Original Article
Mohammad Hossein Saeidirad; Saeed zarifneshat; Majid Forouhar
Abstract
In this research, the performance of the drone sprayer and conventional sprayers was evaluated for saffron liquid fertilization. This project was conducted in a completely randomized experimental design with three replications. The treatments used included: drone, atomizer, lance sprayer and without ...
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In this research, the performance of the drone sprayer and conventional sprayers was evaluated for saffron liquid fertilization. This project was conducted in a completely randomized experimental design with three replications. The treatments used included: drone, atomizer, lance sprayer and without fertilizing (control treatment). The studied parameters included: effective spraying width, spraying time of one-hectare, effective field capacity and efficiency, numerical median diameter (NMD) and volumetric median diameter (VMD) of dissolved particles, drift and efficiency. The results of analysis of variance showed a significant difference between the experimental treatments at the 1% level. Drone sprayer, atomizer and lance sprayer had 19.3, 199.3 and 212.2 liters of fertilizer solution consumption per hectare, 17.5%, 25.4% and 24.7% rate of drift and 5.9, 0.46 and 0.74 hectar per hour field capacity respectively. Also, in the drone sprayer, the VMD was 473 microns, the NMD was 235 microns, and the spraying quality coefficient was 1. 1, which had better spray uniformity than the lance and atomizer device. The evaluation of the effectiveness of all sprayers showed that their effects on agricultural characteristics of the field were significant and the use of lance sprayers and atomizers resulted in higher performance of the saffron field than spraying with a drone sprayer. The yields of 2.4 and 2.3 kg of dry saffron per hectare belong to fertilization spraying with lance and atomizer type, respectively, and also the lowest yield, 2.1 kg/ha, belongs to drone sprayer. In general, liquid fertilization spraying increased the yield of saffron by 20% compared to the control treatment (without spraying).
Original Article
Gholamreza Chegini; Sasan Aliniaeifard; Mohammadreza Khoramtabrizi
Abstract
The increasing production of agricultural products with high efficiency has led to the use of new methods to increase the yield of these products. Among others, we can mention vertical cultivation in greenhouses with artificial light. In these greenhouses, in addition to controlling the different climatic ...
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The increasing production of agricultural products with high efficiency has led to the use of new methods to increase the yield of these products. Among others, we can mention vertical cultivation in greenhouses with artificial light. In these greenhouses, in addition to controlling the different climatic parameters, the light needed by the plant is provided by low consumption LED lamps. The ability to grow all kinds of agricultural products, including lettuce and other vegetables, by changing the height of the floors and changing the spectrum of different lights effective in the photosynthesis of plants is one of the capabilities of this greenhouse. In this research, a greenhouse with vertical cultivation was built with artificial light through LED lamps, irrigation systems, ventilation and hydroponic cultivation bed for growing plants. Due to the independence of the floors, it is possible to cultivate different crops with the same nutrition at the same time, and in addition to light, other variables such as temperature and humidity can also be controlled. The performance results showed that after 30 days and with dimensions of one square meter, 72 lettuce plant were harvested from the system, which is comparable to the yield of field and greenhouse production methods. Greenhouse evaluation was done in 3 treatments with different light combinations. The lowest fresh and dry weight of the plant was observed in the combination of red, blue and far red light treatment, and red light had the highest yield compared to the far red and red, blue treatments.
Original Article
Sadegh Afzalinia; Seyed Ebrahim Dehghanian; Khadijeh Alijani; dadgar mohammadi; Seyed Mashaallh Hosseini; Afshar Estakhr; Seiid Mansur Alavimanesh; Mashaallah Zare
Abstract
In this research, effects of tillage and planting methods (planting on permanent raised beds, no-till, and conventional tillage) on soil properties such as bulk density, moisture content, and organic carbon and water consumption, water productivity, and crop yield were evaluated in the form of randomized ...
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In this research, effects of tillage and planting methods (planting on permanent raised beds, no-till, and conventional tillage) on soil properties such as bulk density, moisture content, and organic carbon and water consumption, water productivity, and crop yield were evaluated in the form of randomized complete blocks experimental design with three treatments and six replicates in corn-wheat rotation. Results showed that the raised bed planting produced the maximum forage corn (95.33 ton/ha) and wheat yield (7.01 ton/ha) and no-till produced the minimum silage corn (87.06 ton/ha) and wheat yield (5.23 ton/ha) which had no significant difference with the conventional tillage. Forage corn consumed the maximum amount of water (9531 m3/ha) in the conventional tillage and the minimum water (8155 m3/ha) in no-till; while, there was no significant difference between treatments from the point of view of water productivity. Wheat consumed the maximum amount of water (7177 m3/ha) in raised bed planting, but there was no significant difference between treatments from the stand point of water productivity. Results also showed that conservation tillage methods increased soil moisture content in forage corn planting (around 11%), but had no significant effect on the soil moisture content in wheat planting.
