Cauterizer Technology Increases Cactus Pear Shelf Life

Cactus pear is a food of nutraceutical and functional importance worldwide. Improvements in cactus pear shelf life will allow international 1-month refrigerated shipments for supplying good-quality fruit to the European markets. The perishable fruit is chilling sensitive and hot water treatments by immersion, increased shelf life to 1 month. Harvest tools are important to avoid fruit damage to the stem end, which leads to pathogens attack and fruit decay. A light wire-cutting tool detached 300 fruits h−1 without leaving the worker with pain. A hot cauterizer (HC) performed better than a cold cauterizer (CC) extending fruit shelf life to 2 months; 85% of the HC-processed fruits were marketable after 2-month storage at ambient temperature. After removal of the prickle pear peduncle, the pulp contacts a hot flat metal surface at 200°C. A pressure of 100 kPa during 30 s assures proper heat transfer and surface healing. An automated HC process-line cauterizes 250 kg h−1

Manejo automático de malla sombra y del riego en un invernadero con tomates

Greenhouse vegetable production in México and worldwide has become important. Following greenhouses automation, a simple controller was designed to open and close shading nets to reduce incident radiation and excessive evapotranspiration. Irrigation period were radiation controlled and did not turn on the pump with clouds or moon radiation, saving 35% of water. The nets remained closed during the night and were opened during scarce radiation. In the tomato greenhouse experiment, every three months analysis was carried on manual and automatic net control. Maximum incident radiation was achieved in May and August when no shading nets were used. Air temperature increased to 28°C in August decreasing by 50% fruit size. Fruit temperature decreased 2.5°C when nets were used decreasing tomato cracking.Los invernaderos son utilizados para muchas aplicaciones, no solo cultivos. Invernaderos automatizados requieren de un controlador que abra y cierre mallas reduciendo la radiación incidente evitando una evapotranspiración excesiva del cultivo. Este trabajo contempla el desarrollo de un controlador de mallas y de irrigación aplicada en función a la radiación incidente ahorrando 35% de agua en tiempo de lluvias; con nubes o con la radiación lunar nocturna no se enciende la bomba. Las mallas permanecían cerradas durante la noche abriéndose al amanecer cuando la radiación era baja. En el experimento realizado con tomates dentro de un invernadero se utilizaron meses intercalados para analizar la operación manual de mallas y la operación automática de las mismas. La radiación incidente en las plantas fue máxima en Mayo y Agosto meses en que no se usaron mallas de sombreo. En Agosto la temperatura del aire aumentó arriba de 28°C reduciendo en un 50% el tamaño de las frutas. La temperatura de los frutos disminuyó 2.5°C con el uso de mallas reduciendo el agrietamiento en el tomate

Determination of physical-mechanical characteristics in potatoes (Fianna variety) as parameters for mechanical design

Potatoes are one of the most important agricultural products due to their great nutritional and industrial value. However, the mechanization of this crop is low in many countries. The main aim of this investigation was to characterize the Fianna potato variety. The potatoes were characterized morphologically (polar diameter, equatorial diameter, thickness, geometric diameter, arithmetic diameter, sphericity, and weight), mechanically (static friction coefficient, rolling angle, and axial compression), and by impact and firmness tests. The sample potatoes were distributed into four groups (S1, S2, S3, and S4) according to their size. A random complete blocks design was used to determine the mean values of their characteristics. The results of the physical characteristics showed a higher coefficient of variation in the S1 group. All values tended to decrease except sphericity. The results of the mechanical tests show that the coefficient of static friction increases as the size of the potato decreases, while the relationship of the rolling angle was the opposite. The axial compression results showed values that decreased from Group S1 to Group S4 except for Young's modulus, which ranged from 1,306 to 3,697 MPa in the four groups. Determining these data is necessary because they represent design parameters useful for the development of mechanical equipment

