Modelling Fertilizer Use in Relation to Farmers’ Household Characteristics in Three Gorges Reservoir Area, China

Non-point source pollution from excessive use of fertilizers in agriculture is a major cause of the eutrophication problem in China. Understanding farmers’ decision-making concerning fertilization and identifying the influencing factors in this process are key to tackling overfertilization and related pollution issues. This paper reports a study on modelling decisions about fertilizer use based on data collected from 200 farmer households in the Three Gorges Reservoir area of China, using a well-fitted artificial neural network (ANN) with incorporated variance-based sensitivity analysis. The rate of fertilizer use estimated from the model is in good agreement with observed data. The model is further validated and tested by comparing the simulated and observed values. Results show that the model is able to identify the influencing factors and their interactions causing the variation in fertilizer use and to help pinpoint the underlying reasons. It is found that the farmers’ fertilization behavior is greatly affected by the area of cultivated land, followed by the interaction among farmers’ education level, annual income, and awareness of the importance of environmental protection. Future land consolidation is one of several ways to achieve more sustainable fertilization strategies

A Review on Energy Consumption Optimization Techniques in IoT Based Smart Building Environments

In recent years, due to the unnecessary wastage of electrical energy in residential buildings, the requirement of energy optimization and user comfort has gained vital importance. In the literature, various techniques have been proposed addressing the energy optimization problem. The goal of each technique was to maintain a balance between user comfort and energy requirements such that the user can achieve the desired comfort level with the minimum amount of energy consumption. Researchers have addressed the issue with the help of different optimization algorithms and variations in the parameters to reduce energy consumption. To the best of our knowledge, this problem is not solved yet due to its challenging nature. The gap in the literature is due to the advancements in the technology and drawbacks of the optimization algorithms and the introduction of different new optimization algorithms. Further, many newly proposed optimization algorithms which have produced better accuracy on the benchmark instances but have not been applied yet for the optimization of energy consumption in smart homes. In this paper, we have carried out a detailed literature review of the techniques used for the optimization of energy consumption and scheduling in smart homes. The detailed discussion has been carried out on different factors contributing towards thermal comfort, visual comfort, and air quality comfort. We have also reviewed the fog and edge computing techniques used in smart homes

STOCK PRICE TREND PREDICTION USING SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE AND CORAL REEF OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM

Due to non-linearity and non-stationary characteristics of stock market time series data, prior approaches have not been adequate enough for predicting stock market prices. Support vector machines are classifier that have been reported in the literature as having good recognition accuracy and have been applied in the area of predicting financial stock market prices and was found efficient. It is however noted that the performance of the SVM is affected by the values of the hyper-parameters used by the SVM. There is the need to find a way for searching for the best hyper-parameters that optimizes the performance of an SVM model. Coral Reef Optimization (CRO) is one of many nature-inspired algorithms used extensively to solve optimization problems. It is very effective in solving optimization problems because it is able to achieve global optimization. This paper’s contribution is the development of Coral Reef search algorithms for the improvement of the hyper-parameters of the SVM used for stock price trend prediction. The Algorithm is validated using stock data of two banks. The results obtained out-performed un-optimized SVM, and have the same performance as that of SVM optimized with the FireFly optimization algorithm.   &nbsp

Advanced Soil Moisture Predictive Methodology in the Maize Cultivation Region using Hybrid Machine Learning Algorithms

The moisture level in the soil in which maize is grown is crucial to the plant's health and production. And over 60% of India's maize cultivation comes from the states of South India. Therefore, forecasting the soil moisture of maize will emerge as a crucial factor for regulating the cultivation of maize crops with optimal irrigation. In light of this, this research provides a unique Improved Hybridized Machine Learning (IHML) model, which combines and optimizes several ML models (base learners-BL). The convergence rate of all the considered BL approaches and the preciseness of the proposed approach significantly enhances the process of determining the appropriate parameters to attain the desirable outcome. Consequently, IHML contributes to an improvement in the accuracy of the overall forecast. This research collects data from districts in South India that are primarily committed to maize agriculture to develop a model. The correlation evaluations served as the basis for the model's framework and the parameter selection. This research compares the outcomes of BL models to the IHML model in depth to ensure the model's accuracy. Results reveal that the IHML performs exceptionally well in forecasting soil moisture, comprising Correlation Coefficient (R2) of 0.9762, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 0.293, and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 0.731 at a depth of 10 cm. Conceptual IHML models could be used to make smart farming and precise irrigation much better

