Download or read book Development and Evaluation of an Automated Tactical Tillage Tool to Control Weeds in Row crop Production Systems written by Grace McCormick Friday and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weed control is an integral part of a successful overall production strategy in row- cropping systems and has the potential to reduce or eliminate yield losses that negatively affect profitability. Timely and correctly selected herbicide applications are the major keys for effective weed control in a majority of instances. However, there are negative factors that contribute to ineffectiveness and weed escape issues that currently lack viable options for management. Sparsely populated late-season weeds that emerge after lay-by herbicide applications and weeds that have become tolerant and resistant to traditional herbicide chemistries are of greatest concern. Historically, these weeds would have been pulled or chopped by hand or removed by cultivation, but with current production strategies built around conservation tillage and herbicide management practices, blanket disturbance of the soil through plowing is not a viable option. There is an immediate need for site-specific weed management to address these weed escapes while minimizing soil disturbance that reduces residual herbicide efficacy and lessens moisture losses that negatively effects the growing crop.

Download or read book Design and Application of Agricultural Equipment in Tillage System written by Mustafa Ucgul and published by Mdpi AG. This book was released on 2023-04-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural productivity should increase to meet the growing food demand. Tillage is defined as the mechanical manipulation of agricultural soil, and it is an extremely vital part of crop production, particularly for seedbed preparation and weed control. Tillage operations are carried out using mechanical force, commonly with a tractor-drawn tool to achieve the cutting, inversion, pulverization, and disturbance of soil. A significant part of the energy (from fossil fuels) used in crop production is expended in tillage. This energy use results in greenhouse gas emissions. It is essential that we reduce energy use (hence, greenhouse gas emissions) to achieve sustainable farming practices and improve crop production and design new tillage tools or optimize the existing tools. Although the design and evaluation of tillage tools are generally carried out using analytical methods and field experiments, with recent technological improvements, computer technology has been used for the design and evaluation of tillage tools. Additionally, sensor technology can improve the efficiency of tillage tools. This Special Issue collated innovative papers that make a significant contribution to the design and application of agricultural equipment in tillage systems. It involved original research and review papers from different research fields, such as agricultural engineering, engineering simulation, and precision agriculture.

Download or read book Systems Development in Agricultural Mechanization with Special Reference to Soil Tillage and Weed Control written by H. P. F. Curfs and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conclusion.

Download or read book Horsedrawn Tillage Tools written by Lynn R. Miller and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lynn R. Miller's newest addition to his ambitious Work Horse Library. Hot on the heels of the tremendously successful Plows and Haying books, this volume lives up to the standard by offering an exhaustive collection of information on the art of tillage and cultivation along with over a thousand illustrations of discs, harrows, harrow carts, rollers, culti-packers, single row cultivators, straddle row cultivators, and unusual derivatives.

