Development of belt drive seedling separation mechanism for automatic vegetable transplanter Qizhi Yanga,b , Ahmad Ibrar a, Li Xua, Xinyi Shia, Siddique Bushrac School of Agricultural Equipment Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, P.R.
China. Institute of Intelligent Robot, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, P.R. China c Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Agriculture Sciences& Technology Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan P.R Pakistan Abstract: Introduction: The number of vegetable users is extending due to rapid addition in the population of the world. The individuals of the developing countries, mostly get essential nutrients from the vegetables ADDIN CSL_CITATION { “citationItems” : { “id” : “ITEM-1”, “itemData” : { “DOI” : “10.1016/S0306-9192(96)00029-2”, “ISSN” : “0306-9192”, “abstract” : “The widespread prevalence of micronutrient deficiency is a major cause of poor human health in many developing countries of Asia.
Integrating micronutrient-rich foods such as vegetables, fruits and livestock products into diets is the most practical and sustainable way to alleviate micronutrient deficiency. Vegetables are efficient sources of several important micronutrients, both with respect to unit cost of production and per unit of land area. However, vegetable consumption in most Asian countries is far below the level required to meet the micronutrient requirements. This is further aggravated by seasonal and annual fluctuations in vegetable production and consumption. The per capita consumption of vegetables has stagnated at low levels in most Asian countries, and real vegetable prices are on the increase.
Policies to ameliorate micronutrient deficiency include reduction in the relative prices of vegetables, increase in income, enhancement of micronutrient contents in vegetables, generating awareness among consumers about the role of vegetables in human health, improvement in vegetable cooking and processing methods and improvement in the gestropolitics of micronutrient distribution. Enhancing vegetable supplies through low-cost production and marketing technology, and advance vegetable cooking and processing methods coupled with educational programs to promote a balanced diet is considered the most efficient strategy to solve the problem of mineral and vitamic deficiency, along with an increased food and income security, new jobs, food diversity, and enhanced sustainability of agricultural production systems that results from the diversification of these systems. Such efforts should not be targeted at a single vegetable or single micronutrient, but rather to enhance overall vegetable supplies, especially during the lean supply period, as well as to increase their diversity usually demanded by consumers when they start consuming more vegetables.”, “author” : { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Ali”, “given” : “Mubarik”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” }, { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Tsou”, “given” : “Samson C.S.”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” } , “container-title” : “Food Policy”, “id” : “ITEM-1”, “issue” : “1”, “issued” : { “date-parts” : “1997”, “2”, “1” }, “page” : “17-38”, “publisher” : “Pergamon”, “title” : “Combating micronutrient deficiencies through vegetablesu2014a neglected food frontier in Asia”, “type” : “article-journal”, “volume” : “22” }, “uris” : “http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=febdfcc7-a98a-354e-acbb-ce6ab8f6086d” } , “mendeley” : { “formattedCitation” : “(Ali and Tsou, 1997)”, “plainTextFormattedCitation” : “(Ali and Tsou, 1997)”, “previouslyFormattedCitation” : “(Ali and Tsou, 1997)” }, “properties” : { }, “schema” : “https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json” }(Ali and Tsou, 1997) and 72 % of the total vegetable yield is produced by developing countries ADDIN CSL_CITATION { “citationItems” : { “id” : “ITEM-1”, “itemData” : { “DOI” : “10.1080/19315260802164921”, “ISBN” : “1931526080216”, “ISSN” : “19315260”, “abstract” : “Developing countries contribute 72% of the total vegetable production in the world. The transplanting operation is one of the most labor intensive in vegetable production.
