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  • Special Issue--Artificial Intelligence and Robot Technology for Smart Agriculture
    ZHAOChunjiang, FANBeibei, LIJin, FENGQingchun
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(4): 1-15. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202312030

    [Significance] Autonomous and intelligent agricultural machinery, characterized by green intelligence, energy efficiency, and reduced emissions, as well as high intelligence and man-machine collaboration, will serve as the driving force behind global agricultural technology advancements and the transformation of production methods in the context of smart agriculture development. Agricultural robots, which utilize intelligent control and information technology, have the unique advantage of replacing manual labor. They occupy the strategic commanding heights and competitive focus of global agricultural equipment and are also one of the key development directions for accelerating the construction of China's agricultural power. World agricultural powers and China have incorporated the research, development, manufacturing, and promotion of agricultural robots into their national strategies, respectively strengthening the agricultural robot policy and planning layout based on their own agricultural development characteristics, thus driving the agricultural robot industry into a stable growth period. [Progress] This paper firstly delves into the concept and defining features of agricultural robots, alongside an exploration of the global agricultural robot development policy and strategic planning blueprint. Furthermore, sheds light on the growth and development of the global agricultural robotics industry; Then proceeds to analyze the industrial backdrop, cutting-edge advancements, developmental challenges, and crucial technology aspects of three representative agricultural robots, including farmland robots, orchard picking robots, and indoor vegetable production robots. Finally, summarizes the disparity between Chinese agricultural robots and their foreign counterparts in terms of advanced technologies. (1) An agricultural robot is a multi-degree-of-freedom autonomous operating equipment that possesses accurate perception, autonomous decision-making, intelligent control, and automatic execution capabilities specifically designed for agricultural environments. When combined with artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things, agricultural robots form an agricultural robot application system. This system has relatively mature applications in key processes such as field planting, fertilization, pest control, yield estimation, inspection, harvesting, grafting, pruning, inspection, harvesting, transportation, and livestock and poultry breeding feeding, inspection, disinfection, and milking. Globally, agricultural robots, represented by plant protection robots, have entered the industrial application phase and are gradually realizing commercialization with vast market potential. (2) Compared to traditional agricultural machinery and equipment, agricultural robots possess advantages in performing hazardous tasks, executing batch repetitive work, managing complex field operations, and livestock breeding. In contrast to industrial robots, agricultural robots face technical challenges in three aspects. Firstly, the complexity and unstructured nature of the operating environment. Secondly, the flexibility, mobility, and commoditization of the operation object. Thirdly, the high level of technology and investment required. (3) Given the increasing demand for unmanned and less manned operations in farmland production, China's agricultural robot research, development, and application have started late and progressed slowly. The existing agricultural operation equipment still has a significant gap from achieving precision operation, digital perception, intelligent management, and intelligent decision-making. The comprehensive performance of domestic products lags behind foreign advanced counterparts, indicating that there is still a long way to go for industrial development and application. Firstly, the current agricultural robots predominantly utilize single actuators and operate as single machines, with the development of multi-arm cooperative robots just emerging. Most of these robots primarily engage in rigid operations, exhibiting limited flexibility, adaptability, and functionality. Secondly, the perception of multi-source environments in agricultural settings, as well as the autonomous operation of agricultural robot equipment, relies heavily on human input. Thirdly, the progress of new teaching methods and technologies for human-computer natural interaction is rather slow. Lastly, the development of operational infrastructure is insufficient, resulting in a relatively low degree of "mechanization". [Conclusions and Prospects] The paper anticipates the opportunities that arise from the rapid growth of the agricultural robotics industry in response to the escalating global shortage of agricultural labor. It outlines the emerging trends in agricultural robot technology, including autonomous navigation, self-learning, real-time monitoring, and operation control. In the future, the path planning and navigation information perception of agricultural robot autonomy are expected to become more refined. Furthermore, improvements in autonomous learning and cross-scenario operation performance will be achieved. The development of real-time operation monitoring of agricultural robots through digital twinning will also progress. Additionally, cloud-based management and control of agricultural robots for comprehensive operations will experience significant growth. Steady advancements will be made in the innovation and integration of agricultural machinery and techniques.

  • Topic--Intelligent Agricultural Sensor Technology
    WANGRujing
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(1): 1-17. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202401017

    [Significance] Agricultural sensor is the key technology for developing modern agriculture. Agricultural sensor is a kind of detection device that can sense and convert physical signal, which is related to the agricultural environment, plants and animals, into an electrical signal. Agricultural sensors could be applied to monitor crops and livestock in different agricultural environments, including weather, water, atmosphere and soil. It is also an important driving force to promote the iterative upgrading of agricultural technology and change agricultural production methods. [Progress] The different agricultural sensors are categorized, the cutting-edge research trends of agricultural sensors are analyzed, and summarizes the current research status of agricultural sensors are summarized in different application scenarios. Moreover, a deep analysis and discussion of four major categories is conducted, which include agricultural environment sensors, animal and plant life information sensors, agricultural product quality and safety sensors, and agricultural machinery sensors. The process of research, development, the universality and limitations of the application of the four types of agricultural sensors are summarized. Agricultural environment sensors are mainly used for real-time monitoring of key parameters in agricultural production environments, such as the quality of water, gas, and soil. The soil sensors provide data support for precision irrigation, rational fertilization, and soil management by monitoring indicators such as soil humidity, pH, temperature, nutrients, microorganisms, pests and diseases, heavy metals and agricultural pollution, etc. Monitoring of dissolved oxygen, pH, nitrate content, and organophosphorus pesticides in irrigation and aquaculture water through water sensors ensures the rational use of water resources and water quality safety. The gas sensor monitors the atmospheric CO2, NH3, C2H2, CH4 concentration, and other information, which provides the appropriate environmental conditions for the growth of crops in greenhouses. The animal life information sensor can obtain the animal's growth, movement, physiological and biochemical status, which include movement trajectory, food intake, heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure, blood glucose, etc. The plant life information sensors monitor the plant's health and growth, such as volatile organic compounds of the leaves, surface temperature and humidity, phytohormones, and other parameters. Especially, the flexible wearable plant sensors provide a new way to measure plant physiological characteristics accurately and monitor the water status and physiological activities of plants non-destructively and continuously. These sensors are mainly used to detect various indicators in agricultural products, such as temperature and humidity, freshness, nutrients, and potentially hazardous substances (e.g., bacteria, pesticide residues, heavy metals, etc. Agricultural machinery sensors can achieve real-time monitoring and controlling of agricultural machinery to achieve real-time cultivation, planting, management, and harvesting, automated operation of agricultural machinery, and accurate application of pesticide, fertilizer. [Conclusions and Prospects In the challenges and prospects of agricultural sensors, the core bottlenecks of large-scale application of agricultural sensors at the present stage are analyzed in detail. These include low-cost, specialization, high stability, and adaptive intelligence of agricultural sensors. Furthermore, the concept of "ubiquitous sensing in agriculture" is proposed, which provides ideas and references for the research and development of agricultural sensor technology.

