The recent divergence of Orchard (Icterus spurius spurius) and Fuertes’s Orioles (I. s. fuertesi) makes them an ideal system for investigating species boundaries. Orchard and Fuertes’s Orioles differ in several respects. They have distinct breeding ranges—Fuertes’s Orioles breed in eastern coastal Mexico, whereas Orchard Orioles breed throughout eastern and central North America—and differ in p...

Crop yield estimation is an essential element in apple orchard management. Apple growers currently predict yield based on historical records and manual counting. These methods require extensive experience on the part of farm managers to take into account variations in weather, soil conditions, pests, etc., and are generally labor-intensive and inaccurate. In this work, we propose an automatic c...

In this study we focus on the invasive brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys (Stål) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), which has a strong dispersal capacity and has had a significant impact on several cropping systems, including peach (Prunus persica (L.)). Management of H. halys has relied on intensive insecticide use, and thus a better understanding of its dispersal behavior may assist in dev...

The precise management of orchards cannot do without the support of various orchard field data, and the orchard field data server is an effective solution thereto. The orchard field data server consists of data acquisition unit, data communication unit, data analysis unit and such diversified server sockets of user terminal as supportive personal computer (PC), notebook computer, mobile phone a...

An intensive investigation was conducted to study the distribution of trace metals in surface soils of Hong Kong and to assess the soil environmental quality. From results of cluster analysis, and comparisons among soil types and areas, it is clearly shown that increases in trace metal concentrations in the soils were generally extensive and obvious in urban and orchard soils, less so in vegeta...

This paper addresses the design, development and field-testing of a localization system for agricultural vehicles. The Autonomous Prime Movers (APMs) are electrical vehicles designed to operate in specialty crops, more specifically in orchards. In order to accomplish geo-referenced tasks inside the crops, the vehicles must know their pose with sub-metric accuracy. One of our requirements is tha...

The intensive use of pesticides in agricultural areas and the resulting effects have created a need to develop monitoring programs for their active assessment at low cost. This research entails biomonitoring study an apple orchard, using juvenile Cornu aspersum (O. F. Müller, 1774) snails exposed field microcosms. were deployed three different locations orchard area used assess temporal 100 sem...