It is largely done by hand in India and most developing countries and incurs large investments in labor, time, and cost. This article presents the details of construction of vegetable transplanters in addition to recent advances in their development. Performance of transplanters under actual field conditions is discussed.u00a9 2008 by The Haworth Press.”, “author” : { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Kumar”, “given” : “G. V Prasanna”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” }, { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Raheman”, “given” : “H.”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” } , “container-title” : “International Journal of Vegetable Science”, “id” : “ITEM-1”, “issue” : “3”, “issued” : { “date-parts” : “2008” }, “page” : “232-255”, “title” : “Vegetable transplanters for use in developing countriesa review”, “type” : “article-journal”, “volume” : “14” }, “uris” : “http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=2255dbf4-d9f4-459f-9a6b-85b6d093bafd” } , “mendeley” : { “formattedCitation” : “(Kumar and Raheman, 2008)”, “plainTextFormattedCitation” : “(Kumar and Raheman, 2008)”, “previouslyFormattedCitation” : “(Kumar and Raheman, 2008)” }, “properties” : { }, “schema” : “https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json” }(Kumar and Raheman, 2008).China tenanted the apex position among the vegetable producers and consumers countries and shares 53% of the global vegetable yield. Due to the rapid industrial growth and pleasing non-agricultural wages during last two decades, the agriculture workers attracted towards urban and industrial areas, which caused shortage of agriculture labor and catalyst towards mechanization technology used for agriculture production ADDIN CSL_CITATION { “citationItems” : { “id” : “ITEM-1”, “itemData” : { “DOI” : “10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.05.002”, “ISBN” : “0305750X (ISSN)”, “ISSN” : “18735991”, “PMID” : “27698530”, “abstract” : “This paper aims to examine the dynamics of land transactions, machine investments, and the demand for machine services using farm panel data from China. Recently, China’s agriculture has experienced a large expansion of machine rentals and machine services provided by specialized agents, which has contributed to mechanization of agricultural production.
On the other hand, the empirical results show that an increase in non-agricultural wage rates leads to expansion of self-cultivated land size. A rise in the proportion of non-agricultural income or the migration rate also increases the size of self-cultivated land. Interestingly, however, relatively educated farm households decrease the size of self-cultivated land, which suggests that relatively less educated farmers tend to specialize in farming. The demand for machine services has also increased if agricultural wage and migration rate increased over time, especially among relatively large farms. The results on crop income also support complementarities between rented-in land and machine services (demanded), which implies that scale economies are arising in Chinese agriculture with mechanization and active land rental markets.”, “author” : { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Wang”, “given” : “Xiaobing”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” }, { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Yamauchi”, “given” : “Futoshi”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” }, { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Otsuka”, “given” : “Keijiro”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” }, { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Huang”, “given” : “Jikun”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” } , “container-title” : “World Development”, “id” : “ITEM-1”, “issued” : { “date-parts” : “2016” }, “page” : “30-45”, “publisher” : “The Authors”, “title” : “Wage Growth, Landholding, and Mechanization in Chinese Agriculture”, “type” : “article-journal”, “volume” : “86” }, “uris” : “http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=8a00ae25-0588-4ade-a852-914097bc0451” } , “mendeley” : { “formattedCitation” : “(Wang et al., 2016)”, “plainTextFormattedCitation” : “(Wang et al., 2016)”, “previouslyFormattedCitation” : “(Wang et al., 2016)” }, “properties” : { }, “schema” : “https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json” }(Wang et al., 2016). The procedural sequence of seedling transplanting is consisted on, transferred seedlings from higher density to lower density plug trays, replacement of unhealthy seedlings with healthy seedlings, filling of non-germinated boxes of plug trays and finally transplant these seedling into green house or open filed for further growth.
A large number of workers are required to transplant vegetable seedlings in the open field as well as in greenhouse. Less availability of labour for seedling transplantation during the intensive demand period and nonuniformity in seedling plantation operation, attract the researchers towards the automation technology. Application of automation technology on un-structured agriculture environment leads towards complexity ADDIN CSL_CITATION { “citationItems” : { “id” : “ITEM-1”, “itemData” : { “DOI” : “10.1016/j.biosystemseng.2016.11.004”, “ISBN” : “1537-5110”, “ISSN” : “15375110”, “abstract” : “This part of our review of the research, developments and innovation in agricultural robots for field operations, focuses on characteristics, performance measures, agricultural tasks and operations. The application of robots to a variety of field operations has been widely demonstrated.