  • Special Issue--Agricultural Information Perception and Models
    GUOWang, YANGYusen, WUHuarui, ZHUHuaji, MIAOYisheng, GUJingqiu
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(2): 1-13. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202403015

    [Significance] Big Models, or Foundation Models, have offered a new paradigm in smart agriculture. These models, built on the Transformer architecture, incorporate numerous parameters and have undergone extensive training, often showing excellent performance and adaptability, making them effective in addressing agricultural issues where data is limited. Integrating big models in agriculture promises to pave the way for a more comprehensive form of agricultural intelligence, capable of processing diverse inputs, making informed decisions, and potentially overseeing entire farming systems autonomously. [Progress] The fundamental concepts and core technologies of big models are initially elaborated from five aspects: the generation and core principles of the Transformer architecture, scaling laws of extending big models, large-scale self-supervised learning, the general capabilities and adaptions of big models, and the emerging capabilities of big models. Subsequently, the possible application scenarios of the big model in the agricultural field are analyzed in detail, the development status of big models is described based on three types of the models: Large language models (LLMs), large vision models (LVMs), and large multi-modal models (LMMs). The progress of applying big models in agriculture is discussed, and the achievements are presented. [Conclusions and Prospects] The challenges and key tasks of applying big models technology in agriculture are analyzed. Firstly, the current datasets used for agricultural big models are somewhat limited, and the process of constructing these datasets can be both expensive and potentially problematic in terms of copyright issues. There is a call for creating more extensive, more openly accessible datasets to facilitate future advancements. Secondly, the complexity of big models, due to their extensive parameter counts, poses significant challenges in terms of training and deployment. However, there is optimism that future methodological improvements will streamline these processes by optimizing memory and computational efficiency, thereby enhancing the performance of big models in agriculture. Thirdly, these advanced models demonstrate strong proficiency in analyzing image and text data, suggesting potential future applications in integrating real-time data from IoT devices and the Internet to make informed decisions, manage multi-modal data, and potentially operate machinery within autonomous agricultural systems. Finally, the dissemination and implementation of these big models in the public agricultural sphere are deemed crucial. The public availability of these models is expected to refine their capabilities through user feedback and alleviate the workload on humans by providing sophisticated and accurate agricultural advice, which could revolutionize agricultural practices.

  • Special Issue--Artificial Intelligence and Robot Technology for Smart Agriculture
    WANGTing, WANGNa, CUIYunpeng, LIUJuan
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(4): 105-116. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202311005

    [Objective] The rural revitalization strategy presents novel requisites for the extension of agricultural technology. However, the conventional method encounters the issue of a contradiction between supply and demand. Therefore, there is a need for further innovation in the supply form of agricultural knowledge. Recent advancements in artificial intelligence technologies, such as deep learning and large-scale neural networks, particularly the advent of large language models (LLMs), render anthropomorphic and intelligent agricultural technology extension feasible. With the agricultural technology knowledge service of fruit and vegetable as the demand orientation, the intelligent agricultural technology question answering system was built in this research based on LLM, providing agricultural technology extension services, including guidance on new agricultural knowledge and question-and-answer sessions. This facilitates farmers in accessing high-quality agricultural knowledge at their convenience. [Methods] Through an analysis of the demands of strawberry farmers, the agricultural technology knowledge related to strawberry cultivation was categorized into six themes: basic production knowledge, variety screening, interplanting knowledge, pest diagnosis and control, disease diagnosis and control, and drug damage diagnosis and control. Considering the current situation of agricultural technology, two primary tasks were formulated: named entity recognition and question answering related to agricultural knowledge. A training corpus comprising entity type annotations and question-answer pairs was constructed using a combination of automatic machine annotation and manual annotation, ensuring a small yet high-quality sample. After comparing four existing Large Language Models (Baichuan2-13B-Chat, ChatGLM2-6B, Llama 2-13B-Chat, and ChatGPT), the model exhibiting the best performance was chosen as the base LLM to develop the intelligent question-answering system for agricultural technology knowledge. Utilizing a high-quality corpus, pre-training of a Large Language Model and the fine-tuning method, a deep neural network with semantic analysis, context association, and content generation capabilities was trained. This model served as a Large Language Model for named entity recognition and question answering of agricultural knowledge, adaptable to various downstream tasks. For the task of named entity recognition, the fine-tuning method of Lora was employed, fine-tuning only essential parameters to expedite model training and enhance performance. Regarding the question-answering task, the Prompt-tuning method was used to fine-tune the Large Language Model, where adjustments were made based on the generated content of the model, achieving iterative optimization. Model performance optimization was conducted from two perspectives: data and model design. In terms of data, redundant or unclear data was manually removed from the labeled corpus. In terms of the model, a strategy based on retrieval enhancement generation technology was employed to deepen the understanding of agricultural knowledge in the Large Language Model and maintain real-time synchronization of knowledge, alleviating the problem of LLM hallucination. Drawing upon the constructed Large Language Model, an intelligent question-answering system was developed for agricultural technology knowledge. This system demonstrates the capability to generate high-precision and unambiguous answers, while also supporting the functionalities of multi-round question answering and retrieval of information sources. [Results and Discussions] Accuracy rate and recall rate served as indicators to evaluate the named entity recognition task performance of the Large Language Models. The results indicated that the performance of Large Language Models was closely related to factors such as model structure, the scale of the labeled corpus, and the number of entity types. After fine-tuning, the ChatGLM Large Language Model demonstrated the highest accuracy and recall rate. With the same number of entity types, a higher number of annotated corpora resulted in a higher accuracy rate. Fine-tuning had different effects on different models, and overall, it improved the average accuracy of all models under different knowledge topics, with ChatGLM, Llama, and Baichuan values all surpassing 85%. The average recall rate saw limited increase, and in some cases, it was even lower than the values before fine-tuning. Assessing the question-answering task of Large Language Models using hallucination rate and semantic similarity as indicators, data optimization and retrieval enhancement generation techniques effectively reduced the hallucination rate by 10% to 40% and improved semantic similarity by more than 15%. These optimizations significantly enhanced the generated content of the models in terms of correctness, logic, and comprehensiveness. [Conclusion] The pre-trained Large Language Model of ChatGLM exhibited superior performance in named entity recognition and question answering tasks in the agricultural field. Fine-tuning pre-trained Large Language Models for downstream tasks and optimizing based on retrieval enhancement generation technology mitigated the problem of language hallucination, markedly improving model performance. Large Language Model technology has the potential to innovate agricultural technology knowledge service modes and optimize agricultural knowledge extension. This can effectively reduce the time cost for farmers to obtain high-quality and effective knowledge, guiding more farmers towards agricultural technology innovation and transformation. However, due to challenges such as unstable performance, further research is needed to explore optimization methods for Large Language Models and their application in specific scenarios.

