Advanced Image Acquisition, Processing Techniques and Applications

"Advanced Image Acquisition, Processing Techniques and Applications" is the first book of a series that provides image processing principles and practical software implementation on a broad range of applications. The book integrates material from leading researchers on Applied Digital Image Acquisition and Processing. An important feature of the book is its emphasis on software tools and scientific computing in order to enhance results and arrive at problem solution

Sensors Application in Agriculture

Novel technologies are playing an important role in the development of crop and livestock farming and have the potential to be the key drivers of sustainable intensification of agricultural systems. In particular, new sensors are now available with reduced dimensions, reduced costs, and increased performances, which can be implemented and integrated in production systems, providing more data and eventually an increase in information. It is of great importance to support the digital transformation, precision agriculture, and smart farming, and to eventually allow a revolution in the way food is produced. In order to exploit these results, authoritative studies from the research world are still needed to support the development and implementation of new solutions and best practices. This Special Issue is aimed at bringing together recent developments related to novel sensors and their proved or potential applications in agriculture

Precision Agriculture Technology for Crop Farming

This book provides a review of precision agriculture technology development, followed by a presentation of the state-of-the-art and future requirements of precision agriculture technology. It presents different styles of precision agriculture technologies suitable for large scale mechanized farming; highly automated community-based mechanized production; and fully mechanized farming practices commonly seen in emerging economic regions. The book emphasizes the introduction of core technical features of sensing, data processing and interpretation technologies, crop modeling and production control theory, intelligent machinery and field robots for precision agriculture production

Carabids for Natural-Enemy Pest Control: combining ecology and knowledge exchange to bridge the gaps

Carabid beetles are proven predators of crop pests and weed seeds. Agri-environmental measures, such as grass margins and beetle banks, are beneficial to the abundance and diversity of carabids. However, there is a lack of consensus over which measures are most effective in terms of Natural enemy Pest Control (NPC) by carabids, and interactions with the surrounding landscape. This thesis aimed to improve the efficacy and applicability of farm management interventions that increase the abundance and diversity of carabid species that contribute to NPC. I analysed data from the Farm Scale Evaluation experiment to determine the effects of landscape features and crop management on species abundance and diversity. To investigate further, I undertook trapping campaigns on a plot-scale and a farm-scale experiment. For this I used novel subterranean traps and standard pitfall traps to capture both above and below ground activity. Data were analysed with Linear Mixed Models, Generalised Linear Mixed Models, multivariate and spatial statistical methods. Central to my findings was that the response of key species varied differentially according to crop type, distance from field edge, adjacent habitat, and boundary feature. By incorporating below-ground sampling, I was able to deliver new understanding of the distribution of soil-dwelling carabid larvae relative to adults, and argue for the inclusion of predatory larvae in the estimation of ecosystem services provided by carabids. To incentivise farm management for NPC it is essential to understand the key motivations of farmers. To that end, I surveyed farmers to discover awareness, attitudes, and behavioural intent towards carabid beetles. Knowledge exchange interventions were also deployed. Farmer attitudes to carabids were positive, and experimental knowledge exchange treatments had a significant effect on behavioural intent. By drawing experimental and behaviour findings together, I was able to recommend specific actions favourable to farmers that were likely to boost NPC

Precision Agriculture Technology for Crop Farming

This book provides a review of precision agriculture technology development, followed by a presentation of the state-of-the-art and future requirements of precision agriculture technology. It presents different styles of precision agriculture technologies suitable for large scale mechanized farming; highly automated community-based mechanized production; and fully mechanized farming practices commonly seen in emerging economic regions. The book emphasizes the introduction of core technical features of sensing, data processing and interpretation technologies, crop modeling and production control theory, intelligent machinery and field robots for precision agriculture production

Sustainable control of infestations using image processing and modelling

A sustainable pest control system integrates automated pest detection and recognition to evaluate the pest density using image samples taken from habitats. Novel predator/prey modelling algorithms assess control requirements for the UAV system, which is designed to deliver measured quantities of naturally beneficial predators to combat pest infestations within economically acceptable timeframes. The integrated system will reduce the damaging effect of pests in an infested habitat to an economically acceptable level without the use of chemical pesticides. Plant pest recognition and detection is vital for food security, quality of life and a stable agricultural economy. The research utilises a combination of the k-means clustering algorithm and the correspondence filter to achieve pest detection and recognition. The detection is achieved by partitioning the data space into Voronoi cells, which tends to find clusters of comparable spatial extents, thereby separating the objects (pests) from the background (pest habitat). The detection is established by extracting the variant and distinctive attributes between the pest and its habitat (leaf, stem) and using the correspondence filter to identify the plant pests to obtain correlation peak values for the different datasets. The correspondence filter can achieve rotationally invariant recognition of pests for a full 360 degrees, which proves the effectiveness of the algorithm and provides a count of the number of pests in the image. A series of models has been produced that will permit an assessment of common pest infestation problems and estimate the number of predators that are required to control the problem within a time schedule. A UAV predator deployment system has been designed. The system is offered as a replacement for chemical pesticides to improve peoples’ health opportunities and the quality of food products

