Cost of production and returns in growing mango orchard are estimated in different ways compared to annual crops. The present study has been designed to investigate cost of production, and returns per acre over the life time of mango trees. A sample of 20 mango growing farmers was taken purposively from various villages of Multan district. The objective was to work out benefit cost ratio and ne...

An algorithm of generating navigation path in orchard for harvesting robot based on machine vision was presented. According to the features of orchard images, a horizontal projection method was adopted to dynamically recognize the main trunks area. Border crossing points between the tree and the earth were detected by scanning the trunks areas, and these points were divided into two clusters on...

Input requirements in an orchard vary in space and time due to the variability of climate, soil and plant growth. Measurements were carried out in Prunus domestica (plum) orchard in the Werder fruit production area in Brandenburg, Germany. Soil zones in the orchard were identified by means of electrical conductivity. Plant data were captured on the tree and organ level: laser-scanner hits show ...

Comprehensive Automation for Specialty Crops (CASC) is a four-year project to develop crop intelligence and agricultural automation technologies for the apple and nursery tree industries. Supported by the USDA Specialty Crop Research Initiative, CASC aims at impacting industry where it matters most: increasing production efficiency and reducing labor costs. In this paper we present our most rec...

During 1998-2003, we used populations of the solitary bee Osmia lignaria Say to pollinate a commercial sweet cherry orchard in northern Utah. Bee densities released each year ranged from 1290 to 1857 females/ha, with approximately twice as many males. Female progeny produced each year were greater than parental populations released, except in 2003, when nesting was poor due to bird predation. D...

One of the tools for optimal crop production is regular monitoring and assessment of crops. During the growing season of fruit trees, the bloom period has increased photosynthetic rates that correlate with the fruiting process. This paper presents the development of an image processing algorithm to detect peach blossoms on trees. Images of an experimental peach orchard were acquired from the Pa...

In a peach orchard with an initial soil pH of 4.9, preplant application of 0, 13.2, 18.2, 27.3, or 54.2 kg lime/tree site altered soil pH (range after 1 year = 4.8-7.3) but did not affect numbers of Criconemella xenoplax or tree circumference. Liming also failed to reduce the incidence of bacterial canker, which affected 17% of the trees by the sixth year after planting. Four years after planti...

D-xylose is one of the most abundant pentose sugars in nature. To isolate oleaginous yeasts that can utilize xylose from diverse soil samples, soils from a litchi orchard, longan orchard, carambola orchard, and woods were collected, yeasts were isolated by the glycerol enrichment and their xylose-assimilating capacities were measured. A subset of these isolates was grown in nitrogen-limited med...

A novel approach for orchard scanning is proposed that is validated through automatic separation of trees and height measurements. The experiments were done in a real orchard recording data from a moving vehicle, using Lidar and stereo vision. The orchard reconstruction was done using tilt sensor corrected GPS positions interpolated through encoder counts. The accuracy of the reconstruction and...

Several tests were performed on commercially used orchard sprayers with different types of air discharge systems (conventional, cross flow, directional spouts). The measurements were conducted in a hangar on an apple orchard planted in containers. Pure tab water and water with minerals (Mg, Mn, Zn) were sprayed. Water sensitive paper and blotting paper were put in and around the trees to evalua...