  • Information Processing and Decision Making
    YANGFeng, YAOXiaotong
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(1): 147-157. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202309010

    [Objective] To effectively tackle the unique attributes of wheat leaf pests and diseases in their native environment, a high-caliber and efficient pest detection model named YOLOv8-SS (You Only Look Once Version 8-SS) was proposed. This innovative model is engineered to accurately identify pests, thereby providing a solid scientific foundation for their prevention and management strategies. [Methods] A total of 3 639 raw datasets of images of wheat leaf pests and diseases were collected from 6 different wheat pests and diseases in various farmlands in the Yuchong County area of Gansu Province, at different periods of time, using mobile phones. This collection demonstrated the team's proficiency and commitment to advancing agricultural research. The dataset was meticulously constructed using the LabelImg software to accurately label the images with targeted pest species. To guarantee the model's superior generalization capabilities, the dataset was strategically divided into a training set and a test set in an 8:2 ratio. The dataset includes thorough observations and recordings of the wheat leaf blade's appearance, texture, color, as well as other variables that could influence these characteristics. The compiled dataset proved to be an invaluable asset for both training and validation activities. Leveraging the YOLOv8 algorithm, an enhanced lightweight convolutional neural network, ShuffleNetv2, was selected as the basis network for feature extraction from images. This was accomplished by integrating a 3×3 Depthwise Convolution (DWConv) kernel, the h-swish activation function, and a Squeeze-and-Excitation Network (SENet) attention mechanism. These enhancements streamlined the model by diminishing the parameter count and computational demands, all while sustaining high detection precision. The deployment of these sophisticated methodologies exemplified the researchers' commitment and passion for innovation. The YOLOv8 model employs the SEnet attention mechanism module within both its Backbone and Neck components, significantly reducing computational load while bolstering accuracy. This method exemplifies the model's exceptional performance, distinguishing it from other models in the domain. By integrating a dedicated small target detection layer, the model's capabilities have been augmented, enabling more efficient and precise pest and disease detection. The introduction of a new detection feature map, sized 160×160 pixels, enables the network to concentrate on identifying small-targeted pests and diseases, thereby enhancing the accuracy of pest and disease recognition. Results and Discussion The YOLOv8-SS wheat leaf pests and diseases detection model has been significantly improved to accurately detect wheat leaf pests and diseases in their natural environment. By employing the refined ShuffleNet V2 within the DarkNet-53 framework, as opposed to the conventional YOLOv8, under identical experimental settings, the model exhibited a 4.53% increase in recognition accuracy and a 4.91% improvement in F1-Score, compared to the initial model. Furthermore, the incorporation of a dedicated small target detection layer led to a subsequent rise in accuracy and F1-Scores of 2.31% and 2.16%, respectively, despite a minimal upsurge in the number of parameters and computational requirements. The integration of the SEnet attention mechanism module into the YOLOv8 model resulted in a detection accuracy rate increase of 1.85% and an F1-Score enhancement of 2.72%. Furthermore, by swapping the original neural network architecture with an enhanced ShuffleNet V2 and appending a compact object detection sublayer (namely YOLOv8-SS), the resulting model exhibited a heightened recognition accuracy of 89.41% and an F1-Score of 88.12%. The YOLOv8-SS variant substantially outperformed the standard YOLOv8, showing a remarkable enhancement of 10.11% and 9.92% in accuracy, respectively. This outcome strikingly illustrates the YOLOv8-SS's prowess in balancing speed with precision. Moreover, it achieves convergence at a more rapid pace, requiring approximately 40 training epochs, to surpass other renowned models such as Faster R-CNN, MobileNetV2, SSD, YOLOv5, YOLOX, and the original YOLOv8 in accuracy. Specifically, the YOLOv8-SS boasted an average accuracy 23.01%, 15.13%, 11%, 25.21%, 27.52%, and 10.11% greater than that of the competing models, respectively. In a head-to-head trial involving a public dataset (LWDCD 2020) and a custom-built dataset, the LWDCD 2020 dataset yielded a striking accuracy of 91.30%, outperforming the custom-built dataset by a margin of 1.89% when utilizing the same network architecture, YOLOv8-SS. The AI Challenger 2018-6 and Plant-Village-5 datasets did not perform as robustly, achieving accuracy rates of 86.90% and 86.78% respectively. The YOLOv8-SS model has shown substantial improvements in both feature extraction and learning capabilities over the original YOLOv8, particularly excelling in natural environments with intricate, unstructured backdrops. Conclusion The YOLOv8-SS model is meticulously designed to deliver unmatched recognition accuracy while consuming a minimal amount of storage space. In contrast to conventional detection models, this groundbreaking model exhibits superior detection accuracy and speed, rendering it exceedingly valuable across various applications. This breakthrough serves as an invaluable resource for cutting-edge research on crop pest and disease detection within natural environments featuring complex, unstructured backgrounds. Our method is versatile and yields significantly enhanced detection performance, all while maintaining a lean model architecture. This renders it highly appropriate for real-world scenarios involving large-scale crop pest and disease detection.

  • Special Issue--Artificial Intelligence and Robot Technology for Smart Agriculture
    CHENRuiyun, TIANWenbin, BAOHaibo, LIDuan, XIEXinhao, ZHENGYongjun, TANYu
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(4): 16-32. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202308006