A key feature of agricultural robots is that they must operate in unstructured environments without impairing the quality of work currently achieved. Designs, developments and evaluations of agricultural robots are diverse in terms of objectives, structures, methods, techniques, and sensors. Standardisation of terms, system-performance measures and methodologies, and adequacy of technological requirements are vital for comparing robot performance and technical progress. Factors limiting commercialisation and assimilation of agricultural autonomous robot systems are unique to each system and to each task. However, some common gaps need to be filled to suit unstructured, dynamic environments; e.g. poor detection performance, inappropriate decision-making and low action success rate.
Research and development of versatile and adaptive algorithms, integrated into multi-sensor platforms, is required. Cycle time must be reduced and production rate increased to justify economic use. Improved wholeness or integration of all sub-systems will enable sustainable performance and complete task operation. Research must focus on each of these gaps and factors that limit commercialisation of agricultural robotics. Research needs to focus on the field use of autonomous or humanu2013robot systems, the latter being a reasonable step toward fully autonomous robots. More robust, reliable information-acquisition systems, including sensor-fusion algorithms and data analysis, should be suited to the dynamic conditions of unstructured agricultural environments.”, “author” : { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Bechar”, “given” : “Avital”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” }, { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Vigneault”, “given” : “Clu00e9ment”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” } , “container-title” : “Biosystems Engineering”, “id” : “ITEM-1”, “issued” : { “date-parts” : “2017” }, “page” : “110-128”, “title” : “Agricultural robots for field operations.
Part 2: Operations and systems”, “type” : “article-journal”, “volume” : “153” }, “uris” : “http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=fe3e3d3d-ecc9-4a4c-99ce-6127c13c7976” } , “mendeley” : { “formattedCitation” : “(Bechar and Vigneault, 2017)”, “plainTextFormattedCitation” : “(Bechar and Vigneault, 2017)”, “previouslyFormattedCitation” : “(Bechar and Vigneault, 2017)” }, “properties” : { }, “schema” : “https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json” }(Bechar and Vigneault, 2017),while the production of vegetables in controlled and configurable agriculture environment with extremely recurrent tasks, motivates towards the application of automation technology in this division of agricultureADDIN CSL_CITATION { “citationItems” : { “id” : “ITEM-1”, “itemData” : { “author” : { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Simonton”, “given” : “Ward”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” } , “id” : “ITEM-1”, “issue” : “June”, “issued” : { “date-parts” : “1992” }, “page” : “231-235”, “title” : “Ward Simonton 1”, “type” : “article-journal”, “volume” : “2” }, “uris” : “http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=a76d8da8-6c33-495f-a381-22209745b7cc” } , “mendeley” : { “formattedCitation” : “(Simonton, 1992)”, “plainTextFormattedCitation” : “(Simonton, 1992)”, “previouslyFormattedCitation” : “(Simonton, 1992)” }, “properties” : { }, “schema” : “https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json” }(Simonton, 1992).
Bibliography
- CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Ali, M., Tsou, S.C.S., 1997. Combating micronutrient deficiencies through vegetables—a neglected food frontier in Asia. Food Policy 22, 17–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0306-9192(96)00029-2 Bechar, A., Vigneault, C., 2017.
- Agricultural robots for field operations. Part 2: Operations and systems. Biosyst. Eng. 153, 110–128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystemseng.2016.11.004 Kumar, G.V.P., Raheman, H., 2008.
- Vegetable transplanters for use in developing countriesa review. Int. J. Veg. Sci.
- 14, 232–255. https://doi.org/10.1080/19315260802164921 Simonton, W., 1992. Ward Simonton 1 2, 231–235. Wang, X., Yamauchi, F., Otsuka, K., Huang, J., 2016. Wage Growth, Landholding, and Mechanization in Chinese Agriculture.
- World Dev. 86, 30–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.05.002
