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Panax notoginseng belongs to the long stemmed crop, and the harvesting of its stems and leaves is one of the important processes. Aming at the problems of high labor intensity and lack of mature harvesting equipment, based on the agronomic requirements of Panax notoginseng cultivation and the mechanical parameters of Panax notoginseng stems, a harvesting device for Panax notoginseng stems and leaves under the forest was designed, which mainly consisted of a control box, a frame, and a leaf cutting device. The overall size, cutting stroke, forward speed and cutting pair width of the device were determined, and the device structure was compacted, which met the requirement of harvesting. The design of key structural parameters for reciprocating cutters mainly included moving blade, fixed blade, crank connecting rod mechanism, blade protector, etc. The reciprocating cutter could meet the technical requirements while didn't damage seedlings and miss cutting Panax notoginseng stems and leaves. A kinematic analysis was conducted on the cutter, and it was determined that the cutting speed was 0.4~0.8 m·s-1, which ensured the cutting effect while also ensuring the stability and safety of the entire machine. A rigid flexible coupling simulation model of Panax notoginseng stem and cutting blade was constructed, and cutting blade simulation analysis was carried out with the maximum cutting force as evaluation index. Based on three factors and three levels test results, it was found that the factors affecting cutting from large to small were cutting angle, cutting speed and tool configuration. The reduction effect of blade shape on Panax notoginseng stem cutting force was determined, with triangular blade>trapezoidal blade>rectangular blade, The optimal parameter combination for the stem cutting blade of Panax notoginseng was cutting angle of 90.5°, triangular blade shape, and cutting speed of 0.52 m·s-1. At this condition, the maximum cutting force was 7.46 N, which met cutting requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of haymaking is to dry forage adequately to inhibit the growth of undesirable microbes and halt residual plant enzymatic activity that causes nutrient losses. During the field and storage phases of haymaking, the environment, management practices, and other factors influence the extent of dry matter losses. This review discusses these factors and the strategies that have been developed to mitigate nutrient losses. A major emphasis was placed on hay microbiome dynamics, as it has been scarcely studied despite its importance on nutrient losses during storage and harvest, especially under humid conditions. The effects of cutting height, mower type, and swath manipulation on soil contamination were discussed. Also, the impact of environmental conditions and swath manipulation on wilting time was analysed for humid and arid conditions. Special attention was given to design improvements in harvesting equipment to reduce wilting time and field losses. Furthermore, we assessed the nutrient losses during storage caused by microbial and residual plant enzymatic activity resulting from excessive moisture at baling or re‐introduced moisture during storage. The spoilage extent during storage depends on bale moisture, size, density, shape, wrapping, forage type, and storage facilities. A Venn diagram analysis showed that each phase of haymaking process has a unique microbiome and that certain fungal and bacterial genera could be shared across more than one hay production phase. To take corrective actions, hay producers need to be aware of the increased susceptibility to nutrient losses associated with particular field and storage practices, environmental conditions, and forage types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safflower is one of the most important cash crops in China. Its production area is concentrated in Xinjiang, Gansu and Ningxia. However, the harvesting of safflower relies mainly on manual labour at present. Particularly, the operating environment is easily affected by weather factors. Fortunately, intelligent harvesting can be expected to improve the efficiency of safflower harvesting with labour cost savings. Previous research often focused on pneumatic, pulling, combing, and cutting harvesting. However, it is still required for manual work during harvesting. The autonomous operation can be realized by combining target detection and navigation in the harvesting robots. However, the complex working environment in the field has limited the accurate recognition and localization in the harvesting process. This study aims to promote the performance of safflower recognition under the complex environment in the field during intelligent harvesting. A lightweight safflower recognition was also proposed using an improved YOLOv8n. The computational resources of the device were then deployed to the model on the mobile for detection. A dataset of 2309 images was created to categorize into two classes: picked and no picked. The safflower blooming was categorized into four stages, namely the bud, first flowering, prime bloom, and septum stage. The prime bloom stage was the best picking time in the most economically beneficial period of safflower. Therefore, the safflower only in the prime bloom stage was picked rather than the bud, first flowering, and septum stage. The improvement procedures were as follows. Firstly, the Vanillanet lightweight network structure was applied to substitute for the Backbone of YOLOv8n, in order to reduce the complex structure of the model. Secondly, the large separable kernel attention (LSKA) module was introduced into the Neck, in order to reduce the amount of storage and computational resource consumption. Thirdly, The YOLOv8n's loss function was revised from the center intersection of union (CIoU) to the wise intersection of union (WIoU), in order to improve the overall performance of the detector. Finally, the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) was chosen to train the model for robustness. The experimental results showed that the frames per second (FPS) of the improved lightweight model increased by 7.41%, while the weight file was only 50.17% of the original one. The precision (P) and the mean average precision (mAP) values reached 93.10% and 96.40%, respectively. Furthermore, the FPS was improved by 25.93% and 19.76%, the weight file was reduced by 21.90% and 25.86%, respectively, compared with the YOLOv5s and YOLOv7-tiny models. Meanwhile, better robustness was achieved in the improved model. The Jetson Orin NX flatform was then selected to deploy for testing. The single-image detection time of YOLOv8n and YOLOv8n-VLWS was 0.38s and 0.27s, which was 28.95% shorter than the original model. The high precision and lightweight of real-time detection was realized for the safflower in the field. The findings can provide the technical support to develop intelligent harvesting equipment for safflower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which addressed the critical need for engineering properties essential in the design of agricultural machinery related to coriander cultivation like sowing machines, machinery related to coriander plant, and post-harvesting equipment. Topics include frictional properties of selected coriander treatments, measurement of cutting resistance of coriander, and mechanical properties of the treatments.