    [Significance] As the research focus of future agricultural machinery, agricultural wheeled robots are developing in the direction of intelligence and multi-functionality. Advanced environmental perception technologies serve as a crucial foundation and key components to promote intelligent operations of agricultural wheeled robots. However, considering the non-structured and complex environments in agricultural on-field operational processes, the environmental information obtained through conventional 2D perception technologies is limited. Therefore, 3D environmental perception technologies are highlighted as they can provide more dimensional information such as depth, among others, thereby directly enhancing the precision and efficiency of unmanned agricultural machinery operation. This paper aims to provide a detailed analysis and summary of 3D environmental perception technologies, investigate the issues in the development of agricultural environmental perception technologies, and clarify the future key development directions of 3D environmental perception technologies regarding agricultural machinery, especially the agricultural wheeled robot. [Progress] Firstly, an overview of the general status of wheeled robots was introduced, considering their dominant influence in environmental perception technologies. It was concluded that multi-wheel robots, especially four-wheel robots, were more suitable for the agricultural environment due to their favorable adaptability and robustness in various agricultural scenarios. In recent years, multi-wheel agricultural robots have gained widespread adoption and application globally. The further improvement of the universality, operation efficiency, and intelligence of agricultural wheeled robots is determined by the employed perception systems and control systems. Therefore, agricultural wheeled robots equipped with novel 3D environmental perception technologies can obtain high-dimensional environmental information, which is significant for improving the accuracy of decision-making and control. Moreover, it enables them to explore effective ways to address the challenges in intelligent environmental perception technology. Secondly, the recent development status of 3D environmental perception technologies in the agriculture field was briefly reviewed. Meanwhile, sensing equipment and the corresponding key technologies were also introduced. For the wheeled robots reported in the agriculture area, it was noted that the applied technologies of environmental perception, in terms of the primary employed sensor solutions, were divided into three categories: LiDAR, vision sensors, and multi-sensor fusion-based solutions. Multi-line LiDAR had better performance on many tasks when employing point cloud processing algorithms. Compared with LiDAR, depth cameras such as binocular cameras, TOF cameras, and structured light cameras have been comprehensively investigated for their application in agricultural robots. Depth camera-based perception systems have shown superiority in cost and providing abundant point cloud information. This study has investigated and summarized the latest research on 3D environmental perception technologies employed by wheeled robots in agricultural machinery. In the reported application scenarios of agricultural environmental perception, the state-of-the-art 3D environmental perception approaches have mainly focused on obstacle recognition, path recognition, and plant phenotyping. 3D environmental perception technologies have the potential to enhance the ability of agricultural robot systems to understand and adapt to the complex, unstructured agricultural environment. Furthermore, they can effectively address several challenges that traditional environmental perception technologies have struggled to overcome, such as partial sensor information loss, adverse weather conditions, and poor lighting conditions. Current research results have indicated that multi-sensor fusion-based 3D environmental perception systems outperform single-sensor-based systems. This superiority arises from the amalgamation of advantages from various sensors, which concurrently serve to mitigate individual shortcomings. [Conclusions and Prospects] The potential of 3D environmental perception technology for agricultural wheeled robots was discussed in light of the evolving demands of smart agriculture. Suggestions were made to improve sensor applicability, develop deep learning-based agricultural environmental perception technology, and explore intelligent high-speed online multi-sensor fusion strategies. Currently, the employed sensors in agricultural wheeled robots may not fully meet practical requirements, and the system's cost remains a barrier to widespread deployment of 3D environmental perception technologies in agriculture. Therefore, there is an urgent need to enhance the agricultural applicability of 3D sensors and reduce production costs. Deep learning methods were highlighted as a powerful tool for processing information obtained from 3D environmental perception sensors, improving response speed and accuracy. However, the limited datasets in the agriculture field remain a key issue that needs to be addressed. Additionally, multi-sensor fusion has been recognized for its potential to enhance perception performance in complex and changeable environments. As a result, it is clear that 3D environmental perception technology based on multi-sensor fusion is the future development direction of smart agriculture. To overcome challenges such as slow data processing speed, delayed processed data, and limited memory space for storing data, it is essential to investigate effective fusion schemes to achieve online multi-source information fusion with greater intelligence and speed.

  • Special Issue--Monitoring Technology of Crop Information
    GUANBolun, ZHANGLiping, ZHUJingbo, LIRunmei, KONGJuanjuan, WANGYan, DONGWei
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(3): 17-34. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202306012

    [Significance] The scientific dataset of agricultural pests and diseases is the foundation for monitoring and warning of agricultural pests and diseases. It is of great significance for the development of agricultural pest control, and is an important component of developing smart agriculture. The quality of the dataset affecting the effectiveness of image recognition algorithms, with the discovery of the importance of deep learning technology in intelligent monitoring of agricultural pests and diseases. The construction of high-quality agricultural pest and disease datasets is gradually attracting attention from scholars in this field. In the task of image recognition, on one hand, the recognition effect depends on the improvement strategy of the algorithm, and on the other hand, it depends on the quality of the dataset. The same recognition algorithm learns different features in different quality datasets, so its recognition performance also varies. In order to propose a dataset evaluation index to measure the quality of agricultural pest and disease datasets, this article analyzes the existing datasets and takes the challenges faced in constructing agricultural pest and disease image datasets as the starting point to review the construction of agricultural pest and disease datasets. [Progress] Firstly, disease and pest datasets are divided into two categories: private datasets and public datasets. Private datasets have the characteristics of high annotation quality, high image quality, and a large number of inter class samples that are not publicly available. Public datasets have the characteristics of multiple types, low image quality, and poor annotation quality. Secondly, the problems faced in the construction process of datasets are summarized, including imbalanced categories at the dataset level, difficulty in feature extraction at the dataset sample level, and difficulty in measuring the dataset size at the usage level. These include imbalanced inter class and intra class samples, selection bias, multi-scale targets, dense targets, uneven data distribution, uneven image quality, insufficient dataset size, and dataset availability. The main reasons for the problem are analyzed by two key aspects of image acquisition and annotation methods in dataset construction, and the improvement strategies and suggestions for the algorithm to address the above issues are summarized. The collection devices of the dataset can be divided into handheld devices, drone platforms, and fixed collection devices. The collection method of handheld devices is flexible and convenient, but it is inefficient and requires high photography skills. The drone platform acquisition method is suitable for data collection in contiguous areas, but the detailed features captured are not clear enough. The fixed device acquisition method has higher efficiency, but the shooting scene is often relatively fixed. The annotation of image data is divided into rectangular annotation and polygonal annotation. In image recognition and detection, rectangular annotation is generally used more frequently. It is difficult to label images that are difficult to separate the target and background. Improper annotation can lead to the introduction of more noise or incomplete algorithm feature extraction. In response to the problems in the above three aspects, the evaluation methods are summarized for data distribution consistency, dataset size, and image annotation quality at the end of the article. Conclusions and Prospects The future research and development suggestions for constructing high-quality agricultural pest and disease image datasets based are proposed on the actual needs of agricultural pest and disease image recognition:(1) Construct agricultural pest and disease datasets combined with practical usage scenarios. In order to enable the algorithm to extract richer target features, image data can be collected from multiple perspectives and environments to construct a dataset. According to actual needs, data categories can be scientifically and reasonably divided from the perspective of algorithm feature extraction, avoiding unreasonable inter class and intra class distances, and thus constructing a dataset that meets task requirements for classification and balanced feature distribution. (2) Balancing the relationship between datasets and algorithms. When improving algorithms, consider the more sufficient distribution of categories and features in the dataset, as well as the size of the dataset that matches the model, to improve algorithm accuracy, robustness, and practicality. It ensures that comparative experiments are conducted on algorithm improvement under the same evaluation standard dataset, and improved the pest and disease image recognition algorithm. Research the correlation between the scale of agricultural pest and disease image data and algorithm performance, study the relationship between data annotation methods and algorithms that are difficult to annotate pest and disease images, integrate recognition algorithms for fuzzy, dense, occluded targets, and propose evaluation indicators for agricultural pest and disease datasets. (3) Enhancing the use value of datasets. Datasets can not only be used for research on image recognition, but also for research on other business needs. The identification, collection, and annotation of target images is a challenging task in the construction process of pest and disease datasets. In the process of collecting image data, in addition to collecting images, attention can be paid to the collection of surrounding environmental information and host information. This method is used to construct a multimodal agricultural pest and disease dataset, fully leveraging the value of the dataset. In order to focus researchers on business innovation research, it is necessary to innovate the organizational form of data collection, develop a big data platform for agricultural diseases and pests, explore the correlation between multimodal data, improve the accessibility and convenience of data, and provide efficient services for application implementation and business innovation.