Robotic Heat Treatments for Mango and Prickly Pear Increase Shelf Life and Reduce Pathogen Infection

Mexico is the main exporter of mango fruits and prickly pears, so new postharvest techniques to increase shelf life are studied. Thermal treatments on both fruits can affect their cuticle so it was reviewed. When mango latex remains within the fruits, it avoids sap burn and decreases anthracnose and stem end rot infestation, so two systems were developed to minimize latex de-sapping. A gripper cuts stems 0.5 cm long and cauterizes them with a hot knife implement. A heating gun applied paraffin wax to mangoes without the stem end and protected them better against anthracnose lesions. Physicochemical analysis of several mango varieties was carried out after harvesting, at market place and after pedicel cutting and cauterizing. Keitt mangoes showed the lower quantity of total soluble solids (TSSs) and total acidity (TA). When the pedicel was cauterized, TSS dropped. Two grippers were developed to cryo-cauterize prickly pears as this system is more energy-efficient than hot cauterization. A six-finger gripper moved over a pneumatic actuator toward a dry ice chamber to optimize pear cryo-cauterization. Gripper’s strong grasping damaged the fruits due to excessive compression. TSS and TA of cryo-cauterized fruit remained constant during the three months of fruit storage

WSN System Warns Producer When Micro-Sprinklers Do Not Work in Fruit Trees

Salts in the irrigation water cause micro-sprinklers to clog. Farmers find it difficult to detect sprinkler clog due to the great number of trees grown in commercial orchards, causing a reduction in yield and timing problems. In this article, IoT can support farmers with daily soil moisture detection. A wireless sensor network, WSN was developed to warn the farmer from micro-sprinkling clogging. Trees were gathered into groups of 9 trees, where the central tree holds the master microcontroller and the other eight trees presented slave microcontrollers (nodes). The system uses BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) to communicate between the master microcontroller by BLE. A second WSN using lasers was also tested but resulted to be a little more expensive. Soil moisture sensor performance against corrosion and current consumption was analyzed being the best sensors the V1.2 capacitance probe and the sprinkler-encoder one. When micro-sprinklers did not apply water to a tree, its number was transmitted via LoRa from the master to the producer\u27s smartphone to warn him/her. A hexacopter was used to detect canopy stress from a height of 30 m, but only after 7 days of water removal did the NDVI indexes detect it

Secure Anonymous Conferencing in Quantum Networks

Users of quantum networks can securely communicate via so-called (quantum) conference key agreement—making their identities publicly known. In certain circumstances, however, communicating users demand anonymity. Here, we introduce a security framework for anonymous conference key agreement with different levels of anonymity, which is inspired by the ε-security of quantum key distribution. We present efficient and noise-tolerant protocols exploiting multipartite Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states and prove their security in the finite-key regime. We analyze the performance of our protocols in noisy and lossy quantum networks and compare with protocols that only use bipartite entanglement to achieve the same functionalities. Our simulations show that GHZ-based protocols can outperform protocols based on bipartite entanglement and that the advantage increases for protocols with stronger anonymity requirements. Our results strongly advocate the use of multipartite entanglement for cryptographic tasks involving several users

Secure Anonymous Conferencing in Quantum Networks

Users of quantum networks can securely communicate via so-called (quantum) conference key agreement—making their identities publicly known. In certain circumstances, however, communicating users demand anonymity. Here, we introduce a security framework for anonymous conference key agreement with different levels of anonymity, which is inspired by the ε-security of quantum key distribution. We present efficient and noise-tolerant protocols exploiting multipartite Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states and prove their security in the finite-key regime. We analyze the performance of our protocols in noisy and lossy quantum networks and compare with protocols that only use bipartite entanglement to achieve the same functionalities. Our simulations show that GHZ-based protocols can outperform protocols based on bipartite entanglement and that the advantage increases for protocols with stronger anonymity requirements. Our results strongly advocate the use of multipartite entanglement for cryptographic tasks involving several users