INTELLIGENT MONITORING OF DISEASED PLANTS USING DRONES

Plant diseases are one of the grand challenges that face the agriculture sector world-wide. In the United States, crop diseases cause losses of one-third of crop production annually. Despite the importance, crop disease diagnosis is challenging for limited-resources farmers if performed through optical observation of plant leaves’ symptoms. Therefore, there is an urgent need for markedly improved detection, monitoring, and prediction of crop diseases to reduce crop agriculture losses. Advanced imaging technologies can detect such changes, and can, therefore, be used as noninvasive crop monitoring methods. Furthermore, novel methods of treatment precision application are required. Both sensing and actuation technologies can be mounted on equipment moving through fields (e.g., irrigation equipment), on (un)manned driving vehicles, and on small drones

RESEARCH OF THE MAIN PROCESSING WORKS FOR ESTABLISHING A JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE CROP ON DIFFICULT AND CONTAMINATED SOILS

Jerusalem artichoke, is a technical plant that have some special features which make it suitable to be cultivated on degraded and difficult soils. However, processing difficult lands can cause major problems for farmers, in terms of using the right technology and reducing investment costs. The paper aim to address to the main challenges faced in preparing the soil for a Jerusalem artichoke culture, in order to maximize the productivity and efficiency

Persistent pre-seismic signature detected by means of Na-K-Mg geothermometry records in a saline spring of Vrancea area (Romania)

A six year-long hydrochemical monitoring operation was conducted in Vrancea seismic zone (Romania), addressing a saline spring that proved to be suitable for Na-K-Mg geothermometry diagnosis. During the considered time-interval (2003–2009), only one important earthquake (<i>m</i><sub>b</sub>=5.8) occurred in Vrancea region, this circumstance providing an unambiguous reference-moment between pre-seismic and post-seismic periods. On occurrence of that earthquake, an anomalous fluctuation of the Na-K temperature was detected – a result largely similar to previous ones recorded worldwide (California, southwest Egypt, northeast India). Yet such fluctuations may not necessarily be induced by earthquake-associated processes: they can occur also "routinely", possibly reflecting some environmental, meteorologically-induced "noise". It was therefore important to examine whether the variations observed in the data values could be plausibly related to a seismogenesis process. By additionally investigating (in a "scattterplot" diagram) the correlation between the Na-K temperatures and the values of a so-called "maturity index", a specific pattern emerged, with pre-seismic data-points plotting in a distinct domain of the diagram; moreover, those data-points appeared to describe a "drift away" pathway with respect to the remaining data-points "cluster", recorded during the subsequent 4 years of post-seismic monitoring. The "drift away" pattern persistently evolved for at least 18 months, ending just before the <i>m</i><sub>b</sub>=5.8 earthquake and consequently suggesting the existence of some kind of long-term precursory phenomenon