  • Special Issue--Monitoring Technology of Crop Information
    LONGJianing, ZHANGZhao, LIUXiaohang, LIYunxia, RUIZhaoyu, YUJiangfan, ZHANGMan, FLORESPaulo, HANZhexiong, HUCan, WANGXufeng
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(3): 62-74. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202308010

    [Objective] Wheat, as one of the major global food crops, plays a key role in food production and food supply. Different influencing factors can lead to different types of wheat lodging, e.g., root lodging may be due to improper use of fertilizers. While stem lodging is mostly due to harsh environments, different types of wheat lodging can have different impacts on yield and quality. The aim of this study was to categorize the types of wheat lodging by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) image detection and to investigate the effect of UAV flight altitude on the classification performance. [Methods] Three UAV flight altitudes (15, 45, and 91 m) were set to acquire images of wheat test fields. The main research methods contained three parts: an automatic segmentation algorithm, wheat classification model selection, and an improved classification model based on EfficientNetV2-C. In the first part, the automatic segmentation algorithm was used to segment the UAV to acquire the wheat test field at three different heights and made it into the training dataset needed for the classification model. The main steps were first to preprocess the original wheat test field images acquired by the UAV through scaling, skew correction, and other methods to save computation time and improve segmentation accuracy. Subsequently, the pre-processed image information was analyzed, and the green part of the image was extracted using the super green algorithm, which was binarized and combined with the edge contour extraction algorithm to remove the redundant part of the image to extract the region of interest, so that the image was segmented for the first time. Finally, the idea of accumulating pixels to find sudden value added was used to find the segmentation coordinates of two different sizes of wheat test field in the image, and the region of interest of the wheat test field was segmented into a long rectangle and a short rectangle test field twice, so as to obtain the structural parameters of different sizes of wheat test field and then to generate the dataset of different heights. In the second part, four machine learning classification models of support vector machine (SVM), K nearest neighbor (KNN), decision tree (DT), and naive bayes (NB), and two deep learning classification models (ResNet101 and EfficientNetV2) were selected. Under the unimproved condition, six classification models were utilized to classify the images collected from three UAVs at different flight altitudes, respectively, and the optimal classification model was selected for improvement. In the third part, an improved model, EfficientNetV2-C, with EfficientNetV2 as the base model, was proposed to classify and recognized the lodging type of wheat in test field images. The main improvement points were attention mechanism improvement and loss function improvement. The attention mechanism was to replace the original model squeeze and excitation (SE) with coordinate attention (CA), which was able to embed the position information into the channel attention, aggregate the features along the width and height directions, respectively, during feature extraction, and capture the long-distance correlation in the width direction while retaining the long-distance correlation in the length direction, accurate location information, enhancing the feature extraction capability of the network in space. The loss function was replaced by class-balanced focal loss (CB-Focal Loss), which could assign different loss weights according to the number of valid samples in each class when targeting unbalanced datasets, effectively solving the impact of data imbalance on the classification accuracy of the model. [Results and Discussions] Four machine learning classification results: SVM average classification accuracy was 81.95%, DT average classification accuracy was 79.56%, KNN average classification accuracy was 59.32%, and NB average classification accuracy was 59.48%. The average classification accuracy of the two deep learning models, ResNet101 and EfficientNetV2, was 78.04%, and the average classification accuracy of ResNet101 was 81.61%. Comparing the above six classification models, the EfficientNetV2 classification model performed optimally at all heights. And the improved EfficientNetV2-C had an average accuracy of 90.59%, which was 8.98% higher compared to the average accuracy of EfficientNetV2. The SVM classification accuracies of UAVs at three flight altitudes of 15, 45, and 91 m were 81.33%, 83.57%, and 81.00%, respectively, in which the accuracy was the highest when the altitude was 45 m, and the classification results of the SVM model values were similar to each other, which indicated that the imbalance of the input data categories would not affect the model's classification effect, and the SVM classification model was able to solve the problem of high dimensionality of the data efficiently and had a good performance for small and medium-sized data sets. The SVM classification model could effectively solve the problem of the high dimensionality of data and had a better classification effect on small and medium-sized datasets. For the deep learning classification model, however, as the flight altitude increases from 15 to 91 m, the classification performance of the deep learning model decreased due to the loss of image feature information. Among them, the classification accuracy of ResNet101 decreased from 81.57% to 78.04%, the classification accuracy of EfficientNetV2 decreased from 84.40% to 81.61%, and the classification accuracy of EfficientNetV2-C decreased from 97.65% to 90.59%. The classification accuracy of EfficientNetV2-C at each of the three altitudes. The difference between the values of precision, recall, and F1-Score results of classification was small, which indicated that the improved model in this study could effectively solve the problems of unbalanced model classification results and poor classification effect caused by data imbalance. [Conclusions] The improved EfficientNetV2-C achieved high accuracy in wheat lodging type detection, which provides a new solution for wheat lodging early warning and crop management and is of great significance for improving wheat production efficiency and sustainable agricultural development.

  • Special Issue--Monitoring Technology of Crop Information
    LIUYixue, SONGYuyang, CUIPing, FANGYulin, SUBaofeng
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(3): 49-61. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202308013

