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Topic Review
Machine Vision Techniques in Agriculture
Introducing machine vision-based automation to the agricultural sector is essential to meet the food demand of a rapidly growing population. Furthermore, extensive labor and time are required in agriculture; hence, agriculture automation is a major concern and an emerging subject. Machine vision-based automation can improve productivity and quality by reducing errors and adding flexibility to the work process. Primarily, machine vision technology has been used to develop crop production systems by detecting stresses and diseases more efficiently.
  • 1.3K
  • 06 Jan 2023
Topic Review
Precision Livestock Farming Applications for Grazing Animals
Precision Livestock Farming refers to the real-time continuous monitoring and control systems using sensors and computer algorithms for early problem detection, while simultaneously increasing producer awareness concerning individual animal needs. These technologies include automatic weighing systems, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) sensors for individual animal detection and behaviour monitoring, body temperature monitoring, geographic information systems (GIS) for pasture evaluation and optimization, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for herd management, and virtual fencing for herd and grazing management.
  • 1.2K
  • 28 Apr 2023
Topic Review
Remediating Endocrine-Disrupting Compounds
Over the years, the persistent occurrence of superfluous endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) (sub µg L−1) in water has led to serious health disorders in human and aquatic lives, as well as undermined the water quality. At present, there are no generally accepted regulatory discharge limits for the EDCs to avert their possible negative impacts. Moreover, the conventional treatment processes have reportedly failed to remove the persistent EDC pollutants, and this has led researchers to develop alternative treatment methods. Comprehensive information on the recent advances in the existing novel treatment processes and their peculiar limitations is still lacking. In this regard, the various treatment methods for the removal of EDCs are critically studied and reported in this entry.
  • 1.2K
  • 23 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Water Nutrient Management in Soilless Plant Cultivation
Under-cover soilless cultivation is an important technique of crop production. Due to the lack of contact with soil and precipitation, the root system of crops grown must be provided with water and all necessary nutrients in the form of a solution (nutrient medium). This nutrient medium needs to be fed in excess to ensure proper plant development and the expected qualitative and quantitative parameters of the crop yield, which means that in the case of, e.g., tomato cultivation, 20–80% of the supplied medium must be removed from the root system and managed. Uncontrolled discharge of this drainage water poses a significant threat to the environment, causing contamination of surface waters and groundwaters. 
  • 1.2K
  • 05 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Multiscapes on an Urbanising Planet
The two most significant signatures of the Anthropocene—agriculture and urbanisation— have yet to be studied synoptically. The term periurban is used to describe territory where the urbanising trend of the planet extends into multiscapes. A periurban praxis is required that spatially reconciles urbanisation and agriculture, simultaneously permitting urban growth and the enhance- ment of critical ecosystem services provided by agricultural hinterlands.
  • 1.2K
  • 18 Mar 2022
Topic Review
GHDs with Solar Technologies
Greenhouse dryers (GHDs) are simple facilities that can provide large capacities for drying agricultural products. The solar GHDs (SGHDs) are classified as passive and active systems. The passive SGHDs have a heat transfer through natural convection, whereas, SGHDs having a heat transfer through forced convection are called active dryers. Active SGHDs can be integrated with different solar technologies, including photovoltaic (PV), photovoltaic-thermal (PVT), and solar thermal collectors. Additionally, solar-assisted greenhouse dryers (SGHDs) can be integrated with heat pumps and thermal energy storage (TES) units and presented in hybrid configuration considering their integration with other renewable energy sources with the aim of improving the thermal performance.
  • 1.2K
  • 01 Jul 2021
Topic Review
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Forest RS
Natural, semi-natural, and planted forests are a key asset worldwide, providing a broad range of positive externalities. For sustainable forest planning and management, remote sensing (RS) platforms are rapidly going mainstream. In a framework where scientific production is growing exponentially, a systematic analysis of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based forestry research papers is of paramount importance to understand trends, overlaps and gaps. 
  • 1.2K
  • 09 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Wood Ash Based Treatment of Anaerobic Digestate
The anaerobic digestion (AD) was first applied to deal with the sewage sludge (SS) produced during the primary and secondary treatment of wastewater, but its use to deal with agro-waste and the MSW with around 70% of organic material has been subsequently encouraged.
  • 1.2K
  • 21 Jan 2022
Topic Review
UV-A Photocatalysis in Livestock and Poultry Farming
As the scale of the livestock industry has grown with the increase in the demand for livestock and poultry products, gaseous emissions, an unwanted side effect of livestock and poultry production, are also increasing. Various mitigation technologies have been developed to reduce such air pollution, and the mitigation technologies are divided mainly into “source-based type” (meant to fundamentally reduce the emissions) and “end-of-pipe type” (physicochemical and biological treatment of the output from barns to reduce the release into the environment). Ultraviolet light (UV) can be considered as both end-of-pipe (treating exhaust air from barns) and source-based type (treating air inside the barn).
  • 1.1K
  • 20 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Blockchain in Revolutionizing the Agricultural Sector
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)/blockchain is an intriguing new technology that has the potential to be a game-changer, and, in general, DLT are tamper-resistant and time-stamped databases. They allow several parties to capture, validate, and distribute data over a network in a decentralized, synchronized, and transparent manner, with minimal human participation and intermediate processes. The application of blockchain agriculture is still in the early stage, although there are ongoing research, projects, and initiatives to gain the most benefits of introducing blockchain-based technology in agriculture. These ongoing processes are centered around topics such as traceability, transparency, creditability, and auditability of agricultural data via blockchain based technology. Moreover, they are developing useful models or applications that can be used to improve the performance of the agriculture sector.
