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Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Cotton is one of the most important strategic materials and cash crops. The planting area and output of cotton have been ranked among the top in the world. Among them, cotton planting has been one of the basic links in the whole process during production. The mechanization of cotton planting has been the key bottleneck to restricting the cotton industry at present. The reason can be that the mechanical planting of cotton can be utilized to improve the quality and efficiency of cotton production, and then enhance the competitive advantage of cotton production, which is directly related to the sustainable development of the national cotton industry. The cotton mechanization planting can be divided into the cotton live broadcast and transplanted seedlings. Most previous efforts were focused on the optimization of equipment structure, flow field simulation, and operation performance tests. The cotton planting mechanization technology and equipment system have begun to take shape during this time. Cotton planting mechanization should follow the development direction of precision agriculture for the promising goal of high yield, quality, and efficiency, indicating a major practical demand in the cotton industry. The development mode of the cotton industry can be changed to enhance the quality and efficiency, as well as the competitiveness of the international market. It is also the research focus of the whole process mechanization and scale of the cotton industry. In this review, the current situation and characteristics of cotton planting were summarized on the key technologies and equipment in China. There was a trend of westward expansion of the cotton area in the Yangtze River basin and the Yellow River basin, whereas, the northwest inland cotton area gradually served as the main body of cotton planting in China. Especially, the sowing area of cotton in Xinjiang increased the fastest, while the proportion of cotton gradually increased, and the cotton in Xinjiang was the backbone of national cotton production for the new main producing area. Two technologies of cotton planting mechanization were proposed to emphatically analyze the research status and trends during cotton seedling cultivation, transplanting, and cotton live streaming. Furthermore, the opportunities and challenges were summarized to combine with the background of precision agriculture and the production requirements of the cotton industry. The future research directions and suggestions were addressed to optimize the layout of cotton-producing areas, in order to improve the competitiveness of cotton production efficiency under the planting structure at a reasonable level. Moreover, the independent innovation ability and technology reserve can be expected to strengthen the independent research and development of the cotton industry. A scientific and reasonable system can be formed to promote the deep integration of agricultural machinery, agronomy, and credit under mechanized cotton seeding. Therefore, the allocation of resources can be optimized to comprehensively promote the green, high-quality, and sustainable development of cotton production. The finding can provide a strong reference for cotton planting mechanization and equipment innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has been known as the largest producer of forest and fruit in the world, the same as grain and vegetables. The forestry and fruit industry can gradually dominate the ecological and economic benefits for better living. Therefore, a timely, non-destructive and efficient harvesting of mature fruits has greatly contributed to the subsequent fruit storage, transportation, processing, and sales. Mechanical harvesting has also been one of the most promising operations in the whole process of fruit production. More importantly, fruit mechanical harvesting has been one of the important ways for the forest fruit industry to transform the development mode for cost saving, high efficiency, and competitiveness in the international market. An automatic, intelligent, and unmanned harvesting of forest fruits can be preferred for the better performance of mechanical fruit harvesting, together with the high efficiency and low-loss picking in technical focus. In this review, the research progress was summarized on the mechanical harvesting of forest fruits in recent years, in terms of fruit planting and distribution in China. The planting forms mainly included the small step, steep slope, traditional, gentle slope, high ridge, and wide row dense planting. The reasons were clarified for the bottleneck of mechanical harvesting in the development of the forest fruit industry. The mechanical harvesting of forest fruit was systematically divided into one-time combined fruit picking, and fruit picking after vibration harvesting. Among them, the one-time combined fruit picking was divided into the pneumatic vibration, mechanical vibration (i.e. shaking, and impact type), orchard picking platform, and robot picking, according to the different operation modes of the picking parts. By contrast, the fruit picking after vibration harvesting was divided into the mechanical and pneumatic types, according to the different picking power modes. Then, the research status and development trends were elaborated to combine with the development requirements and application scenarios of the forest fruit industry. Four challenges were reviewed for the mechanical harvesting of forest fruit in China, including the complex working environment, the low level of appropriate mechanization, the limited basic research, and the lacking of Research and Development (R&D) talents. Accordingly, some recommendations were proposed for the mechanized harvesting of forest fruit. National support and R&D investment were the first concern to strengthen the cooperation between agricultural machinery and agronomy, thus promoting the mechanization level of the forest fruit industry. A production-university-research technical personnel training system was highly required to conquer the state-of-the-art technologies in the facilities and equipment during harvesting. It is very necessary to promote the deep integration of agricultural machinery and agronomy under the mode of mechanical harvesting of fruits and vegetables. The main focus can be made to explore the new technical mode with the planting agronomy for the mechanical harvesting of fruits and vegetables. Various agricultural requirements can be comprehensively considered to evaluate the reasonable technical system for better mechanical fruit harvesting with high performance, efficiency, and reliability. In a word, the mechanized operation of forest fruit can be widely expected to serve as the most effective way for cost saving, low labor intensity, but high efficiency during [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conveying technology of agricultural materials has been one of the most important bottlenecks to restricting the intelligent application of farms. In general, the conveying equipment can be used to transport the materials from the feeder to the receiver. It is a high demand for the long battery life of the receiver for efficient and continuous conveying in the long distance. An automation conveying technology of agricultural materials can mainly cover all production links of farming, management, and harvesting in the complex system engineering. In this study, the current automation conveying technologies were systematically reviewed to divide into the following four categories, according to the material characteristics and conveying: automatic conveying technology of solid seedling fertilizer, liquid water medicine fuel automatic filling, harvest automatic collection, and harvest automatic unloading technology. A clear development trend was also proposed for the intelligent transportation of agricultural materials, with the development of technologies, such as 3S (Remote Sensing, Global Position System, GPS, and Geographic Information System, GIS), sensing and detection, as well as the automatic control and information processing. The final goal was to optimize the coordination of the fleet for the complete point-to-point zero inventory distribution, further realize the intelligent transportation of agricultural materials. Four stages of materials transportation usually included the meeting, docking, conveying, and separating. The main challenges were focused on the precise docking of the feeder/receiver, as well as the highly efficient, stable, and flexible conveying of materials. Furthermore, the research progress was summarized for three key technologies of intelligent material conveying, including autonomous positioning and navigation, real-time monitoring of material flow, and real-time communication of fleets. Among them, the autonomous positioning and navigation technology can be used to accurately control the position and path between the feeder/receiver, in order to ensure the precise meeting and docking of the feeder/receiver for better intelligent material transportation. The sensors can be widely used to real-time monitor the material balance in the granary of the feeder/receiver for the highly efficient, stable, and flexible transportation of materials in the real-time monitoring technologies of material flow. Technical support can also be provided to realize intelligent material transportation in the real-time communication technology of the machine group. The communication task between the feeder and the feeder can be completed by the transmission of information and data between the machine and the ground control station, all of which can then be collected, transmitted, and processed efficiently in real time. The information and data between the feeder/receiver can be used for a rapid response to the actual situation. Therefore, it is very necessary to combine the technical requirements and application scenarios of farm intelligence. The entire production can be linked to the agricultural material transportation system, including the farmland material demand decision-making technology using spatiotemporal data, the agricultural machinery material abundance prediction using the farmland digital model and variable operation prescriptions, and various material vehicles. A prediction was given for the trend of multi-machine collaborative material distribution in the intelligent farm operation, particularly from the perspective of dynamic optimization of machine distribution path. Therefore, the agricultural material conveying technology can be expected to be more intelligent, user-friendly, and precise in the future. Anyway, intelligent farms can greatly contribute to optimizing agricultural production and resource allocation in sustainable agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Potato is the fourth staple food product in China, and Chinese potato planting area of 6.7 million hm2 ranks first worldwide in 2013. However, the mechanized potato seeding percentage in China is only 23%, which is limited by poor performance of potato planter. Cup-chain metering device is the most commonly used for potato planting, whereas it is troubled with high miss-seeding and re-seeding problems. To solve these problems, the simulation model of potato planter is firstly built, and this model is used to analyze potato seed movement during metering process; then a new type of metering device with double-deck seed tank is designed, and finally the parameters of seeding speed, seed cup diameter and seed filling height are optimized. 1) Potato planter simulation: Potato cup-chain metering planter is simulated based on the software of EDEM (enhanced discrete element method). On the one hand, Hertz-Mindlin non-sliding contact model between 2 seeds is built with the recovery coefficient of 0.3, static friction coefficient of 0.56 and dynamic friction coefficient of 0.15; on the other hand, the model between seed and seeder is built with the recovery coefficient of 0.52, static friction coefficient of 0.5 and dynamic friction coefficient of 0.1. 2) Potato seed movement analysis: During the metering process, movement is originated from only a small part of seeds instead of most of them that are immobile. The small part of moving seeds determine the seed charging performance. The major movement area of potato seed is around the chain presenting the shape of inverted cone, which contains 3 areas of high-efficiency charging area, low-efficiency charging area and no seed area. The seed charging performance is directly affected by the volume of high-efficiency charging area and the seed mobility. 3) Seed planter design: Aiming to enlarge high-efficiency charging area and enhance seed mobility, planter with double-deck seed tank is designed, which doubles the volume of high-efficiency charging area and enhance seed mobility. A planter test platform with double-deck seed tank is modified from a 1 220 type potato planter provided by Zhongji Meno Polytron Technology. 4) Performance evaluation and parameter optimization: 2 indicators are employed to evaluate the planter performance, including miss-seeding percentage and re-seeding percentage. The influence of seeding speed, seed cup diameter and seed filling height in the seed tank on seed charging performance is studied. Regression equation and multi-objective optimization method are employed for parameter optimization. In the Chinese national standard for potato planter, miss-seeding percentage is no more than 10% and re-seeding percentage is no more than 20%, the designed planter can operate at the seeding speed of 0.96 m/s to satisfy this national standard. To balance the planting performance, including miss-seeding percentage and re-seeding percentage, and planting efficiency of seeding speed, the parameters of seeding speed, seed cup diameter and seed filling height in the seed tank are optimized as 0.67 m/s, 48.6 mm and 0.28 m, respectively, showing the miss-seeding percentage of 3.8% and re-seeding percentage of 8.8%. This paper demonstrates the potential for a high-performance cup-chain metering device with double-deck seed tank for potato planting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]