    [Objective] Wine grapes are severely affected by leafroll disease, which affects their growth, and reduces the quality of the color, taste, and flavor of wine. Timely and accurate diagnosis of leafroll disease severity is crucial for preventing and controlling the disease, improving the wine grape fruit quality and wine-making potential. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote sensing technology provides high-resolution images of wine grape vineyards, which can capture the features of grapevine canopies with different levels of leafroll disease severity. Deep learning networks extract complex and high-level features from UAV remote sensing images and perform fine-grained classification of leafroll disease infection severity. However, the diagnosis of leafroll disease severity is challenging due to the imbalanced data distribution of different infection levels and categories in UAV remote sensing images. Method A novel method for diagnosing leafroll disease severity was developed at a canopy scale using UAV remote sensing technology and deep learning. The main challenge of this task was the imbalanced data distribution of different infection levels and categories in UAV remote sensing images. To address this challenge, a method that combined deep learning fine-grained classification and generative adversarial networks (GANs) was proposed. In the first stage, the GANformer, a Transformer-based GAN model was used, to generate diverse and realistic virtual canopy images of grapevines with different levels of leafroll disease severity. To further analyze the image generation effect of GANformer. The t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) to visualize the learned features of real and simulated images. In the second stage, the CA-Swin Transformer, an improved image classification model based on the Swin Transformer and channel attention mechanism was used, to classify the patch images into different classes of leafroll disease infection severity. CA-Swin Transformer could also use a self-attention mechanism to capture the long-range dependencies of image patches and enhance the feature representation of the Swin Transformer model by adding a channel attention mechanism after each Transformer layer. The channel attention (CA) mechanism consisted of two fully connected layers and an activation function, which could extract correlations between different channels and amplify the informative features. The ArcFace loss function and instance normalization layer was also used to enhance the fine-grained feature extraction and downsampling ability for grapevine canopy images. The UAV images of wine grape vineyards were collected and processed into orthomosaic images. They labeled into three categories: healthy, moderate infection, and severe infection using the in-field survey data. A sliding window method was used to extract patch images and labels from orthomosaic images for training and testing. The performance of the improved method was compared with the baseline model using different loss functions and normalization methods. The distribution of leafroll disease severity was mapped in vineyards using the trained CA-Swin Transformer model. [Results and Discussions] The experimental results showed that the GANformer could generate high-quality virtual canopy images of grapevines with an FID score of 93.20. The images generated by GANformer were visually very similar to real images and could produce images with different levels of leafroll disease severity. The T-SNE visualization showed that the features of real and simulated images were well clustered and separated in two-dimensional space, indicating that GANformer learned meaningful and diverse features, which enriched the image dataset. Compared to CNN-based deep learning models, Transformer-based deep learning models had more advantages in diagnosing leafroll disease infection. Swin Transformer achieved an optimal accuracy of 83.97% on the enhanced dataset, which was higher than other models such as GoogLeNet, MobileNetV2, NasNet Mobile, ResNet18, ResNet50, CVT, and T2TViT. It was found that replacing the cross entropy loss function with the ArcFace loss function improved the classification accuracy by 1.50%, and applying instance normalization instead of layer normalization further improved the accuracy by 0.30%. Moreover, the proposed channel attention mechanism, named CA-Swin Transformer, enhanced the feature representation of the Swin Transformer model, achieved the highest classification accuracy on the test set, reaching 86.65%, which was 6.54% higher than using the Swin Transformer on the original test dataset. By creating a distribution map of leafroll disease severity in vineyards, it was found that there was a certain correlation between leafroll disease severity and grape rows. Areas with a larger number of severe leafroll diseases caused by Cabernet Sauvignon were more prone to have missing or weak plants. [Conclusions] A novel method for diagnosing grapevine leafroll disease severity at a canopy scale using UAV remote sensing technology and deep learning was proposed. This method can generate diverse and realistic virtual canopy images of grapevines with different levels of leafroll disease severity using GANformer, and classify them into different classes using CA-Swin Transformer. This method can also map the distribution of leafroll disease severity in vineyards using a sliding window method, and provides a new approach for crop disease monitoring based on UAV remote sensing technology.

  • Special Issue--Monitoring Technology of Crop Information
    WANGJingyong, ZHANGMingzhen, LINGHuarong, WANGZiting, GAIJingyao
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(3): 142-153. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202308018

    Objectives Chlorophyll content and water content are key physiological indicators of crop growth, and their non-destructive detection is a key technology to realize the monitoring of crop growth status such as drought stress. This study took maize as an object to develop a hyperspectral-based approach for the rapid and non-destructive acquisition of the leaf chlorophyll content and water content for drought stress assessment. [Methods] Drought treatment experiments were carried out in a greenhouse of the College of Agriculture, Guangxi University. Maize plants were subjected to drought stress treatment at the seedling stage (four leaves). Four drought treatments were set up for normal water treatment [CK], mild drought [W1], moderate drought [W2], and severe drought [W3], respectively. Leaf samples were collected at the 3rd, 6th, and 9th days after drought treatments, and 288 leaf samples were collected in total, with the corresponding chlorophyll content and water content measured in a standard laboratory protocol. A pair of push-broom hyperspectral cameras were used to collect images of the 288 seedling maize leaf samples, and image processing techniques were used to extract the mean spectra of the leaf lamina part. The algorithm flow framework of "pre-processing - feature extraction - machine learning inversion" was adopted for processing the extracted spectral data. The effects of different pre-processing methods, feature wavelength extraction methods and machine learning regression models were analyzed systematically on the prediction performance of chlorophyll content and water content, respectively. Accordingly, the optimal chlorophyll content and water content inversion models were constructed. Firstly, 70% of the spectral data was randomly sampled and used as the training dataset for training the inversion model, whereas the remaining 30% was used as the testing dataset to evaluate the performance of the inversion model. Subsequently, the effects of different spectral pre-processing methods on the prediction performance of chlorophyll content and water content were compared. Different feature wavelengths were extracted from the optimal pre-processed spectra using different algorithms, then their capabilities in preserve the information useful for the inversion of leaf chlorophyll content and water content were compared. Finally, the performances of different machine learning regression model were compared, and the optimal inversion model was constructed and used to visualize the chlorophyll content and water content. Additionally, the construction of vegetation coefficients were explored for the inversion of chlorophyll content and water content and evaluated their inversion ability. The performance evaluation indexes used include determination coefficient and root mean squared error (RMSE). [Results and Discussions] With the aggravation of stress, the reflectivity of leaves in the wavelength range of 400~1700 nm gradually increased with the degree of drought stress. For the inversion of leaf chlorophyll content and water content, combining stepwise regression (SR) feature extraction with Stacking regression could obtain an optimal performance for chlorophyll content prediction, with an R2 of 0.878 and an RMSE of 0.317 mg/g. Compared with the full-band stacking model, SR-Stacking not only improved R2 by 2.9%, reduced RMSE by 0.0356mg/g, but also reduced the number of model input variables from 1301 to 9. Combining the successive projection algorithm (SPA) feature extraction with Stacking regression could obtain the optimal performance for water content prediction, with an R2 of 0.859 and RMSE of 3.75%. Compared with the full-band stacking model, SPA-Stacking not only increased R2 by 0.2%, reduced RMSE by 0.03%, but also reduced the number of model input variables from 1301 to 16. As the newly constructed vegetation coefficients, normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI) [(R410-R559)/(R410+R559)] and ratio index (RI) (R400/R1171) had the highest accuracy and were significantly higher than the traditional vegetation coefficients for chlorophyll content and water content inversion, respectively. Their R2 were 0.803 and 0.827, and their RMSE were 0.403 mg/g and 3.28%, respectively. The chlorophyll content and water content of leaves were visualized. The results showed that the physiological parameters of leaves could be visualized and the differences of physiological parameters in different regions of the same leaves can be found more intuitively and in detail. [Conclusions] The inversion models and vegetation indices constructed based on hyperspectral information can achieve accurate and non-destructive measurement of chlorophyll content and water content in maize leaves. This study can provide a theoretical basis and technical support for real-time monitoring of corn growth status. Through the leaf spectral information, according to the optimal model, the water content and chlorophyll content of each pixel of the hyperspectral image can be predicted, and the distribution of water content and chlorophyll content can be intuitively displayed by color. Because the field environment is more complex, transfer learning will be carried out in future work to improve its generalization ability in different environments subsequently and strive to develop an online monitoring system for field drought and nutrient stress.