Download or read book Impacts of Tillage Systems Crop Sequence and Weed Control on the Development of Weed Populations and the Degradation of Herbicides written by Bernhard Streit and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Conservation Tillage for Row Crop Production written by and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hyperspectral Vision based Machine Learning for Robust Plant Recognition in Autonomous Weed Control written by Yun Zhang and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While herbicide application and mechanical cultivation remain the primary means for weed control in agricultural production, the only solution to-date for weed control within close proximity of crop plants in the seedline is hand hoeing. To reduce manual labor cost and minimize herbicide usage for organic farming, this research developed an intelligent robotic system for automated weed detection and control within the seedline. The system utilized visible and near infrared (NIR) reflectance-based features in hyperspectral images of plant foliage for real-time species recognition. This technique is less computationally intensive than the shape- and texture-based machine vision methods. For real-time, in-field applications, this technique is superior to traditional shape-based machine vision, as it does not require singulation of individual plants, and is robust to visual occlusion and less susceptible to leaf morphological variation or damage. A principle challenge of reflectance-based species recognition has been that the optical properties of plant foliage are functions of external growing conditions, and are greatly impacted by the variability in natural environment of agricultural fields. Prior studies of using visible and NIR spectroscopy for plant recognition were restricted to reflectance spectra measured on plants grown in a single season with exposure to a single environmental condition. This work, for the first time, demonstrated the potential of hyperspectral imaging technology for plant species identification under varying external factors of growing temperature, soil moisture and sunlight intensity, as well as over three multiple seasons of natural field environment. This work also developed adaptive learning techniques that mitigated environmental effects and provided solutions to robust plant recognition across the variation in the studied single conditions and seasons. Finally, the machine vision system was coupled with a thermal micro-dosing application system and validated under outdoor conditions for real-time automated weed control with heated food-grade oil. This research provided a complete solution to automated weed control in row crops using machine vision reflectance-based plant recognition. The technical results of this research are summarized as below: Multispectral Bayesian classifiers were developed for distinguishing tomatoes among black nightshade and pigweed. The effects of variation in the three single environmental factors of temperature, soil moisture, and solar irradiance, on spectroscopy-based plant recognition demonstrated that (i) the optimum performance, ranging from 88.2% to 95.3%, occurred when the models were applied in same environmental conditions as represented in training; (ii) increasing the deviation of the validation conditions from the calibration conditions degraded the performance to 62.5-81.7%; (iii) environmental stress made the plant species more distinguishable and slightly improved the overall accuracy by 1.3-6.9% for same condition applications; (iv) the Bayesian classifiers optimized for the normal conditions demonstrated more robust plant recognition over environmental variations. An environmentally-adaptive machine learning algorithm was developed for automatic site-specific recalibration of a Bayesian classifier in a dynamic environment. Validation performance of the classifier demonstrated that site-specific recalibration can be implemented by establishing the models exclusively with a fraction of new data (approximately 30 to 80 plants) without adverse impact due to ignoring the old data originally used to train the model. This method alleviated the bias produced by single-condition calibration and, overall, it improved the classification rates to 90.4-94.5% across variation in the three studied environmental factors. Global calibration was another approach investigated to improve robustness of the Bayesian classifiers to varying environmental conditions of the three studied factors. The overall classification rates of global classifiers ranged from 90.0% to 93.0% and the performance stability was also improved. Global calibration was recommended as it was able to provide robust classification performances across variation in the three studied environmental factors and was comparable to the optimal results obtained when the single-condition models were cross-validated on their training conditions. However, global calibration was not superior when used to discriminate tomatoes among weeds over three seasons (2005, 2006 and 2008), in which the plants were grown in a natural agricultural field environment. To improve the seasonal stability of plant recognition, a multiclassifier system was developed by integrating expert knowledge from historical data that most closely matched the new field environment. This method improved the performance of the global model by 10.5% (from 85.0% to over 95.5%) and provided an innovative direction for achieving robust plant recognition over the variation in field environment of multiple seasons. In an outdoor test of the complete weed control system, the hyperspectral vision system correctly mapped, by species, 91.0% of plant canopy and the thermal micro-dosing system then delivered preheated (160°C) food-grade oil exclusively to the targeted weed foliage. Fifteen days post application, the system successfully controlled 95.8% of black nightshade and 93.8% of pigweed; while only 2.4% of tomato was damaged to the extent of non-viability due to inadvertent spray.

Download or read book Evaluation of performance of selected tillage tines regarding quality of work written by Amer Khalid Ahmed Al-Neama and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-06-22 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines and evaluates the performance of four standard chisel plough tines: heavy duty, double heart, double heart with wings and duck foot, which were connected with a rigid shank. Experiments were conducted in a soil bin filled with sandy loamy soil, and the experimental factors included varying operation conditions (speed and depth) and their dependency upon a draft force and their components (horizontal and vertical force), specific force (force per unit area), specific power (power per unit area), soil loosening percentage (above and below the original soil surface) and soil profile parameters (e.g. furrow height, furrow width, ridge height, area of ridge and furrow etc.). The evaluation involved developing regression equations based on Glancey and Upadhyaya’s model by adding new terms related to the tine geometric parameters or by adding a dummy term variable. These two techniques made up the general study parameters and had the same trend effect on operation conditions to compare between tines. Lab results such as force components and the width of furrow were verified in a field test. Furthermore, a model to predict the draft force by using principles of soil mechanics and soil profile evaluation was designed.