Original Article
Leila Anbarestani; Morteza Almassi; hossein bakhoda; Mohammad Ghahdarijani
Abstract
The current research was conducted with the aim of identifying and prioritizing strategies for increasing the productivity of agricultural mechanization in wheat production. This research was based on a mixed method and in two phases, qualitative and quantitative. In this research, the integrated approach ...
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The current research was conducted with the aim of identifying and prioritizing strategies for increasing the productivity of agricultural mechanization in wheat production. This research was based on a mixed method and in two phases, qualitative and quantitative. In this research, the integrated approach of SWOT, PESTEL and AHP has been used. First, by using SWOT analysis in the framework of PESTEL, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of wheat production mechanization and strategies to increase the productivity of mechanization of wheat production were identified and classified. Then, since the decision-making problem in the research was multi-criteria, the process of hierarchical analysis was used to calculate the weight and importance of each of the criteria and strategies. Written sources, interviews and paired comparison matrix questionnaires were used to collect data. The participants in the research were university and organizational experts in the field of agricultural mechanization. The results showed that although mechanization in wheat production has many strengths, the weaknesses are more effective. Also, despite the fact that mechanization has many threats, the opportunities are more effective. Therefore, the officials should try to make the most of the available opportunities by reducing the weaknesses. As a result, from the expert's point of view, conservative strategies were prioritized in terms of importance. Increasing the technical efficiency and development of small agricultural machines, production and distribution of suitable technologies for all types of operating systems, improvement and modernization of the system of agricultural machines to strengthen the livelihood of farmers, use of pressurized irrigation systems and create transformation in the process of land preparation according to the protection and sustainability of production, conservative strategies were suggested in this research.
Original Article
Ghasem Zarei; Jalal Javadi Moghaddam; Sayed Moin‐eddin Rezvani
Abstract
The production of horticultural products is faced with environmental stress; and heavy damages are caused to the products every year. The use of shade/net houses to reduce stress and to increase the quantity and quality of the product have been significantly developed in the last few years. Although ...
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The production of horticultural products is faced with environmental stress; and heavy damages are caused to the products every year. The use of shade/net houses to reduce stress and to increase the quantity and quality of the product have been significantly developed in the last few years. Although after the columns, screens of the shade/net houses are the most important part of such protected agriculture, there is not much information about their behavior under the loads. The purpose of this article is to investigate and analyze the behavior of screens when different loads are applied to them. In this research, the samples of shade/net houses implemented in the country were examined. The stress analysis and calculation of the displacement of the screens according to the way of installation and operation, the snow load and the shape of their snow removal were done using SolidWorks software. The results showed that with the arrangement of the distance between the cenotes and the width used for the nets, the maximum allowable snow load is 40-52.5 kg/m2. It was also found that changing the distances of the columns and the width of the corridors could have a direct role in the stability of the structure while reducing the accumulation of snow, so that according to the load of the area, the distance between the columns could be adjusted in such a way that it was possible to strain with less stress in the screen and the screen could be loaded. Having no significant differences, the economic aspect can play a decisive role in the selection of column distances. This issue (changing the width of the columns) can be considered as an advantage in screens of shade/net houses. Also, the calculations showed that the conditions of yielding in the nets were strongly affected by the change of location in them. In other words, by choosing the appropriate distance between the columns in the row of the corridor and the possibility of creating more rise in the screens, the bearing capacity would increase, but it should be noted that the loading surface is wider and the screens of shade/net houses must bear more snow load.
Original Article
Keyvan Asefpour Vakilian
Abstract
During the last two decades, various types of enzymatic biosensors have been introduced for the specific and selective detection of nitrate. These biosensors generally use the redox reaction of nitrate-nitrite to measure nitrate. Since the activity of the enzyme used in the biosensor structure decreases ...
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During the last two decades, various types of enzymatic biosensors have been introduced for the specific and selective detection of nitrate. These biosensors generally use the redox reaction of nitrate-nitrite to measure nitrate. Since the activity of the enzyme used in the biosensor structure decreases over time, the user of the biosensor should frequently replace the enzyme immobilized onto the working electrode, which increases the detection costs and limits their commercialization. In this study, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been used to predict nitrate concentration in samples by considering electrochemical data and the decrease in enzyme activity over time. The Harris hawks algorithm was used as a meta-heuristic optimization method to optimize weight and bias hyperparameters of ANNs used in the biosensor decision-making unit. The results showed that the optimized learning algorithm led to a promising prediction of nitrate concentration at the micromolar level with a coefficient of determination of 0.95. In addition, the introduced biosensor could be used up to 30 days after enzyme immobilization. A comparison between the findings of this study and previous studies, that used support vector machines and fuzzy inference systems, showed that ANNs optimized with novel meta-heuristic techniques can provide more reliable prediction results.