  • Special Issue--Monitoring Technology of Crop Information
    ZHANGGan, YANHaifeng, HUGensheng, ZHANGDongyan, CHENGTao, PANZhenggao, XUHaifeng, SHENShuhao, ZHUKeyu
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(3): 75-85. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202309013

    Objective Lodging constitutes a severe crop-related catastrophe, resulting in a reduction in photosynthesis intensity, diminished nutrient absorption efficiency, diminished crop yield, and compromised crop quality. The utilization of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to acquire agricultural remote sensing imagery, despite providing high-resolution details and clear indications of crop lodging, encounters limitations related to the size of the study area and the duration of the specific growth stages of the plants. This limitation hinders the acquisition of an adequate quantity of low-altitude remote sensing images of wheat fields, thereby detrimentally affecting the performance of the monitoring model. The aim of this study is to explore a method for precise segmentation of lodging areas in limited crop growth periods and research areas. [Methods] Compared to the images captured at lower flight altitudes, the images taken by UAVs at higher altitudes cover a larger area. Consequently, for the same area, the number of images taken by UAVs at higher altitudes is fewer than those taken at lower altitudes. However, the training of deep learning models requires huge amount supply of images. To make up the issue of insufficient quantity of high-altitude UAV-acquired images for the training of the lodging area monitoring model, a transfer learning strategy was proposed. In order to verify the effectiveness of the transfer learning strategy, based on the Swin-Transformer framework, the control model, hybrid training model and transfer learning training model were obtained by training UAV images in 4 years (2019, 2020, 2021, 2023)and 3 study areas(Shucheng, Guohe, Baihe) under 2 flight altitudes (40 and 80 m). To test the model's performance, a comparative experimental approach was adopted to assess the accuracy of the three models for segmenting 80 m altitude images. The assessment relied on five metrics: intersection of union (IoU), accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. [Results and Discussions] The transfer learning model shows the highest accuracy in lodging area detection. Specifically, the mean IoU, accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score achieved 85.37%, 94.98%, 91.30%, 92.52% and 91.84%, respectively. Notably, the accuracy of lodging area detection for images acquired at a 40 m altitude surpassed that of images captured at an 80 m altitude when employing a training dataset composed solely of images obtained at the 40 m altitude. However, when adopting mixed training and transfer learning strategies and augmenting the training dataset with images acquired at an 80 m altitude, the accuracy of lodging area detection for 80 m altitude images improved, inspite of the expense of reduced accuracy for 40 m altitude images. The performance of the mixed training model and the transfer learning model in lodging area detection for both 40 and 80 m altitude images exhibited close correspondence. In a cross-study area comparison of the mean values of model evaluation indices, lodging area detection accuracy was slightly higher for images obtained in Baihu area compared to Shucheng area, while accuracy for images acquired in Shucheng surpassed that of Guohe. These variations could be attributed to the diverse wheat varieties cultivated in Guohe area through drill seeding. The high planting density of wheat in Guohe resulted in substantial lodging areas, accounting for 64.99% during the late mature period. The prevalence of semi-lodging wheat further exacerbated the issue, potentially leading to misidentification of non-lodging areas. Consequently, this led to a reduction in the recall rate (mean recall for Guohe images was 89.77%, which was 4.88% and 3.57% lower than that for Baihu and Shucheng, respectively) and IoU (mean IoU for Guohe images was 80.38%, which was 8.80% and 3.94% lower than that for Baihu and Shucheng, respectively). Additionally, the accuracy, precision, and F1-score for Guohe were also lower compared to Baihu and Shucheng. [Conclusions] This study inspected the efficacy of a strategy aimed at reducing the challenges associated with the insufficient number of high-altitude images for semantic segmentation model training. By pre-training the semantic segmentation model with low-altitude images and subsequently employing high-altitude images for transfer learning, improvements of 1.08% to 3.19% were achieved in mean IoU, accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score, alongside a notable mean weighted frame rate enhancement of 555.23 fps/m2. The approach proposed in this study holds promise for improving lodging monitoring accuracy and the speed of image segmentation. In practical applications, it is feasible to leverage a substantial quantity of 40 m altitude UAV images collected from diverse study areas including various wheat varieties for pre-training purposes. Subsequently, a limited set of 80 m altitude images acquired in specific study areas can be employed for transfer learning, facilitating the development of a targeted lodging detection model. Future research will explore the utilization of UAV images captured at even higher flight altitudes for further enhancing lodging area detection efficiency.

  • Special Issue--Agricultural Information Perception and Models
    ZHANGRonghua, BAIXue, FANJiangchuan
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(2): 49-61. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202311007

    [Objective] It is of great significance to improve the efficiency and accuracy of crop pest detection in complex natural environments, and to change the current reliance on expert manual identification in the agricultural production process. Targeting the problems of small target size, mimicry with crops, low detection accuracy, and slow algorithm reasoning speed in crop pest detection, a complex scene crop pest target detection algorithm named YOLOv8-Entend was proposed in this research. [Methods] Firstly, the GSConv was introduecd to enhance the model's receptive field, allowing for global feature aggregation. This mechanism enables feature aggregation at both node and global levels simultaneously, obtaining local features from neighboring nodes through neighbor sampling and aggregation operations, enhancing the model's receptive field and semantic understanding ability. Additionally, some Convs were replaced with lightweight Ghost Convolutions and HorBlock was utilized to capture longer-term feature dependencies. The recursive gate convolution employed gating mechanisms to remember and transmit previous information, capturing long-term correlations. Furthermore, Concat was replaced with BiFPN for richer feature fusion. The bidirectional fusion of depth features from top to bottom and from bottom to top enhances the transmission of feature information acrossed different network layers. Utilizing the VoVGSCSP module, feature maps of different scales were connected to create longer feature map vectors, increasing model diversity and enhancing small object detection. The convolutional block attention module (CBAM) attention mechanism was introduced to strengthen features of field pests and reduce background weights caused by complexity. Next, the Wise IoU dynamic non-monotonic focusing mechanism was implemented to evaluate the quality of anchor boxes using "outlier" instead of IoU. This mechanism also included a gradient gain allocation strategy, which reduced the competitiveness of high-quality anchor frames and minimizes harmful gradients from low-quality examples. This approach allowed WIoU to concentrate on anchor boxes of average quality, improving the network model's generalization ability and overall performance. Subsequently, the improved YOLOv8-Extend model was compared with the original YOLOv8 model, YOLOv5, YOLOv8-GSCONV, YOLOv8-BiFPN, and YOLOv8-CBAM to validate the accuracy and precision of model detection. Finally, the model was deployed on edge devices for inference verification to confirm its effectiveness in practical application scenarios. [Results and Discussions] The results indicated that the improved YOLOv8-Extend model achieved notable improvements in accuracy, recall, mAP@0.5, and mAP@0.5:0.95 evaluation indices. Specifically, there were increases of 2.6%, 3.6%, 2.4% and 7.2%, respectively, showcasing superior detection performance. YOLOv8-Extend and YOLOv8 run respectively on the edge computing device JETSON ORIN NX 16 GB and were accelerated by TensorRT, mAP@0.5 improved by 4.6%, FPS reached 57.6, meeting real-time detection requirements. The YOLOv8-Extend model demonstrated better adaptability in complex agricultural scenarios and exhibited clear advantages in detecting small pests and pests sharing similar growth environments in practical data collection. The accuracy in detecting challenging data saw a notable increased of 11.9%. Through algorithm refinement, the model showcased improved capability in extracting and focusing on features in crop pest target detection, addressing issues such as small targets, similar background textures, and challenging feature extraction. [Conclusions] The YOLOv8-Extend model introduced in this study significantly boosts detection accuracy and recognition rates while upholding high operational efficiency. It is suitable for deployment on edge terminal computing devices to facilitate real-time detection of crop pests, offering technological advancements and methodologies for the advancement of cost-effective terminal-based automatic pest recognition systems. This research can serve as a valuable resource and aid in the intelligent detection of other small targets, as well as in optimizing model structures.

