agricultural production in Iran. Due to extent of border zone and diversity of different climatic regions in our country, reaching a suitable cultivation model that it can bring maximum utilization of production factors and inputs particularly water as the limiting factor is an undeniable necessary. Dehgolan field has 802 deep and semi deep wells which have the problem of the water surface falling. Surplus usage of water resource and droughts in recent years impelled Kurdistan Province Regional Water Company to exert limitations for preventing excessive water extraction from wells.Target-Motad is a kind of mathematical programming model which interferes risk in decisions for planning farm activities. The main feature of this model is that the risk is calculated by negative deviation of a determined efficiency (gross revenue), as total product of the expected efficiencies for separate activities. In this study, the analysis of optimum cropping pattern in risk condition and considering exertive limitations is considered. Results show that if the farmers use the optimum cropping pattern in water limitation period, there will be only 2000 thousand Rial loss in comparison with the state which there is no water limitation.
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Oct 1, 2010
In large farms' management, especially under multi-production conditions, obtaining a combination... more In large farms' management, especially under multi-production conditions, obtaining a combination of crop production with maximum income, has always been of prominent importance; especially if compulsive limitations and the risk of various activities has to be considered. Generarally, farmers deal with two types of risks, namely, economic and weather. Target-Motad is a kind of mathematical programming model which enters risk in decisions for planning farm activities. The main feature of this model is that the risk for separate activities is calculated by negative deviation of a determined efficiency (gross revenue), as the total product of the expected efficiencies. Ghorveh plain is a suitable agricultural land in which the problem of water surface lessening is encompassed. Recent years' excess usage of water resource and droughts has provoked Kordistan Province Regional Water Company to exert limitations for preventing further excessive water extraction from wells. In this study, the analysis of optimum cropping pattern under risk conditions with considering the exertive limitations is considered. Results show that if the farmers use the optimum cropping pattern in water limitation period, there will be only 1980 thousand Rials loss as compared with the situation where there is no water limitation.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research, Nov 8, 2019
Aim of study: Wheat appropriate harvest date (WAHD) is an important factor in farm monitoring and... more Aim of study: Wheat appropriate harvest date (WAHD) is an important factor in farm monitoring and harvest campaign schedule. Satellite remote sensing provides the possibility of continuous monitoring of large areas. In this study, we aimed to investigate the strength of vegetation indices (VIs) derived from Landsat-8 for generating the harvest schedule regional (HSR) map using Artificial Neural Network (ANN), a robust prediction tool in the agriculture sector. Area of study: Qorveh plain, Iran. Material and methods: During 2015 and 2016, a total of 100 plots was selected. WAHD was determined by sampling of plots and specifying wheat maximum yield for each plot. The strength of eight Landsat-8 derived spectral VIs (NDVI, SAVI, GreenNDVI, NDWI, EVI, EVI2, CVI and CI green) was investigated during wheat growth stages using correlation coefficients between these VIs and observed WAHD. The derived VIs from the required images were used as inputs of ANNs and WAHD was considered as output. Several ANN models were designed by combining various VIs data. Main results: The temporal stage in agreement with dough development stage had the highest correlation with WAHD. The optimum model for predicting WAHD was a Multi-Layer Perceptron model including one hidden layer with ten neurons in it when the inputs were NDVI, NDWI, and EVI2. To evaluate the difference between measured and predicted values of ANNs, MAE, RMSE, and R 2 were calculated. For the 3-10-1 topology, the value of R 2 was estimated 0.925. A HSR map was generated with RMSE of 0.86 days. Research highlights: Integrated satellite-derived VIs and ANNs is a novel and remarkable methodology to predict WAHD, optimize harvest campaign scheduling and farm management.
International Journal of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Nov 15, 2011
In vast farms management, especially in multi-crop cultivation case, planning for a combination o... more In vast farms management, especially in multi-crop cultivation case, planning for a combination of crops cultivation has always been of high importance to achieve the maximum income, by taking into account imposed limitations and the risk of different activities. According to the fact that in traditional models of farm programming because of not attention to risk, its results differ from what farmer do in reality, considering the risk farm programming should be well thought. MOTAD model (Minimization of the Total Absolute Deviation) is a mathematic programming model that enters risk into decision making related to farm activities and provides different programs. A main feature of this model is that the risk is calculated by negative deviation from efficiency amount as total multiplication. In recent years, serious declining of water table problem forced Regional Water Corporation of West-Azerbaijan province to impose limitations for extra water use of wells in order to sustain "Mako, Poldasht" water resources. These limitations result in lowering available water level (The most important input for farming), and create changes in cropping patterns and income level of farmers in this area. The aim of this study is analyzing improved cropping considering water limitations and in risk conditions. Data have been collected from farmers and Agriculture "Jihad" Management of town of Mako for duration of 1 387-1 388. According to the results of the research, the real cultivation plan that is now being implemented throughout the region carries a high risk and low income. Based on results, if the farmer uses the optimal cultivation pattern during the so-called water access limitation, watermelon harvest will be excluded from the optimal cultivation pattern. Also, alfalfa will enter the cultivation plan with the expected income level of 1 067 billion Rials (100 Rials = US$0.01). If the farmer uses improved cropping pattern in limitations in risk it will decrease total income as 171.36 billion Rials, to when the water limitations is not implemented.
Because of insufficient effectiveness after herbicide application in autumn, bur chervil (Anthris... more Because of insufficient effectiveness after herbicide application in autumn, bur chervil (Anthriscus caucalis M. Bieb.) is often present in cereal fields in spring. A second reason for spreading is the warm winter in Europe due to climate change. This weed continues to germinate from autumn to spring. To prevent further spreading, a site-specific control in spring is reasonable. Color imagery would offer cheap and complete monitoring of entire fields. In this study, an end-to-end fully convolutional network approach is presented to detect bur chervil within color images. The dataset consisted of images taken at three sampling dates in spring 2018 in winter wheat and at one date in 2019 in winter rye from the same field. Pixels representing bur chervil were manually annotated in all images. After a random image augmentation was done, a Unet-based convolutional neural network model was trained using 560 (80%) of the sub-images from 2018 (training images). The power of the trained mode...
In this research the quality of walnut kernels under impact loading were studied. Due to unavaila... more In this research the quality of walnut kernels under impact loading were studied. Due to unavailability of specific varieties of walnut in Iran, the tests were carried out on the available genotypes. Three different genotypes from walnut orchards of Azarshar region were selected and were collected in 2009. A drop test device was designed and constructed to perform the experiments. The impact tests were performed considering five factors in a factorial experiment using completely randomized design with five replications. The factors were genotype, moisture content, geometrical mean diameter, load direction with three levels and the hammer drop height (five levels). The effect of these factors on kernel quality was examined. Walnut cracking assessments and kernel quality were evaluated by well-defined criteria. Generally, by increasing the moisture content, the percentage of broken kernels decreased while the number of unbroken kernels increased and the quality grade of the kernels im...
sliding or bouncing seeds on the sticky belt, especially at high belt speed (Kocher et al., 1998)... more sliding or bouncing seeds on the sticky belt, especially at high belt speed (Kocher et al., 1998). However, it is convenient and has been tried by some researchers for evaluating a single row seed metering mechanism (Pan-
Uploads
Papers by Hossein Navid