Imputation of missing microclimate data of coffee-pine agroforestry with machine learning

This research presents a comprehensive analysis of various imputation methods for addressing missing microclimate data in the context of coffee-pine agroforestry land in UB Forest. Utilizing Big data and Machine learning methods, the research evaluates the effectiveness of imputation missing microclimate data with Interpolation, Shifted Interpolation, K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), and Linear Regression methods across multiple time frames - 6 hours, daily, weekly, and monthly. The performance of these methods is meticulously assessed using four key evaluation metrics Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). The results indicate that Linear Regression consistently outperforms other methods across all time frames, demonstrating the lowest error rates in terms of MAE, MSE, RMSE, and MAPE. This finding underscores the robustness and precision of Linear Regression in handling the variability inherent in microclimate data within agroforestry systems. The research highlights the critical role of accurate data imputation in agroforestry research and points towards the potential of machine learning techniques in advancing environmental data analysis. The insights gained from this research contribute significantly to the field of environmental science, offering a reliable methodological approach for enhancing the accuracy of microclimate models in agroforestry, thereby facilitating informed decision-making for sustainable ecosystem management

Maize Genetic Resources

Maize is one of the most economically important food crops worldwide. It is used for livestock feeds and human nutrition. Recent strategies have been adopted for improving maize crops. This book brings together recent advances, breeding strategies, and applications in the biological control, breeding, and genetic improvement of maize genetic resources. It also provides new insights and sheds light on new perspectives and future research work that have been carried out for further improvement of maize crops. This book is a useful resource for students, researchers, and scientists

Nondestructive Chicken Egg Fertility Detection Using CNN-Transfer Learning Algorithms

This study explores the application of CNN-Transfer Learning for nondestructive chicken egg fertility detection. Four models, VGG16, ResNet50, InceptionNet, and MobileNet, were trained and evaluated on a dataset using augmented images. The training results demonstrated that all models achieved high accuracy, indicating their ability to accurately learn and classify chicken eggs’ fertility state. However, when evaluated on the testing set, variations in accuracy and performance were observed. VGG16 achieved a high accuracy of 0.9803 on the testing set but had challenges in accurately detecting fertile eggs, as indicated by a NaN sensitivity value. ResNet50 also achieved an accuracy of 0.98 but struggled to identify fertile and non-fertile eggs, as suggested by NaN values for sensitivity and specificity. However, InceptionNet demonstrated excellent performance, with an accuracy of 0.9804, a sensitivity of 1 for detecting fertile eggs, and a specificity of 0.9615 for identifying non-fertile eggs. MobileNet achieved an accuracy of 0.9804 on the testing set; however, it faced challenges in accurately classifying the fertility status of chicken eggs, as indicated by NaN values for both sensitivity and specificity. While the models showed promise during training, variations in accuracy and performance were observed during testing. InceptionNet exhibited the best overall performance, accurately classifying fertile and non-fertile eggs. Further optimization and fine-tuning of the models are necessary to address the limitations in accurately detecting fertile and non-fertile eggs. This study highlights the potential of CNN-Transfer Learning for nondestructive fertility detection and emphasizes the need for further research to enhance the models’ capabilities and ensure accurate classification

A comprehensive review of crop yield prediction using machine learning approaches with special emphasis on palm oil yield prediction