Biodiversity Conservation and Utilization in a Diverse World

This book "Biodiversity Conservation and Utilization in a Diverse World" sees biodiversity as management and utilization of resources in satisfying human needs in multi-sectional areas including agriculture, forestry, fisheries, wildlife and other exhaustible and inexhaustible resources. Its value is to fulfill actual human preferences and variability of life is measured by amount of genetic variation available. In viewing diversity as an ultimate moral value, one is faced with a situation in environmental preservation in order to allow components of total diversity to flourish and constitute a threat to continuous existence and decrease total diversity. The overall importance described economic benefits from bio-diversity, though difficult to measure and varying, but are limited on a local scale, increase on a regional or national scale and become potentially substantial on a transnational or global scale

Photodegradation of pesticides in water using metal doped multi-component heterojunction photocatalyst

Abstract : For many years now, South Africa has been facing water crisis. Availability of clean water is lacking, and human population increases every year. Available water is contaminated with variety of pollutants such as microbials, organic and inorganic pollutants. This is because of increased industrial and agricultural practices to satisfy the growing population demand. Organic pollutants are prominent due to high agricultural production whereby pesticides and fertilizers are applied to optimize product output. Pesticides are of huge concern due to their persistence and toxic behaviour in the environment. They are found in rivers and ground water streams after application in the field via run-off or seep into ground. Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate pesticide widely used to control pest. Chlorpyrifos has been detected at high levels in water in Western Cape of South Africa. Department of Agriculture in South Africa banned its use as an ingredient in domestic products and pesticides in 2010 but it is still detected in the environment. Chlorpyrifos is an endocrine disrupting chemical, nerve agent and causes dizziness. This pollutant can enter human body by ingestion, dermal adsorption or inhalation. The WHO limit of chlorpyrifos in water is 30 μg/L. Several methods have been used to remove chlorpyrifos and other pollutants in water such as biological treatment and advanced oxidation processes. Advanced oxidation processes are regarded as safe and efficient pollutant removal, removing a variety of pollutants in water. This is due to utilization of highly reactive species such as hydroxyl and superoxide radicals, known for their rapid and indiscriminative behaviour towards organic compounds resulting in a complete mineralization. Photocatalysis which is a semiconductor-based method emerged as a promising organic pollutant removal method. Tungsten trioxide (WO3) has been extensively studied for degradation of heavy metals and organic pollutants. But suffer from photogenerated charge vi recombination. To curb that, doping has been used with metal/non-metal dopant and by formation of heterojunction with another semiconductor catalyst to name a few. In this study, WO3 was successfully synthesized using a hydrothermal treatment method. It was further modified with Mn2+ ion and SnS2 to improve its photocatalytic activity towards chlorpyrifos degradation by formation of Mn-WO3/SnS2. Mn- WO3/SnS2 was formed with rectangular shapes confirmed through HRTEM and FESEM. A mixture of monoclinic and hexagonal phases was identified using XRD, Raman and SAED indexing. The optical and electrochemical properties of Mn-WO3/SnS2 were studied using EIS, PL and UV-Vis-DRS. Low emission intensity corresponding to less charge recombination, smaller semi-circle diameter corresponding to less charge transfer impedance and high visible light absorbance wavelength (582 nm) were observed in comparison to those of WO3 (466 nm), Mn-WO3 (472 nm), SnS2 (512 nm) and WO3/SnS2 (572 nm). Mn-WO3/SnS2 displayed good stability and increased surface area (77 m2/g) compared to WO3 (6 m2/g). The materials were mesoporous as determined by BET analysis with pore volumes in the range of 0.02 to 0.07. Except SnS2 which displayed porous adsorbent properties. The Mn-doped composite (Mn-WO3/SnS2) nanoparticles displayed high efficiency for the degradation of chlorpyrifos in synthetic water samples within 60 minutes. UHPLC-MS-MS was used to evaluate the concentration of chlorpyrifos and deduce the degradation pathway. Mn-WO3/SnS2 degraded up to 95% chlorpyrifos removal compared to 50, 65, 75, and 85% using WO3, Mn-WO3, SnS2 and WO3/SnS2 respectively. After optimization of conditions such as pH, initial chlorpyrifos concentration and initial photocatalyst loading, 100% chlorpyrifos removal was achieved at pH 7, 1 g of nanoparticles and 1000 ppb of chlorpyrifos concentration. The complete degradation of chlorpyrifos and its major degradation by-product TCP was achieved. vii TCP was completely degraded to innocuous materials. Kinetic studies were deduced to a second order reaction at 209x10-3 M-1s-1.M.Sc. (Chemistry