In this research, a convective/infrared (CV/IR) dryer was used to dry pumpkin slices. For optimization of the drying conditions, the influence of three levels of independent variables including air temperature (40, 55, and 70 °C), air velocity (0.5, 1, and 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoil compaction management relies on costly annual deep tillage. Variable-depth tillage or site-specific tillage modifies the physical properties of the soil at the required zones for the growth of crops. In this study, a depth control system was designed for the subsoiler of the tillage at various depths.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGinger is a well-known product in the food and pharmaceutical industries. Ginger is one of the spices which are adulterated for economic gain. The lack of marketability of grade 3 chickpeas (small and broken chickpeas) and their very low price have made them a good choice to be mixed with ginger in powder form and sold in the market.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAssessing the quality of food and spices is particularly important in ensuring proper human nutrition. The use of computer vision method as a non-destructive technique in measuring the quality of food and spices has always been taken into consideration by researchers. Due to the high nutritional value of turmeric among the spices as well as the fraudulent motives to gain economic profit from the selling of this product, its quality assessment is very important.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoil roughness is one of the most challenging issues in the agricultural domain and plays a crucial role in soil quality. The objective of this research was to develop a computerized method based on stereo vision technique to estimate the roughness formed on the agricultural soils. Additionally, soil till quality was investigated by analyzing the height of plow layers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present study aimed to examine the effect of ultrasonic pretreatment and hot air, microwave-hot-air, infrared-hot air, and freeze-drying on the drying time, specific energy (SE), qualitative properties (i.e., color, shrinkage, and rehydration ratio), and bioactive compounds' properties (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this study, the possibility of non-destructive detection of tomato pesticide residues was investigated using Vis/NIRS and prediction models such as PLSR and ANN. First, Vis/NIR spectral data from 180 samples of non-pesticide tomatoes (used as a control treatment) and samples impregnated with pesticide with a concentration of 2 L per 1000 L between 350-1100 nm were recorded by a spectroradiometer. Then, they were divided into two parts: Calibration data (70%) and prediction data (30%).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWeeds might be defined as destructive plants that grow and compete with agricultural crops in order to achieve water and nutrients. Uniform spray of herbicides is nowadays a common cause in crops poisoning, environment pollution and high cost of herbicide consumption. Site-specific spraying is a possible solution for the problems that occur with uniform spray in fields.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSite-specific weed management and selective application of herbicides as eco-friendly techniques are still challenging tasks to perform, especially for densely cultivated crops, such as rice. This study is aimed at developing a stereo vision system for distinguishing between rice plants and weeds and further discriminating two types of weeds in a rice field by using artificial neural networks (ANNs) and two metaheuristic algorithms. For this purpose, stereo videos were recorded across the rice field and different channels were extracted and decomposed into the constituent frames.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study aimed to predict the drying kinetics, energy utilization ( ), energy utilization ratio (), exergy loss, and exergy efficiency of quince slice in a hot air (HA) dryer using artificial neural networks and ANFIS. The experiments were performed at air temperatures of 50, 60, and 70°C and air velocities of 0.6, 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLack of sufficient knowledge about the physical and mechanical properties of agricultural products can result in higher waste of them. Due to the importance of carrot as an agricultural product and lack of much knowledge about how to reduce its waste as well as design and optimize the required harvest and postharvest machinery, this research study was carried out to fill this gap. In this study, physical properties included the length, width, thickness, mean diameter (geometric and arithmetic), mass, volume, density, sphericity, surface area, aspect ratio.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc
October 2018
The presence of sunn pest-damaged grains in wheat mass reduces the quality of flour and bread produced from it. Therefore, it is essential to assess the quality of the samples in collecting and storage centers of wheat and flour mills. In this research, the capability of visible/near-infrared (Vis/NIR) spectroscopy combined with pattern recognition methods was investigated for discrimination of wheat samples with different percentages of sunn pest-damaged.
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