  • 1.1K
  • 07 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Sustainability Dimensions in the Food Supply Chain
Nowadays, the world is facing numerous sustainability challenges and the modern food system is called to innovate processes or products in order to remain competitive within the market, as well as answering to strategic government guidelines for a more sustainable food supply chain.
  • 1.1K
  • 12 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Properties of Starch as Nanocomposites
Starch is one of the most abundant natural polymers globally. Starch and its nanocomposites have been extensively studied for their abundance, low cost, ease of processibility, and chemical and physical properties.
  • 1.1K
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Shear Energy on Harvesting Tools
Smart and precise agriculture has increasingly been developed in the last decade, and with that, the idea of optimizing the tools commonly used in this field for harvesting tasks. One way to improve these devices, particularly cutting tools conceived for harvesting purposes, is to measure the shear energy consumption required for a particular plant. The proposed methodology aims to establish both a design criterion for cutting grippers and a quantifiable way to evaluate and classify a harvesting tool for a specific crop.
  • 1.1K
  • 29 Apr 2021
Topic Review
Sustainable Food Production
Fault diagnosis and prognosis methods are the most useful tools for risk and reliability analysis in food processing systems. Proactive diagnosis techniques such as failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) are important for detecting all probable failures and facilitating the risk analysis process. However, significant uncertainties exist in the classical-FMEA when it comes to ranking the risk priority numbers (RPNs) of failure modes. Such uncertainties may have an impact on the food sector’s operational safety and maintenance decisions.
  • 1.1K
  • 28 Mar 2022
Topic Review
Fresh Fruit Bunch Ripeness Evaluation Methods
There are two types of methods to analyse the ripeness of fresh fruit bunches (FFBs), destructive methods and nondestructive methods. The destructive methods require physical contact in ways that affect the integrity of the FFBs and severely reduce the amount of oil that can be extracted from the tested FFBs. Meanwhile, the nondestructive techniques can involve noncontact features that are either visual or nonvisual. Nonvisual methods include using physicochemical, electrical, magnetic, and electromagnetic properties to determine fruit maturity such as fluorescence sensor, microwave sensor, inductive sensor, and thermal sensor. However, most nondestructive methods are visual, in which the selected sensor can evaluate through the morphology, colour, and other physical characteristics of the fruit to identify their maturity stages through the analysis of specific modalities such as colour vision, light detection and ranging, spectral image, and near-infrared spectroscopy.
  • 1.1K
  • 20 Jan 2023
Topic Review
Vulnerabilities and Potential Threats of Cloud computing
Cloud computing has become a prominent technology due to its important utility service; this service concentrates on outsourcing data to organizations and individual consumers. Cloud computing has considerably changed the manner in which individuals or organizations store, retrieve, and organize their personal information. Despite the manifest development in cloud computing, there are still some concerns regarding the level of security and issues related to adopting cloud computing that prevent users from fully trusting this useful technology.
  • 1.1K
  • 28 Mar 2022
Topic Review
Fibrillated Cellulose on Lime Pastes and Mortars
The use of nanocellulose in traditional lime-based mortars is a promising solution for green buildings in the frame of limiting the CO2 emissions resulting from Portland Cement production. The influence of the fibrillated cellulose (FC) on lime pastes and lime-based mortars was studied incorporating FC at dosages of 0%, 0.1%, 0.2% and 0.3 wt% by weight of binder. The lime pastes were subjected to thermal and nitrogen gas sorption analyses to understand if FC affects the formation of hydraulic compounds and the mesoporosities volume and distribution. The setting and early hydration of the mortars were studied with isothermal calorimetry. The mechanical performances were investigated with compressive and three-point-bending tests. Furthermore, fragments resulting from the mechanical tests were microscopically studied to understand the reinforcement mechanism of the fibres. It was found that 0.3 wt% of FC enhances the flexural and compressive strengths respectively by 57% and 44% while the crack propagation after the material failure is not affected. 
  • 1.0K
  • 27 Jan 2022
Topic Review
MiRNA-Nanofiber, Bioactive Scaffolds for Bone Regeneration
Scaffold-based bone tissue engineering has been introduced as an alternative treatment option for bone grafting due to limitations in the allograft. Not only physical conditions but also biological conditions such as gene expression significantly impact bone regeneration. Scaffolds in composition with bioactive molecules such as miRNA mimics provide a platform to enhance migration, proliferation, and differentiation of osteoprogenitor cells for bone regeneration.
  • 1.0K
  • 13 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Bird Deterrent Solutions for Crop Protection
Weeds, pathogens, and animal pests are among the pests that pose a threat to the productivity of crops meant for human consumption. Bird-caused crop losses pose a serious and costly challenge for farmers. 
  • 1.0K
  • 11 Apr 2023
Topic Review
Sustainable Desert Agriculture Systems with Saline Groundwater Irrigation
Agricultural land expansion is a solution to address global food security challenges in the context of climate change. However, the sustainability of expansion in arid countries is difficult because of scarce surface water resources, groundwater salinity, and the health of salt-affected soil. Developing expansion and sustainability plans for agriculture requires systems thinking, considering the complex feedback interactions between saline groundwater, salt-affected soil, plant growth, freshwater mixing with saline groundwater, irrigation systems, and the application of soil amendments to alleviate the salinity impacts.
  • 1.0K
  • 20 Jan 2023
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