Download or read book Development of a Test Stand for the Evaluation of Row Crop Planter Automatic Downforce Systems and the Evaluation of a Row Crop Planter Electronic Drive Singulation Seed Meter written by Ryan Scott Strasser and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the technology employed on precision row-crop planters has rapidly advanced. These new technologies include automatic downforce control systems and electronic drive singulation seed meters. These new technologies offer producers higher productivity through high speed planting and increased yield potentials through accurate seed spacing and placement. To begin to understand the benefits and performance of these new technologies, research must be conducted that specifically targets these new systems. With this research, producers would be able to better select equipment for their operation and have a deeper understanding of proper system operation and settings. A test stand, of a scissor-lift type design, was developed to evaluate row crop planter automatic downforce systems. Evaluation of a planter's automatic downforce system is important for understanding the planter's capability of maintaining target seeding depth throughout varying field conditions. The test stand consists of a horizontal platform that can raise and lower to simulate terrain changes as well as a mechanism to load the planter row unit's opening discs to simulate varying soil texture. The vertical height of the test stand and the disc load can be varied in real-time based on utilizing real-world scenarios under simulated conditions to evaluate downforce system response. The stand incorporated several sensors to obtain the overall applied downforce, applied disc load, applied gauge wheel load, and hydraulic pressure. The test stand's capabilities were evaluated and found to be satisfactory for planter downforce system testing. The test stand was then used to evaluate a commercial automatic downforce system when operating under simulated field conditions. Field data was used to create simulations representing soil type changes, planter operating speed changes, and extreme conditions such as a hard, packed clay or rocky soil type. It was found that the evaluated downforce system was able to maintain target gauge wheel load to within ±223 N for at least 94% of the time during all simulations. This would suggest that the planter would be able to maintain target seeding depth for at least 94% of field operations. Another key aspect for precision agricultural planters is to achieve accurate seed spacing at varying speeds. An electronic drive singulation seed metering system was evaluated to gather the meter's effectiveness for high speed planting during straight and contour farming mode using simulated field conditions. The simulated conditions were used to gather the meter's response when encountering high planting speeds, accelerations, decelerations, point-rows, and contours. These meters were found to be highly accurate, with less than 1.5% error in target seed meter speed during all simulated conditions. The meters were also found to have a response time that was always 0.34 seconds or less for all simulated conditions.

Download or read book Tillage Systems written by David Hest and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book An Evaluation of Various Tillage Systems for Wheat written by James M. Davidson and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Increased Row Crop Production with a Reduced Tillage System written by L.E. Clark and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Integrated Mechanical Weed Management in High Residue Cropping Systems written by Ryan Timothy Bates and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The objective of this research was to evaluate the potential of select mechanical tillage implements and reduced herbicide inputs in integrated high-residue corn and soybean systems. This integrated approach attempted to reduce the negative effects from herbicides and intense inversion tillage, while providing effective economical weed control. Treatments examined a vertical coulter, a rotary harrow, a high-residue rotary hoe, and a high-residue row cultivator in combination with soil-applied broadcast, soil-applied banded, or post-emergence herbicides. Conventional no-till using herbicides and a weedy check were included for comparison and the weed seed bank was supplemented to help ensure an effective assessment. Evaluation parameters included crop population, weed density, end of season weed biomass, surface residue, grain yield, and costs. Weed density, crop, and production year influenced the efficacy of the mechanical implements. Treatments including herbicides reduced weed density and weed biomass compared to treatments relying on mechanical control alone. The vertical coulter and rotary harrow controlled weeds similar to a herbicide burndown treatment in corn, while with the later planting date of soybean, this treatment was not as effective as a burndown herbicide. While the rotary hoe had a minimal impact on surface residue, weed densities were higher than with the soil-applied broadcast herbicide treatments. In addition, the rotary hoe did not increase weed control in banded herbicide treatments. Treatments that included banded herbicide tended to have better weed control than treatments that relied strictly on mechanical implements, but lower weed control than broadcast herbicides. Of the mechanical tools tested, the high residue cultivator was the most effective in reducing weed density and weed biomass, while maintaining crop yield. The greater reliance on mechanical implements reduced weed control cost, but tended to have higher breakeven prices due to lower yields. Overall, mechanical tillage implements alone did not provide adequate weed control, while integration with reduced herbicide inputs maintained acceptable weed control and competitive crop yields.