An early and reliable estimation of crop yield is essential in quantitative and financial evaluation at the field level for determining strategic plans in agricultural commodities for import-export policies and doubling farmer’s incomes. Crop yield predictions are carried out to estimate higher crop yield through the use of machine learning algorithms which are one of the challenging issues in the agricultural sector. Due to this developing significance of crop yield prediction, this article provides an exhaustive review on the use of machine learning algorithms to predict crop yield with special emphasis on palm oil yield prediction. Initially, the current status of palm oil yield around the world is presented, along with a brief discussion on the overview of widely used features and prediction algorithms. Then, the critical evaluation of the state-of-the-art machine learning-based crop yield prediction, machine learning application in the palm oil industry and comparative analysis of related studies are presented. Consequently, a detailed study of the advantages and difficulties related to machine learning-based crop yield prediction and proper identification of current and future challenges to the agricultural industry is presented. The potential solutions are additionally prescribed in order to alleviate existing problems in crop yield prediction. Since one of the major objectives of this study is to explore the future perspectives of machine learning-based palm oil yield prediction, the areas including application of remote sensing, plant’s growth and disease recognition, mapping and tree counting, optimum features and algorithms have been broadly discussed. Finally, a prospective architecture of machine learning-based palm oil yield prediction has been proposed based on the critical evaluation of existing related studies. This technology will fulfill its promise by performing new research challenges in the analysis of crop yield prediction and the development

Integrating Growth and Environmental Parameters to Discriminate Powdery Mildew and Aphid of Winter Wheat Using Bi-Temporal Landsat-8 Imagery

Monitoring and discriminating co-epidemic diseases and pests at regional scales are of practical importance in guiding differential treatment. A combination of vegetation and environmental parameters could improve the accuracy for discriminating crop diseases and pests. Different diseases and pests could cause similar stresses and symptoms during the same crop growth period, so combining growth period information can be useful for discerning different changes in crop diseases and pests. Additionally, problems associated with imbalanced data often have detrimental effects on the performance of image classification. In this study, we developed an approach for discriminating crop diseases and pests based on bi-temporal Landsat-8 satellite imagery integrating both crop growth and environmental parameters. As a case study, the approach was applied to data during a period of typical co-epidemic outbreak of winter wheat powdery mildew and aphids in the Shijiazhuang area of Hebei Province, China. Firstly, bi-temporal remotely sensed features characterizing growth indices and environmental factors were calculated based on two Landsat-8 images. The synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) algorithm was used to resample the imbalanced training data set before model construction. Then, a back propagation neural network (BPNN) based on a new training data set balanced by the SMOTE approach (SMOTE-BPNN) was developed to generate the regional wheat disease and pest distribution maps. The original training data set-based BPNN and support vector machine (SVM) methods were used for comparison and testing of the initial results. Our findings suggest that the proposed approach incorporating both growth and environmental parameters of different crop periods could distinguish wheat powdery mildew and aphids at the regional scale. The bi-temporal growth indices and environmental factors-based SMOTE-BPNN, BPNN, and SVM models all had an overall accuracy high than 80%. Meanwhile, the SMOTE-BPNN method had the highest G-means among the three methods. These results revealed that the combination of bi-temporal crop growth and environmental parameters is essential for improving the accuracy of the crop disease and pest discriminating models. The combination of SMOTE and BPNN could effectively improve the discrimination accuracy of the minor disease or pest

Enhancing battery state of charge estimation through hybrid integration of barnacles mating optimizer with deep learning

The precise determination of battery state of charge (SoC) holds paramount significance and has garnered considerable attention across diverse sectors, including academia. Accurate knowledge of the SoC percentage offers numerous advantages, ranging from optimizing travel planning to enhancing the efficiency and reliability of electric vehicle operations through effective battery management systems. In response to the growing importance of SoC estimation, this study introduces a hybrid approach called the Barnacles Mating Optimizer with Deep Learning (BMO-DL) for SoC of Nissan Leaf batteries. The conventional methods for SoC estimation often suffer from limitations in accuracy and robustness, leading to suboptimal EV performance and battery management. In contrast, BMO-DL leverages the power of BMO algorithm to fine-tune the hyperparameters of DL, which is subsequently employed for the actual estimation. This synergistic combination enhances the accuracy and reliability of SoC estimation. The estimation model takes three inputs: voltage, current and conducted charge to generate a single output, the SoC percentage. he study's findings underscore the superiority of BMO-DL by revealing its capability to achieve significantly better results compared to the other benchmarking methods identified. Notably, BMO-DL exhibits significantly lower error rates when compared to competing algorithms, thereby reinforcing its potential to advance the efficiency and reliability of electric vehicle operations while addressing the critical challenge of SoC prediction