Pineapple harvesting is a key step in pineapple field production. At present, pineapple fruits are usually picked manually. With decreasing labor resources and increasing production costs, machines have been used instead of manual picking approaches in the modern pineapple industry. This paper briefly describes the basic situation of pineapple planting worldwide. Based on the degree of automation of mechanized pineapple harvesting equipment, the main structural forms, core technologies, and operation modes of semi-automatic, automatic, and intelligent pineapple harvesting equipment are summarized. The research status and existing problems of key pineapple fruit picking robots, such as fruit recognition, maturity classification, positioning, and separation of pineapple fruits, are analyzed. Considering the problems of pineapple harvesting equipment, such as difficulty entering the ground, low harvesting efficiency, low picking success rate, and fruit damage, innovative future research directions for mechanized pineapple harvesting technology are proposed, such as combining agricultural machinery and agronomical principles, integrating mechanized, automated, and intelligent technology, and developing modular designs and generalized approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the harvesting process, rigid materials are prone to causing damage to the cotton stalks, which will increase the risk of stalk breakage. A cotton stalk pulling component that blends stiff and flexible materials was devised to lower the breaking rate. The cotton stalk pulling component was made up of rollers and flexible belts that pull the stalks using clamping force and the forward speed of the tractor. The influence of various factors in the equipment on the harvesting effect of cotton stalks were analyzed through response surface experiments, and a multiple quadratic regression response surface model with missing pulling rate and breakage rate as response values was established. The significant of influencing factors on the breaking rate of cotton stalks are in a descending order as: the angle of cotton stalk pulling, tractor's forward speed, and the clamping speed of the cotton stalk component. The working parameters of the wheel-belt type cotton stalk pulling machine have been optimized using the response surface combination experimental method, and the optimal parameter combination was obtained as: tractor forward speed of 4.5 km/h, cotton stalk pulling angle of 60°, and clamping speed of the cotton stalk pulling component of 349 r/min. The results of validation experiments showed that the missing pulling rate of cotton stalks was 5.06% and the breakage rate was 13.12%, indicating a good harvesting effect of the cotton stalks. The model was reasonable and the performance parameters could meet the relevant inspection requirements. The results can provide a reference for further research on the technology of flexible cotton stalk pulling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To solve the problem of low efficiency of manual harvesting of green soybeans and lack of adaptable harvesters, in this study, a brushing-type green soybean harvester was designed. The comb-brushing type green soybean pod harvesting equipment is composed of a front-mounted separation drum, a full-width material delivery mechanism, a negative pressure cleaning system, and a stalk-pod separation system. Based on the operation requirements of the front-mounted brushing-type detachment drum, the drum parameters, parameters of comb arrangement, and structural parameters of the comb, the force analysis in detachment was performed. By taking the pod detachment rate and damage rate as the response indexes, the rotational speed of the drum, the travel speed of the device, and teeth distance as influencing factors, a three-factor five-level orthogonal rotary combination test was carried out by the software Design-Expert. By establishing mathematical regression models for various influencing factors and evaluation indicators, conducting variance analysis and significance analysis on the response indicators of each factor, the optimal parameters were obtained at a rotational speed of teeth of 397.36 rpm/min, minimum axial teeth distance of 4.8 mm and travel speed of the device of 0.5 m/s. Field test results showed that, under the optimal parameter combination, the pod detachment rate was 94%, the damage rate was 3.04%, the harvesting efficiency was greater than 0.187 hm2/h, and impurity content was less than 7.8%, all of which met the design and usage requirements. The research results can provide a reference for the design of soybean harvesters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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As an important oil crop in China and the world, the harvesting problem of Camellia oleifera has attracted much attention. Research is needed on mechanical characteristics of harvesting equipment. Explicit dynamics was used to establish a finite element model under a simulated load response to the branch-pedicel-fruit system of C. oleifera to predict the fracture process at the pedicel junction. The separation mechanism of C. oleifera fruit was determined by measuring the constitutive parameters of fruit branches and pedicels and conducting separation experiments and explicit dynamics simulations on different hanging fruits. The maximum stress at the fruit pedicel was 1.14 MPa, and the goodness of fit between the simulation and experiment was approximately 89.5%, indicating that the branch-pedicel-fruit finite element model could accurately reflect the fruit shedding process and that the pedicel diameter was correlated positively with the separation force. This study provides technical parameters for the optimized design of existing C. oleifera harvesting equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fritilariae ussuriensis maxim can be used as a medicine with little difficulty in its planting, but owing to its fragile characteristics, Fritilariae ussuriensis maxim is mainly collected by manual excavation. In order to solve the problems of the low working efficiency and poor environmental adaptability of the harvesting equipment of Fritilariae ussuriensis maxim, this paper designs a new excavation device, which can effectively reduce the operation resistance and improve the excavation efficiency of Fritilariae ussuriensis maxim. In this paper, the finite element method and discrete element method are used to simulate and analyze the operation performance of the excavation device. Combined with the orthogonal test and single factor test, the factors affecting the operating performance of the excavating device were explored. The excavating experimental platform was designed and built, and the simulation results were verified with experimental excavation data. This study shows that the operating speed, shovel face inclination angle, and digging depth had significant effects on the digging resistance of the shovel body, with the shovel face inclination angle having the highest influencing factor and the operating speed having the lowest influencing factor. Combined with the orthogonal test analysis and response surface design, the optimal operating parameters of the shovel body are: operating speed 0.5 m/s, shovel face inclination angle 25°, and excavation depth 120 mm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a globalized market, forest management plans play an important role in the sustainability of forest enterprises. Several optimization processes have therefore been developed to support decision-making in forestry operations. However, important issues remain to be addressed, such as planning the allocation of harvesting areas and scheduling the harvesting teams that are contracted for these purposes. Harvesting schedules include different time scales and natural constraints, so that finding optimal or even good quality ones constitutes a highly complex combinatorial optimization problem. Efficient planning of harvesting operations can significantly reduce the costs associated with logistics and improve the economic performance of companies in the sector. In Uruguay, almost 75% of total forest harvesting operations for pulp production are carried out by contractor companies, so they are an important player in the supply chain. This study aims to optimize the allocation and routing of the harvesting equipment of forest contractors, which must be located at the sites to be harvested during the year. Numerical experiments over a case study based on realistic data have shown that realistic-sized instances can be resolved by standard mathematical programming software in a reasonable time. The mathematical programming model can also be useful to evaluate potential gains in joint planning by several contractors with respect to the costs incurred by separate planning; as illustrated also with numerical examples over the same case study. This model can be used to support annual forest harvest scheduling and equipment allocation for corporate contractors, leading to better quality plans and improvement opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Best-quality seeds of high-yielding commercial cultivars are the foundation of the future harvest in all crops. Significant seed damage arises from seed injury during harvesting and tillage. With the use of machinery in all harvesting and processing stages, the issue of seed injury has become severe. Therefore, the presented research sought to determine commercial soybean seeds' properties and seeding qualities, depending on the cultivar properties and the influence of machinery used in harvesting. The identified degree of soybean seed injury of commercial soybean cultivars depends on the growing strength after harvesting with drum threshing combined with the harvesting equipment's influence. Based on biological characteristics, the soybean cultivars differed significantly in the number of damaged seeds during harvest using the drum thresher type 'Sampo SR 2035'. However, the soybean cultivar Birlik KV showed the minimum seed damage (49.5%), whereas the cultivar Zhansaya had the most seed injuries (83.0%). According to laboratory tests, high intensity of initial growth resulted in seeds of soybean cultivars Birlik KV (86.0%), followed by Perizat (82.0%), and Lastochka (78.0%). Seeds of the soybean cultivars Ivushka and Zhansaya had the lowest growth strength (52.0%-60.0%). The most injury-prone soybean cultivar Zhansaya exhibited 21.3% crushed and inured seeds when their threshing used a drum thresher, but when threshed with a rotary thresher, the number of damaged seeds decreased to 2.9%. For injury-resistant soybean cultivar Lastochka, the harvester Sampo SR 2035 produced 12.4% injured seeds, and the harvester 'John Deere' generated 2.2% crushed seeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daylily is one of the most favored crops with the great nutritional and economic value. Manual harvesting cannot fully meet the large-scale production at present, due to the inefficient and costly tasks. Mechanized picking can be expected for the large-scale development of daylily industry. However, it is still lacking on the suitable machinery and equipment for the large-scale automated harvesting, due to the complex environments, such as mutual shielding of daylily, interference of weeds, and changes in lighting. It is a high demand for the target identification of daylily under the complex environment for the intelligent harvesting in an automatic harvesting robot. In this study, an improved YOLOv7-MOCA model was established to identify the daylily under the complex environment. The image data of daylily samples were collected from the real harvesting scene in daylily farms. A daylily dataset was established with 12 000 sample images, including 2 000 raw sample image data of single-target, multi-target and occlusion type in sunny and cloudy weather, and 10 000 image data processed by mirroring, brightness transformation, Gaussian filtering, and Gaussian noise processing. Sample images was then enhanced for the better generalization ability of image training models. The daylily dataset in the experiment was divided into a training set, a test set and a validation set, with 7 200, 2 400, and 2 400 images, respectively. The training and identification experiments were then performed on the daylily dataset. The detection effectiveness was compared among the three classical object detection models YOLOv7(You Only Look Once), Faster R-CNN (Fast Region-based Convolutional Network), and SSD (Single Shot MultiBox Detector). The results show that the comprehensive performance of YOLOv7 was better than those of the other two models. As such, an object identification model (YOLOv7-MOCA) was proposed to recognize the daylily in complex environment using YOLOv7. Firstly, a lightweight network model was constructed using MobileOne network as the backbone feature extraction network. Deep convolution was used to replace the ordinary convolution in MobileOne for the less cost of network computing that caused by feature extraction and object detection. The feature extraction efficiency and model detection speed of the model backbone network were compared with the replacement of two mainstream lightweight neural networks. Secondly, the Coordinate Attention (CoordAtt) attention mechanism was integrated in the neck network, in order to improve the receptive field of the model before the convolution operation. The mechanism was enhanced the attention of the model in the characteristics of small target samples of daylily. The comprehensive performance of intelligent identification was achieved in the real-time detection effectiveness of daylily samples. Finally, a YOLOv7-MOCA lightweight daylily fast identification model was designed by ablation test. The MobileOne was used as the backbone network, whereas, a neck network was utilized the attention mechanism of CoordAtt. The experimental results showed that the model YOLOv7-MOCA detection accuracy reached 96.1% with the recall rate of 96.6% and F1 coefficient of 0.96. The model weight was 10MB, whereas, 58 frames per second was used to transmit. Compared with the YOLOv7, the detection accuracy of the improved model increased by 3.2 percentage points, the average detection speed increased by 26.1%, whereas the weight was reduced by 86.7%, indicating the small model weight and fast identification speed. The optimal parameters were obtained from the improved lightweight network model. The detection speed and model weight were significantly redesigned to effectively optimize the identification and detection of daylily in the complex environment of the network model, in terms of the mutual occlusion of target samples, weed interference, and light change. This improved model can be expected to intelligently identify some targets under complex environments for the automatic harvesting equipment of daylily. The finding can provide the technical support for the research of intelligent harvesting equipment of daylily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the low level of mechanized harvesting of white radish in China and other developing countries and the current situation of "no machine can be used" due to the expensive imported machines, a self-propelled white radish combine harvester was designed based on the material, growth characteristics, and agronomic pattern of white radish. This combines harvester can realize the functions of white radish tassel gathering, deep soil loosening, clamping and conveying, tassel cutting, and collecting. In this research, the overall design of the harvester is described, and the structural and working parameters and kinematic requirements of the tassel gathering device, clamping and conveying device, tassel cutting device, and vibrating deep loosening device are determined by mechanical and kinematic analysis. Innovatively, a range of values for the tassel gathering speed ratio of 1.7–4.2 is proposed for the operation of the tassel gathering device suitable for white radish harvesting. The prototype was bench tested with the loss rate, damaged rate, and impurity rate as performance evaluation indexes. The results show that under the pitch of 240 mm between the taper angle of the tassel-raising device, a speed of 80 rpm for the tassel gathering device gathering claw belt rotation, a speed of 120 rpm for the clamping and conveying pulley rotation, a vibration frequency of 2 Hz and an amplitude of 15 mm for the vibrating deep loosening device, and a forward speed of 0.5 m/s (tassel gathering speed ratio: 1.7). The loss rate was 2.75%, the damage rate was 4.99%, and the impurity rate was 1.64%. During the operation, the innovatively designed white radish leaf gathering device can better fulfill the function of tassel gathering, and the systems worked well together, meeting the requirements of mechanized combined harvesting of white radish, but the adaptability to complex working conditions in the field needs to be further strengthened. This research can provide a reference for the design and optimization of mechanized white radish harvesting equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Potato planting area and the total output have been ranked first in the world in recent years. Since the potato can serve as a growth crop under the soil, the harvest process is complex, large labor intensity, time consuming, and high labor costs. Potato harvest mode is still dominated by manual and semi-mechanized harvesting. Mechanized harvest is one of the key links in potato mechanized production. The low rate of mechanization harvest has been the short board for the potato harvest equipment in the field of agricultural machinery at present. The current situation has restricted the development of the Chinese potato industry. This review aims to summarize the planting characteristics, distribution, and mechanized harvest status of potatoes in the main production areas. At the same time, the key technologies of potato mechanization harvest were also reviewed at home and abroad. For example, the potato efficient ridge-like vine killing, potato digging device, potato low-loss and high-efficiency separation, multi-functional walking chassis, as well as human-computer interaction. The potato digging device was elaborated in the drag reduction and soil breaking, bionic digging, vibration digging, anti-blocking and depth limiting, as well as automatic ridge finding technology. The key technologies of potato low loss and high-efficiency separation were described in detail, including potato soil separation, potato vine separation, potato stone separation, flexible protection, and low position container. A summary was also provided for the structure and technical characteristics of typically small and medium-sized potato diggers, potato picking machines, as well as small-, medium-, and large-sized combined harvesting machines. A systematic analysis was made of the potato mechanization harvest. 1) It was difficult to complete the matching of machines and tools, particularly in various planting modes, complex terrain, and wide planting areas in the small plots in the hilly and mountainous areas. 2) There was a large proportion of small-scale planting areas, the high cost of purchasing harvesting equipment, and the weak ability of farmers to resist risks, leading to insufficient purchasing power for harvesting equipment. 3) Some potatoes in vegetable harvest accounted for a large proportion of China, with high requirements on the quality of the mechanized harvest. Farmers shared low trust in the harvesting equipment, and most of them used manual harvesting. 4) There was no perfect leasing service system for agricultural machinery, resulting in the low utilization rate of mechanized harvesting equipment. 5) The low separation effect and high impurity rate were found in the domestic combined harvesting machinery under the condition of large damage and sticky heavy soil. 6) Much attention can be expected to pay agricultural machinery research and development and support. Therefore, the mechanized potato harvest can be the trend of joint development in the step and combined harvest. In addition, the future directions prospected for the low loss and highefficiency separation device, the breakthroughs in the weak technology, deep integration of agricultural machinery and agronomy in the agricultural machinery service system, together with the national policy support. The finding can also provide a strong reference for the development and research of mechanized potato harvesting technology in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study some physical and geometrical properties of 11 superior apricot genotypes were determined. These properties such as respiration rate, Mass, fruit dimensions, perimeter, surface area, volume, geometric mean diameter, projected area, shape factor, circularity, compact factor, length to width ratio, length to thickness ratio, and length to mass ratio were measured at harvesting moisture content ranging from 75.19 to 87.67 %. Then the correlation among average values of the attributes was performed and the genotypes were classified using principal component analysis (PCA). The results showed that all the genotypes had significant differences in terms of all the studied attributes (P<0.01). There was a significant and positive correlation between fruit length and weight and fruit length and moisture content. Fruit shape factor and compression factor showed a positive and significant correlation, while these attributes had negative and significant correlations with circularity. This study showed that Iranian apricot genotypes could be discriminated by differences in their geometrical characteristics using principal component analysis. Based on the PCA results, the first two components account for the most of the variation in the data (91%) and five distinct groups were observed. Overall, the results of this study can be beneficial for the design of equipment for harvesting, transportation, separating, packaging, and processing of apricot fruit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to explore the mechanism and influence mechanism of cabbage harvest damage, a low-loss cabbage harvest test platform was designed on the basis of combining the physical characteristics of cabbage with the mechanical characteristics of mechanical harvest and the cabbage harvest operation process. Through the design of key components of the test platform harvesting, the key parameters of the pulling-out device, the reel device, the flexible clamping and conveying device, and the double-disc cutting device were determined. The movement changes of cabbage during pulling out, conveying, and cutting were analyzed to clarify the process of damage generation and critical conditions of damage in cabbage harvesting operations. The test results showed that when the speed of the pulling out device was controlled at 80–120 r/min, the speed of the clamping and conveying device was controlled at 120–240 r/min, and the speed of the double disc cutter was controlled at 140–180 r/min, the average success rate of pulling on the low-loss harvesting test platform was 92.7%; the average damage rate of the pulling process was 7.32%; the average success rate of clamping and conveying was 88.6%; the average damage rate of the clamping and conveying link was 12%; the average success rate of root cutting was 89.3%; and the average damage rate of the cutting link was 11.34%. The average qualified rate of harvesting in the pulling link was 86.7%, the average qualified rate of harvesting in the clamping and conveying link was 75.3%, and the average qualified rate of harvesting in the cutting link was 77.3%. All the performance indicators meet the design requirements and relevant standards, and the research results can provide a reference for the development and structural improvement of low-loss harvesting equipment for cabbage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seabuckthorn is one of the most important ecological cash crops in modern agriculture. The existing seabuckthorn forests in China are accounted for more than 90% of the world's total crop area. However, the current manual harvesting cannot fully meet the large-scale production in recent years, because the fruits can be clustered in the thorny branches. It is also a high demand for seabuckthorn harvesting machinery rather than manual ones. In this study, the movable double blades cutting device was developed to investigate the effect of the cutting parameters on the harvesting performance of seabuckthorn branches. The optimal combination of cutting parameters was also achieved after the experiment and simulation. The sample branches were four years old, 300 mm in length, with a moisture content of 43.13% to 53.83% (average 47%). The test instruments included the self-developed double blades cutting test device, a video recorder, and a digital camera. The cutting test device consisted of three units (the cutting, branch feeding, and control unit). The single factor and orthogonal tests were also carried out to verify the simulation. The experimental factors in the single factor tests were the average cutting speed (0.4~0.8 m/s), sliding cutting angle of the blade (7.5°, 15°, and 22.5°), blade height (35, and 70 mm), and the number of the movable blade (single, double), where the average cutting speed was set at 5 levels. A regression model was established for the orthogonal tests. The Box-Behnken method was designed with a three-factor, three-level test scheme. The average cutting speed (0.4-0.6 m/s), branch feeding speed (0.5-0.7 m/s), and sliding cutting angle of the blade (7.5°, 15°, and 22.5°) were selected as the experimental factors, whereas, the peak cutting force per unit diameter and cutting power consumption per unit area were set as the evaluation indexes. Response surface analysis was used to optimize the regression model. The experimental results show that the evaluation indexes decreased with the increase in average cutting speed, sliding cutting angle of blade, and blade height. The values of these indexes were smaller for the double movable blades, compared with the single ones. The average cutting speed and sliding cutting angle of blade presented the highly significant effects on the evaluation indexes ( P<0.01), while the branch feeding speed shared a non-significant effect on the evaluation indexes ( P>0.05). The key factor for the quality of the cutting section was the average cutting speed when the branch feeding speed was determined. The optimal combination of cutting parameters for the double movable blades was: the average cutting speed of 0.45 m/s, the branch feeding speed of 0.64 m/s, and the sliding cutting angle of 9.4°. Specifically, the peak force per unit diameter was 53.33 N/mm, and the cutting power consumption per unit area was 69.87 N/mm² under the combination. Three groups of verification tests were carried out for the experimental optimization. The relative error of the regression model was less than 5%, indicating the reliable optimization of cutting parameters. Therefore, the optimized conditions were reasonable in this case. The optimized parameters (such as the average cutting speed, branch feeding speed, and sliding cutting angle of the blade) can be expected to effectively reduce the peak force per unit diameter for the cutting power consumption saving per unit area. The finding can provide the data support for the subsequent development of seabuckthorn harvesting equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a peanut-picking device with a feeding rate greater than 5 kg/s, the problem of low picking rate and high damage rate will occur during the picking process. A discrete element model is developed to determine the range of values of the main influencing factors affecting the peanut picking device. A three-factor, three-level orthogonal combination test was carried out with feeding volume, drum speed, and peanut-picking gap as test factors to investigate the effects of the main influencing factors on the quality of peanut picking operation of the peanut-picking device. The results of the field trials showed that the best results were achieved at the optimum combination of drum speed of 508 r/min, peanut-picking gap of 22 mm, and feeding volumes of 6.3 kg/s. At this time, the peanut picking rate was 99.17%, and the peanut breakage rate was 0.91, meeting the standard technical requirements for mechanized peanut harvesting. The study results provide a theoretical basis for further enhancing the development of peanut combine harvesting equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cost-effective harvesting method and equipment for small-scale farms is essential to ensure the viability and sustainability of their operations. This study aims to retrofit and test a pull-type combine harvester for effective and efficient operations in small grains. A 1960s-era functional combine harvester was retrofitted with a stripper header rotor in place of the sickle bar cutting system to increase the harvesting capacity. Preliminary field testing found that the original header auger and feeder house could not handle the changed crop composition at an increased capacity and did not properly convey the grain from the auger to the feeder house and onto the threshing system. Therefore, redesign modifications were conducted for the auger and feeder house to help increase the efficiency and capacity required to use the stripper header. Various design concepts were proposed, analyzed, and prototyped in this study. The machine performance of the material-conveying efficiency of the wheat-material-other-than-grain mixture was evaluated at various material throughput rates. The results showed that the auger shim and feeder house paddle redesign increased the efficiency from 80.68% to 98.56%, as compared to the original machine configuration. The cost-effective and high-performance pull-type combine harvester proposed in this study has a high potential in solving the bottleneck problem of local production of small grains by small-scale farming operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cotton is one of the most important economic crops and strategic materials in national defense, medicine, and industry. Mechanized harvesting of cotton has been an effective way to promote the development of the cotton industry in China. Among them, a large cotton harvesting equipment, a cotton picker has been widely used in Xinjiang in western China, due to the fast, convenient, and low labor intensity. The spindle is the commonly-used core component in the cotton picker. The product quality and wear resistance of the spindle can determine the operation efficiency, quality, and economy of the cotton picker. The wear failure of the spindle is mainly manifested in the serious wear to the hook teeth. The hook teeth are the key structure of the spindle hooking and winding the cotton. Moreover, the hook teeth are in contact with the cotton plant, the bell shell, the sand, and hard particles during the operation of the cotton picker, leading to damage and peeling from the hook tooth coating. The failure of spindle hook teeth can be caused to couple with the complex and changeable field operating environment. The rear tooth tip and the tooth edge of the hook tooth were concentrated in the process of cotton picking or removal, due to the stresses of the front tooth tip. The wear in the hook tooth can often start from these parts, leading to the low wear resistance of the hook tooth. The electrolytic method can be used to passivate the front tooth tip, the rear tooth tip, and the tooth edge of the spindle hook teeth before the electroplating of the spindle, in order to improve the wear resistance of the spindle hook teeth, particularly for the service life and the collection rate of the spindle during harvesting. This study aims to explore the wear resistance of the passivated spindle and the cotton collection rate under field conditions. The unpassivated spindle and the passivated spindle were installed on different picking heads of the cotton picker. Once the working area of the cotton picker reached 0, 150, 300, 450, and 600 hm2, two kinds of spindle samples were obtained and cut for sample preparation. The wear morphology of the hook teeth was analyzed to extract the wear area of the hook teeth and the thickness of the coating. The collection rate of the two kinds of spindles was measured after harvesting. The results show that the front tooth tip of the unpassivated spindle hook tooth was easy to break, whereas, the peeling of the passivation spindle hook tooth coating was later than that of the unpassivated spindle. There was a smaller wear area of the passivated spindle hook teeth, and the coating thickness was higher at the test position under the working areas. When the working area reached 600 hm2, the wear area of the unpassivated spindle No.1 hook tooth reached 8.8×105 μm2, which was about 2.3 times of the passivated spindle No.1 hook tooth. There was the peeled-off coating of unpassivated hook teeth No.1 and No.2, as well as the passivated hook teeth No.1 at the test position. The passivated spindle performed better wear resistance, in terms of the wear morphology, wear area, and coating thickness. Furthermore, the collection rate of the passivated spindle was 0.2 percentage points lower than that of the unpassivated one. When the working area reached about 200 hm2, there was little difference between the collection rate two kinds of spindles. Once the working area exceeded 200 hm2, the collection rate of the passivated spindle was greater than that of the unpassivated spindle. When the working area reached 450 hm2, the collection rate of unpassivated and passivated spindles reached the maximum, which was about 96.4 % and 96.7 %, respectively. When the working area reached 600 hm2, the average wear area of the unpassivated spindle hook tooth reaches 2.9×105 μm2, which was about 2.6 times of the passivated spindle hook tooth, and the collection rate of the passivated spindle was 0.5 percentage points higher than that of the unpassivated spindle, indicating the better picking performance of passivated spindle. The finding can provide great significance for the structural optimization and modification of the hook teeth of the cotton picker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Packaging & Food Machinery is the property of Packaging & Food Machinery Magazine 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.)

Bamboo is widely used as an excellent engineering material in construction and furniture. The harvesting equipment and the bamboo application process need to be integrated better. According to the application requirements of the original bamboo structure building, the mechanism and practical experience of bamboo harvesting were analyzed using field experiments in bamboo forests and the finite element method. The operation stability and the side-face planeness of the saw were the direct factors affecting bamboo cutting quality. Further, the indirect factors were the clamp saw effect on the cutting surface, the hollow structure and diaphragm of bamboo, the density and moisture, and the swarf pocket. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results obtained by INMA Bucharest, following a research project, in which a technology for harvesting and storing industrial hemp was developed. The equipment for harvesting green hemp stalks intended for this technology was tested in an experimental plot grown with Dacia - Secuieni hemp. Operating indices (actual torque at the power take-off, traction force at drawbar, total effective power to operate the equipment, working speed, effective working capacity) and working qualitative indices (stalk cutting height at lower knife and upper knife, degree of stalk cutting, stalk diameter, the average length of the stalk cut without inflorescence). As a result of the analysis of the values obtained for the operating indices and qualitative working indices, a series of pertinent conclusions and observations resulted, which will help guide harvesting and storage practices to ensure quality requirements for hemp fibre production are met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to solve problems such as poor applicability of headers, weak separation ability of threshing mechanisms and poor impurity-removal ability of cleaning devices in the existing seed harvest methods of Chinese milk vetch (Astragalus sinicus L.), a combined Chinese milk vetch seed harvester was designed in this paper. The parameters of the key components, such as the flexible anti pod-dropping seedling-lifting header, the longitudinal rod-teeth-type threshing device and the air-sieve-type layered impurity-controlled cleaning device, were designed and optimized. Aiming at reducing seed loss rate, breakage rate and impurity rate of Chinese milk vetch during the mechanical harvesting process, through multi-parameter optimization, the best combination of working parameters was obtained: machine forward speed was 3 km·h−1, rotation speed of the threshing drum was 550 r·min−1, rotation speed of the cleaning fan was 990 r·min−1 and the scale sieve's opening was 35 mm. Field tests were performed under these parameters, and the results showed that the seed loss rate of Chinese milk vetch was 2.35%, the breakage rate was 0.22% and the impurity rate was 0.51%, which were better than the technical requirements of loss rate and breakage rate less than 5% and impurity rate less than 3% specified in relevant standards. The research results can solve the shortage problem of efficient seed harvest equipment in large-scale planting areas of Chinese milk vetch, and will further help to carry out seed harvest experiments on different varieties of Chinese milk vetch and other green manure varieties in paddy fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Chinese Journal of Oil Crop Sciences is the property of Oil Crops Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences 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.)

[Display omitted] • Classifying citrus categories based on growth status and harvest restrictions. • Offering a data-driven approach to infer green-occluded citrus' geometric center. • Resizing anchor boxes by Bayesian Gaussian Mixtures Model and citrus aspect ratio. • Proposing a lightweight and efficient model for green citrus real-time detection. • The model outperforms other classical models in robustness and generalization. The demand for harvesting green citrus has increased due to the rapid growth of the green citrus industry. However, real-time detection of green citrus is challenging because of its high visual similarity to the background. To address this issue, a new model called EDGC-YOLO (Efficient Detection of Green Citrus based on the YOLO) has been developed, focusing on detecting green citrus effectively and accurately. Specifically, the proposed model uses a data-driven approach that employs the highest confidence level from the aspect ratio of unobstructed citrus fruits to infer anchor boxes of obscured citrus. This method ensures a high degree of coincidence with bounding boxes based on empirical annotation. Furthermore, analyzing the distribution range of various citrus annotation categories within the dataset and the incorporating the highest confidence level of the normal distribution regarding aspect ratios, the initial cluster centers of the BGMM (Bayesian Gaussian Mixture Model) are dynamically adjusted. This strategy enables the anchor boxes to be inferred from the best suited for detecting green citrus. These improved anchor boxes provide a more accurate and effective solution for centroid positioning of obscured green citrus, significantly enhancing the entire network model's detection accuracy and lightweight efficiency. To further improve detection accuracy and reduce model size, this study integrated the Refined-EfficientNetV2 network as the backbone, enhanced with a Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) for better feature extraction. This integration allows the model to effectively capture relevant channel information and spatial features, increasing the feature extraction capability for green citrus images. Experimental results demonstrate the model's superior performance: parameters reduced to 4.52 million, computational demand to 7.8 GFLOPs (64.4 % and 49.4 % of the original model, respectively), and model size decreased to 9.4 MB (65.3 % of the original). Additionally, the optimized model improved Precision (P), Recall (R), and mean Average Precision (mAP) by 0.5 %, 1.6 %, and 3.0 %, respectively, compared to the original model. The proposed model achieves higher detection accuracy with a smaller model size, providing theoretical support for the harvesting decision-making of green citrus harvesting robots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Auricularia auricula harvester has low harvesting productivity, low qualification rate, and high breakage rate, and the lack of research on key operating parameters has become a bottleneck restricting the large-scale development industry. In view of the difficulty of industrialization and promotion of Auricularia auricula harvesting equipment, this paper combines the research on the physical properties of Auricularia auricula, adopts a quadratic orthogonal rotation combination design test and response surface analysis method to carry out the optimization and test of the key parameters of the harvesting equipment of Auricularia auricula, including the speed of the tray fungus stick (A), the frequency of the harvesting knife (B), and the distance of the harvesting knife (C). Design-Expert software was used to analyse the data and investigate the influence of each parameter and its interaction on the harvesting productivity, qualified rate, and breakage rate. The test results show that the factors affecting the harvesting productivity are in order: (A) > (B) > (C); the factors affecting the harvest qualification rate are in order: (C) > (B) > (A); and the factors affecting the harvesting damage rate are in order: (C) > (B) > (A). The multi-objective optimization results show that the optimal parameter combination of the key parameters of the Auricularia auricula harvesting equipment operation is that the tray speed is 308.17 r/min, the harvesting knife frequency is 10.78 Hz, the spacing between the harvesting knives is 84.67 mm, the productivity is 363 bags/h, the pass rate is 94.26%, and the breakage rate is 2.40%. The field production application under this optimized parameter combination shows that the productivity of the Auricularia auricula mechanized harvester is 346 bars/h, the qualified rate is 91.43%, and the breakage rate is 3.19%. This study can provide a reference for improving the quality of Auricularia auricula harvesting equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Glasnik Zastite Bilja is the property of Zadruzna Stampa D.D. 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.)

Achieving rapid and accurate localization of winter jujubes in trees is an indispensable step for the development of automated harvesting equipment. Unlike larger fruits such as apples, winter jujube is smaller with a higher density and serious occlusion, which obliges higher requirements for the identification and positioning. To address the issues, an accurate winter jujube localization method using improved YOLOX-Nano network was proposed. First, a winter jujube dataset containing a variety of complex scenes, such as backlit, occluded, and different fields of view, was established to train our model. Then, to improve its feature learning ability, an attention feature enhancement module was designed to strengthen useful features and weaken irrelevant features. Moreover, DIoU loss was used to optimize training and obtain a more robust model. A 3D positioning error experiment and a comparative experiment were conducted to validate the effectiveness of our method. The comparative experiment results showed that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art object detection networks and the lightweight networks. Specifically, the precision, recall, and AP of our method reached 93.08%, 87.83%, and 95.56%, respectively. The positioning error experiment results showed that the average positioning errors of the X, Y, Z coordinate axis were 5.8 mm, 5.4 mm, and 3.8 mm, respectively. The model size is only 4.47 MB and can meet the requirements of winter jujube picking for detection accuracy, positioning errors, and the deployment of embedded systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On account of a lack of suitable and specialized harvesting equipment for cabbage species and planting modes in China, in this study, a type of 4GCSD-1200 type cabbage harvester was designed to further optimize the working performance of the cabbage harvester. First, the structure and working principles of the harvester were introduced, and the cabbage harvesting process was analyzed. Based on the test method and theoretical analysis, a single-factor test was carried out on the main working parameters of the sample machine, the advancing speed, rotating speed of the pulling roller, rotating speed of the conveyor belt, and the cutter-head were taken as independent variables, and the qualifying rate of cabbage harvesting was taken as the response value. According to the Box–Behnken test design principles, a four-factor three-level response surface analysis was adopted to establish a mathematical model between all test factors and the qualifying rate of cabbage harvesting, then all test factors and their interaction effects were analyzed. The test results showed that the optimal working parameters of the harvester were: the advancing speed was 1.1 km/h, the rotating speed of the pulling roller was 90 r/min, the rotating speed of the conveyor belt was 205 r/min, and the rotating speed of the cutter-head was 395 r/min. The verification test results showed that the qualifying rate of cabbage harvesting was 96.3%, showing a good harvesting effect, with uniformly cut notches and a low damage rate. The test indicates that by optimizing the working parameters, the damage during the mechanized harvesting of cabbage can be reduced and the qualifying rate of harvesting can be improved; the working effect could, therefore, satisfy the requirements of market harvesting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-quality cutting of root crop tops at the root ensures both a high yield and determines the condition of the root crops before they are extracted from the soil. Therefore, the search for conditions that will ensure this is an important and urgent problem for the production of these crops. The purpose of this research was to determine, through an analytical study, the optimal parameters of a new design of a machine for harvesting root crop tops, which is mounted in front of an aggregating tractor and performs oscillatory movements in the longitudinal-vertical plane. Methods related to the modelling of complex dynamic systems consisting of an aggregating tractor and a front-mounted machine, the development and solution of the final form of differential equations of oscillatory motion and computer modelling of the oscillatory process were used. According to the developed equivalent scheme, a new differential equation of angular vibrations of the machine was solved in the final form. In addition, numerical modelling was performed on a PC, which allowed constructing graphical dependencies of the machine's turning angle φ at different speeds V of its forward movement and values of the c stiffness coefficient and μ damping coefficient of the pneumatic tyres of the copying wheels, and at different values of the unevenness of the soil surface and the main design parameters of the machine. It was established that with an increase V from 1.5 m·s-1 to 2.5 m·s-1, the amplitude of oscillations of the machine's turning angle φ increased from 0.88° to 1.18°. However, at V 1.5 m·s-1, the duration of the transient process is 0.22 s, and at a speed of 2.5 m·s-1, this figure is already 0.14 s, i.e., a decrease of 36%. The positive amplitude of oscillations φ of the machine's steering angle reaches 1.2°, and the negative amplitude does not exceed 0.3°, i.e., the oscillation range is insignificant. In the range of values considered V, preference should be assigned to its higher value. The structural and kinematic parameters of the system examined were determined using computer simulation. The presented method of mathematical modelling of the oscillatory process can be used in the research of any machines that are hitched in front of the aggregating tractors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sunflower is one of the four major oil crops in the world. There are oil and edible sunflower at present. Among them, there is a large planting area of edible sunflowers in China. The seeds of edible sunflowers are thin and delicate easy to thresh, and the skin is mostly black with white lines and short hairs. Particularly, the skin of seeds is easily scratched, as the full ripe stage stalks and back of sunflower disc turn yellow and leaves dry up. The traditional threshing elements are also easily scratched during threshing. The resulting flowery-skinned seeds can greatly reduce the economic value, where the sunflower discs are seriously broken and hard to clean. It is very necessary to balance the structure of the threshing element and the key operating parameters of the system for the better threshing performance of sunflowers. In this study, an axial, spiral, and cylindrical threshing device was designed for the low breaking and un-threshing rate of edible sunflowers during harvesting and threshing. A theoretical and experimental investigation was carried out, according to the current status of sunflower threshing. The sunflower threshing device was mainly composed of a threshing drum, top cover, power transmission system, frame, grain collection, concave screen, threshing gap adjustment mechanism, and material conveying component. The threshing element was a spiral tube with an external diameter of 32 mm, in order to reduce the scratching of grain skin during threshing. The concave screen used the grid with the wrap angle of 180° for the larger separation area. The kinematics and dynamics of material transport were then analyzed in the threshing space. The spiral lift angle was 63° for the spiral tube of the threshing element, where the pitch was 2 800 mm. Taking the sunflower 3638 as the object, the field test was performed on the self-developed sunflower threshing bench. A single-factor experiment was carried out to determine the influence of working parameters on the threshing performance. The results show that an optimal combination was achieved, with the range of feeding rate of 1.2-1.6 kg/s, drum speed of 250-350 r/min, and threshing clearance of 30-40 mm. There were generally low un-threshing rate and damage rates in this case. A multi-objective optimization test was conducted to evaluate the threshing performance under the optimal combination of the parameters in the threshing device. A secondary rotation orthogonal test was carried out, with the feeding rate, drum speed, and threshing clearance as the influencing factors, while the un-threshing rate and breaking rate as the response indices. Design-Expert software was then selected to establish the mathematical model between the response index and the influencing factors. The optimal combination of parameters was optimized using the response surface method. The optimized parameter set was determined as the feeding rate of 1.4 kg/s, and the drum speed of 300 r/min with a threshing clearance of 35 mm. At the same time, the un-threshing rate and the breaking rate were 0.55%, and 1.76%, respectively. A verification test was carried out on the test bench. After that, the un-threshing rate was 0.59%, and the breaking rate was 1.77%. Among them, the relative error was less than 5% in the predicted value of the model, indicating the suitability of the prediction model. This finding can provide a theoretical reference for the mechanized harvesting equipment of edible sunflowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hemp is not a crop prohibited or restricted by law, only that such a plantation must be authorized and monitored by the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Beyond the impediment to authorization and monitoring, hemp cultivation brings more than profitable gains to those who invest in it. It is grown for its relatively high natural fiber content and for its seeds rich in drying oil. Hemp fibers are longer than flax, very durable and quite resistant. They are used to make a wide range of rot-resistant textiles, even in water. Short fibers (tows) are used in the manufacture of mattresses as well as as an insulating material. Lately, the market demand for green hemp inflorescence has increased. The paper will present the partial results obtained in a research project in which a piece of equipment for harvesting green hemp stems was grounded and made in order to process these stems to obtain fibers. However, there are factors in the agro-industrial chain that limit the large-scale marketing of these crops and their products. From an agronomic point of view, some of the problems are associated with technological gaps in harvesting technologies, which prevent the full exploitation of some crops. For example, the production of high-quality textile fibers depends primarily on the quality of the raw material, which in turn is linked, inter alia, to the efficiency of the harvesting system adopted. In most cases, these systems have been developed locally, based on available solutions related to specific local agricultural practice. The purpose of this paper is to present a review of existing mechanical harvesting systems for hemp fiber crops with special reference to hemp. In addition, the paper will provide a description of the innovations that have been adopted in recent years to improve harvesting processes to increase the value of these crops and their products, made by INMA Bucharest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The operation of harvesting medicinal plants is one of the important factors, which influences the quality of plant material and thus its value. In order to optimize the cultivation technologies and to adapt them to the local conditions, INMA Bucharest has developed and tested a multifunctional equipment for the mechanized harvesting of medicinal plants (annual and perennial), cultivated on small and medium areas. This equipment, of small capacity, equipped with interchangeable working parts, performs the harvesting operation by cutting, at a certain height from the ground. The paper presents the results obtained when testing the experimental model of Multifunctional equipment for harvesting medicinal and aromatic plants in the crops of three species of medicinal plants, grown on small areas. Determining for each crop some qualitative working indices (average working height, cutting degree, collecting degree, losses, etc.) as well as some energy indices (working speed, hourly fuel consumption, working capacity, etc.) allows the evaluation of the technical and working performances of the Multifunctional equipment for harvesting medicinal and aromatic plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific observations on the quality and reliability of combine harvesters have shown that of all the delays of equipment, 32...35% of the total operating time, technical failures account for 17.4...19.8%. Most of the failures were observed with the failure of combine parts, mechanical transmissions, hydraulic systems, etc. Quantitative analysis of harvester failures has shown that most failures occur in the operation of the cutting device, namely the finger bar mower. The working hypothesis is that it is possible to increase the reliability of the cutting device of harvesting machines in ordinary operating conditions and in the event of sudden failures by applying a coating on the blade segment, without significantly changing its geometric parameters, and performing notches that ensure both a decrease in the mass of the segment and its destruction without plastic deformation when foreign objects enter the cutting zone. The main problem of the reliability of segments of cutting device, harvesting equipment, is the cutting edge of the blade, which wears out and deforms during operation. From the above, it follows that the purpose of the study is to improve the reliability of segment finger bar mower machines by improving the mechanical properties of segments, these investigations are relevant and of practical interest. The study includes the use of mathematical probability and reliability theory, analysis, and a systematic approach to provide an analytical description of the operation of a cutting device segment. The consequence of this scientific investigation is an analysis of failures and malfunctions of the machinery, presented graphically, a diagram of how a plant stem segment is cut and the forces acting on the stem and the segment during the cutting process are depicted. These materials have scientific and informative content that would be of interest to engineers and scientists in the process of research and production of cutting device segments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the low level of mechanized sowing and harvesting technology of buckwheat, the operation quality of mechanized production equipment needs to be improved, which cannot adapt to the production practice of the rapid development of buckwheat industry at this stage in China. This paper summarized the scale of buckwheat production in the world in recent years. The main planting provinces and yields of buckwheat in China were analyzed. The problems of mechanized sowing and harvesting of buckwheat in China were analyzed. The typical machines used in production at present and their characteristics were described. It is pointed out that the future research on Buckwheat seeding technology and equipment should focus on precision seeding technology, trencher anti-blocking technology, key technology of community seeding, intelligent monitoring system. At the same time, it also pointed out that the mechanized harvesting technology and equipment of buckwheat should focus on the research of agricultural machinery and agronomy integration technology, hilly and mountainous harvesting technology, community harvesting technology, harvesting operation technical specifications and quality standards. The summary of mechanized seeding and harvesting technology of buckwheat at the present stage is expected to provide reference for the development of China's buckwheat industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the problems of high moisture content of stems during buckwheat harvesting and easy clogging of grid concave plates, a telescopic rod tooth-ribbed rod roller type threshing device was designed. The device is mainly composed of a ribbed rod roller and telescopic rod teeth. When the ribbed rod roller type rotates, the telescopic rod teeth do reciprocating telescopic motion. When the rod teeth rotate to the minimum threshing gap, the outstretch length is the smallest. When the rod teeth rotate to the top, the outstretch length maximum. The device solves the problems of poor material flow between threshing devices and clogging of grid concave plates. This threshing device was attached to the threshing performance test bench, and the buckwheat threshing test was performed. Through the single factor test, the threshing parameter range under the condition of low loss rate and damage rate of the threshing device was obtained: the speed of the threshing roller is 350~450 r/min, the feeding amount is 0.8~1.2 kg/s, and the threshing gap is 9~11 mm. Through the quadratic orthogonal rotation combination test, the results were fitted by multiple linear regression, and the regression equations of the loss rate and the broken rate were obtained, and the significance test was carried out. The response surface analysis of the main influencing factors was carried out to explore the influence of threshing parameters on the loss rate and damage rate. Through parameter optimization, the threshing parameter combination with the lowest loss rate and damage rate of the threshing device was obtained. The speed of the threshing roller is 405.47 r/min, the feed amount is 1.06 kg/s, and the threshing gap is 10.49 mm. Under these conditions, the loss rate is 0.05%, and the damage rate is 4.05%. The overall performance of the threshing device is good, which provides a theoretical basis for the research and development of buckwheat mechanized harvesting equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first seasonal harvest technology of ratoon rice requires the least rolling with suitable stubble height required by agronomy when the ratoon rice is nearly mature. Mechanized harvesting in the first season of ratoon rice needs to finish harvesting, threshing, cleaning, straw treatment, grain transportation, grain collection and other processes at one time with a low rolling rate and low rolling degree. Limited by the production conditions such as wet and soft fields, and wet, thick and strong straw, harvest technology with high efficiency and a low rolling rate of ratoon rice in the first season has become the key technology and research focus affecting the yield of ratoon rice. In this paper, we analyzed the planting and popularization of ratoon rice in China, summarized the planting mode and agronomic characteristics of ratoon rice, highlighted the research status of mechanized harvesting equipment for the first season of ratoon rice, especially the specialized harvesters, and illustrated in detail the technical characteristics and research trends of key segments such as chassis, header, and processes such as threshing and cleaning, and straw and stubble treatment of ratoon rice harvesters. In addition, we summarized the application status and value of lightweight technology, performance monitoring and fault diagnosis technology, grain quality detection technology and automatic navigation technology of mechanized harvest in the first season, explained the main problems and reasons affecting the development of ratoon rice harvest mechanization in China, and illustrated the prospect of its research focus and tendency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Accurate and timely prediction of regional winter wheat maturity date can provide essential information to improve the management of agriculture and avoid declines in the yield and quality of crops. In this paper, we propose the use of an autoregressive moving‐average model to predict vegetation indices on 1, 9, and 17 May each year, and applied them to the methods of evaluating crop maturity based on vegetation indices. Growing degree days and a widely applied local empirical method were selected to explore and compare the feasibility of several methods. We analyzed winter wheat harvested from the Guanzhong Plain during 2003–2013 and used leave‐one‐out cross‐validation to compare and verify the performance of the maturity prediction methods. RESULTS: The results demonstrated that (i) the vegetation index methods and growing degree days methods predicted maturity with higher accuracy than did the widely applied local empirical method, and (ii) the two‐step filtering method based on future meteorological data from The Observing System Research and Predictability Experiment Interactive Grand Global Ensemble exhibited the highest prediction accuracy on 1 May and had the lowest error fluctuation range on 17 May. CONCLUSION: These results provide new insights for predicting regional crop maturity, deploying agricultural harvesting equipment in various regions, and avoiding decreases in crop yields caused by adverse weather. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Agriculturae Zhejiangensis is the property of Acta Agriculturae Zhejiangensis Editorial Office 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.)

This study analyzes the existing relationship between the productions of the industrial sector destined for the agricultural sector, in this case specifically destined for Azcuba, taking into account the energy efficiency and the behavior of the necessary consumption rates per energy sources for these productions. Proper practices in reducing energy consumption contribute to a reduction in the final cost sheet of the product destined for the customer. In the case study presented, the entity's production is mainly destined to the production of spare parts for the sugarcane combines and other equipment used in the harvest. The statistical methods used are based on historical information on consumption that make possible to control the energy carriers involved in production, in this case emphasizing the behavior of the electricity consumption, which is the predominant energy carrier in the energetic structure of the entity taken as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]