Download or read book Ecological Management of Agricultural Weeds written by Matt Liebman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-07-19 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents principles and practices for ecologically based weed management in a wide range of temperate and tropical farming systems. Special attention is given to the evolutionary challenges that weeds pose and the roles that farmers can play in the development of new weed-management strategies.

Download or read book Alternatives for Reducing Tillage in an Organic Grain silage Production System written by Rebecca Champagne and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many organic farmers would like to reduce tillage to aid with soil conservation and decrease labor and fuel costs. However, tillage is still necessary for weed control and incorporation of nutrient amendments. One strategy for reducing tillage revolves around cover crop-based, organic rotational no-till, which employs cover crop mulches and no-till cash crop planting. Primary tillage occurs in the fall at cover crop establishment, and in-season weed control relies on suppression by the cover crop mulch along with supplemental inter-row cultivation. We initiated a cropping systems experiment to study several strategies for reducing tillage frequency and intensity within an organic grain/silage rotation in the Mid-Atlantic. Four cropping systems (S1-S4) were examined before soybean and corn crops. For soybean, either a cover crop mixture interseeded into corn harvested for grain or fall sown cereal rye after corn silage and before soybean was terminated via tillage or roller-crimper, respectively. Soybean were either seeded into the tilled cover crop mixture (S2 and S4) or no-till planted into the cereal rye mulch (S1 and S3). Cover crops preceding corn included two systems of hairy vetch/triticale sown after spelt harvest (S1 and S2) and primary tillage, and two systems of red clover/timothy frost-seeded into spelt in late winter (S3 and S4). One hairy vetch system was terminated via roller-crimping (S1), while the other three systems relied on spring tillage to incorporate the cover crop and livestock manure. One hairy vetch and red clover system were grown for corn silage (S1 and S3), while the other two were harvested as grain corn. The results showed that for the soybean crop, while the interseeded mix generally produced around 2,000 kg ha-1 biomass, cereal rye typically produced about 5,000 kg ha-1, with upwards of 8,000 kg ha-1. Weed suppression varied from year to year based on environmental conditions which sometimes hindered in-season cultivation. Weed control was good and subsequent biomass production was as low as 95 kg ha-1 in 2015, but reached upwards of 2,000 kg ha-1 in 2016, when weather conditions prevented effective mechanical weed control. Despite differences in both soybean stand and weed biomass, yields were comparable between the no-till and tilled soybean systems, ranging from 1,800-3,000 kg ha-1 across years. For the corn crop, red clover/timothy produced 3,300-4,500 kg ha-1 cover crop biomass, while hairy vetch/triticale was more variable, producing 3,600-7,500 kg ha-1 biomass over the three years. Although weed biomass at the time of corn planting was below 78 kg ha-1, in-season weed control varied by both treatment and year depending on the effectiveness of in-season cultivation. Late-summer weed biomass levels ranged from 300 kg ha-1 up to 2,700 kg ha-1, with less effective weed control resulting when environmental conditions prevented timely blind tillage and inter-row cultivation. Corn grain yields were not different from year to year; however, corn silage yields were different between systems every year likely due to later planted corn and a reduced nutrient supply. Finally, the weed seedbanks were measured to the plow layer each March preceding the cash crop growing season. Our results show that poor in-season weed control greatly drives the density of the weed seedbank, with seeds m-2 increasing after a droughty 2016 which hindered in-season cultivation efforts. Foxtail species dominated the seedbank in all three cash crops (corn, soybean, spelt), comprising at least 40% of the germinable seedbank. Other prevalent species included purslane speedwell, yellow woodsorrel, Eastern black nightshade, common lambsquarters, and redroot pigweed, among others. Seedbank trends showed that seed density increased after the corn and soybean phases, but decreased after the spelt phase. No-till corn and soybean systems tended to have lower seed density relative to tilled systems, but this was dependent on successful in-season weed control. Our results also show that interseeding a cover crop in corn can help reduce returns to the seedbank, with seed density being lower than corn systems which did not employ interseeding.

Download or read book Tillage and Seeding Practices and Machines for Crop Production in Semiarid Areas written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Mechanical Weed Control in Conservation Tillage written by Suzanne Kopan and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: