DESIGNING SPEECH INTERFACE APPLICATIONS FOR ACQUISITION OF AGRICULTURAL INFORMATION

It will be argued that customary software design strategies, by themselves, fall short when designing speech recognition applications. Concepts of experimental design and analysis are also necessary for developing speech interface software. This study demonstrates that these tools can be advantageous to the software developer, especially if the prototype methodology model of software development is applied. A case study for the problem of developing a speech interface for collecting, or mapping, information on cotton plant growth is presented. The acquisition of cotton plant map data is a \u27hands and eyes\u27 busy task that requires considerable investment to record and convert hand-written data sheets into computer data files. The project goal is to develop software that converts spoken key words and phrases describing a cotton plant into text \u27strings\u27 that are subsequently manipulated into a computer ready data file

UTILIZATION OF THE LINE-INTERCEPT METHOD TO ESTIMATE THE COVERAGE, DENSITY, AND AVERAGE LENGTH OF ROW SKIPS IN COTTON AND OTHER ROW CROPS

In row crops, a skip is a length of row within the drill where the crop has failed to establish. If the number of skips and their mean length per acre becomes too high, then considerable losses in crop yield occur. Frequently, farmers are faced with the decision to replant a crop which has row skips. To make the best decision, reliable estimates of the stand loss due to skips must be available. In making this decision, three parameters are useful: the percent of the area per acre that is skipped, the number of individual skips (that is, density) per acre, and the mean row length per skip. The line-intercept method for the sampling of two-dimensional objects (particles) can be used to obtain estimates of these parameters. The method is illustrated with an example from a cotton field

SPECIFICATIONS OF A PROTOTYPE SOFTWARE SYSTEM FOR DEVELOPING VARIABLE-RATE TREATMENT PRESCRIPTIONS FOR USE IN PRECISION AGRICULTURE

This paper discusses the process of developing variable-rate treatment prescriptions and gives specifications for a prototype software system for implementing that process. The process is based on statistical analysis of data from embedded field trials, and incorporates producer preferences in determining a treatment prescription. The system can be used by researchers in agricultural research stations for developing prescriptions for commercial agricultural producers. The specifications provided are general enough to be implemented using a variety of statistical and database packages that are available to researchers. In addition to these specifications we provide online access to source code for implementing the system in SAS. We use this system to develop treatment prescriptions for a commercial cotton farming operation in northeast Louisiana. The prescriptions are based on data from a precision agriculture experiment conducted in 2006. The objective of that study was to compare the effects of five nitrogen rates on cotton lint yield across several soil types for the purpose of developing a variable-rate nitrogen treatment prescription for future use on that farm. Several possible producer preferences were incorporated with the results of the field trial to produce optional treatment prescriptions for the producer

Sampletalk: A Speech-Enabled Application For Plant Stand Sampling

Introduction Plant stand sampling is an important method for monitoring plant growth and production. To do the sampling, the user typically goes to a field, manually records the data, and then comes back and types this data into the computer. This procedure is timeconsuming and requires a lot of effort by the user. Also, the user needs to enter the data twice, once on the data sheet and again on the computer. This increases the potential error rate. The purpose of this project is to design a software system (SampleTalk) to facilitate the sampling process. Plant stand sampling is a typical hand/eye busy application. Speech interfaces allow users to interact with a computer by voice. In the plant stand sampling case, the goal is to allow the user to enter data directly into the computer using voice while doing the sampling in the field. 1.1 Speech Enabled Applications Speech is the most natural and widely-distributed human communication method. A speech-enable

Effects of Field Plot Size on Variation in White Flower Anther Injury by Tarnished Plant Bug for Host Plant Resistance Evaluations in Arkansas Cotton

Field trials conducted in 2008 and 2009 investigated whether plot size affects incidence of white flower anther injury by tarnished plant bug (Lygus lineolaris (Palisot de Beauvois)) in host plant resistance (HPR) evaluations. The three cotton lines evaluated in the trial included a susceptible frego bract line (RBCDHGPIQH-197) and 2 standards, SureGrow (SG) 105 and Deltapine (DP) 393. Samplers monitored white flower anther injury between single row mini-plots embedded within multiple row max-plots. A sub-section of the max-plots was sprayed with insecticides to evaluate these tactics on altering the incidence of white flower anther injury. Plant bug numbers were very low in 2008, while infestation levels were higher in 2009. Significantly higher numbers of flowers with anther injury were observed in both years in the susceptible frego bract line compared to SG 105 and DP 393 lines. In both years, anther injury levels were similar in the max- and mini-plots, with lower levels observed in max-sprayed plots. The white flower monitoring procedure is a consistent indicator of adult plant bug preferences and is not influenced by plot size or interspersions of cultivar lines among plots