  • Special Issue--Monitoring Technology of Crop Information
    CHENGYuxin, XUEBowen, KONGYuanyuan, YAODongliang, TIANLong, WANGXue, YAOXia, ZHUYan, CAOWeixing, CHENGTao
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(3): 35-48. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202309008

    Objective Rice blast is considered as the most destructive disease that threatens global rice production and causes severe economic losses worldwide. The detection of rice blast in an early manner plays an important role in resistance breeding and plant protection. At present, most studies on rice blast detection have been devoted to its symptomatic stage, while none of previous studies have used solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) to monitor rice leaf blast (RLB) at early stages. This research was conducted to investigate the early identification of RLB infected leaves based on solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence at different leaf positions. [Methods] Greenhouse experiments and field trials were conducted separately in Nanjing and Nantong in July and August, 2021, in order to record SIF data of the top 1th to 4th leaves of rice plants at jointing and heading stages with an Analytical Spectral Devices (ASD) spectrometer coupled with a FluoWat leaf clip and a halogen lamp. At the same time, the disease severity levels of the measured samples were manually collected according to the GB/T 15790-2009 standard. After the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) of SIF spectra, separability assessment and feature selection were applied to SIF spectra. Wavelet features sensitive to RLB were extracted, and the sensitive features and their identification accuracy of infected leaves for different leaf positions were compared. Finally, RLB identification models were constructed based on linear discriminant analysis (LDA). [Results and Discussion] The results showed that the upward and downward SIF in the far-red region of infected leaves at each leaf position were significantly higher than those of healthy leaves. This may be due to the infection of the fungal pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae, which may have destroyed the chloroplast structure, and ultimately inhibited the primary reaction of photosynthesis. In addition, both the upward and downward SIF in the red region and the far-red region increased with the decrease of leaf position. The sensitive wavelet features varied by leaf position, while most of them were distributed in the steep slope of the SIF spectrum and wavelet scales 3, 4 and 5. The sensitive features of the top 1th leaf were mainly located at 665-680 nm, 755-790 nm and 815-830 nm. For the top 2th leaf, the sensitive features were mainly found at 665-680 nm and 815-830 nm. For the top 3th one, most of the sensitive features lay at 690 nm, 755-790 nm and 815-830 nm, and the sensitive bands around 690 nm were observed. The sensitive features of the top 4th leaf were primarily located at 665-680 nm, 725 nm and 815-830 nm, and the sensitive bands around 725 nm were observed. The wavelet features of the common sensitive region (665-680 nm), not only had physiological significance, but also coincided with the chlorophyll absorption peak that allowed for reasonable spectral interpretation. There were differences in the accuracy of RLB identification models at different leaf positions. Based on the upward and downward SIF, the overall accuracies of the top 1th leaf were separately 70% and 71%, which was higher than other leaf positions. As a result, the top 1th leaf was an ideal indicator leaf to diagnose RLB in the field. The classification accuracy of SIF wavelet features were higher than the original SIF bands. Based on CWT and feature selection, the overall accuracy of the upward and downward optimal features of the top 1th to 4th leaves reached 70.13%、63.70%、64.63%、64.53% and 70.90%、63.12%、62.00%、64.02%, respectively. All of them were higher than the canopy monitoring feature F760, whose overall accuracy was 69.79%, 61.31%, 54.41%, 61.33% and 69.99%, 58.79%, 54.62%, 60.92%, respectively. This may be caused by the differences in physiological states of the top four leaves. In addition to RLB infection, the SIF data of some top 3th and top 4th leaves may also be affected by leaf senescence, while the SIF data of top 1th leaf, the latest unfolding leaf of rice plants was less affected by other physical and chemical parameters. This may explain why the top 1th leaf responded to RLB earlier than other leaves. The results also showed that the common sensitive features of the four leaf positions were also concentrated on the steep slope of the SIF spectrum, with better classification performance around 675 and 815 nm. The classification accuracy of the optimal common features, ↑WF832,3 and ↓WF809,3, reached 69.45%, 62.19%, 60.35%, 63.00% and 69.98%, 62.78%, 60.51%, 61.30% for the top 1th to top 4th leaf positions, respectively. The optimal common features, ↑WF832,3 and ↓WF809,3, were both located in wavelet scale 3 and 800-840nm, which may be related to the destruction of the cell structure in response to Magnaporthe oryzae infection. [Conclusions] In this study, the SIF spectral response to RLB was revealed, and the identification models of the top 1th leaf were found to be most precise among the top four leaves. In addition, the common wavelet features sensitive to RLB, ↑WF832,3 and ↓WF809,3, were extracted with the identification accuracy of 70%. The results proved the potential of CWT and SIF for RLB detection, which can provide important reference and technical support for the early, rapid and non-destructive diagnosis of RLB in the field.

  • Special Issue--Artificial Intelligence and Robot Technology for Smart Agriculture
    LIZhengkai, YUJiahui, PANShijia, JIAZefeng, NIUZijie
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(4): 92-104. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202308015

    [Objective] The proliferation of kiwifruit trees severely overlaps, resulting in a complex canopy structure, rendering it impossible to extract their skeletons or predict their canopies using conventional methods. The objective of this research is to propose a crown segmentation method that integrates skeleton information by optimizing image processing algorithms and developing a new scheme for fusing winter and summer information. In cases where fruit trees are densely distributed, achieving accurate segmentation of fruit tree canopies in orchard drone images can efficiently and cost-effectively obtain canopy information, providing a foundation for determining summer kiwifruit growth size, spatial distribution, and other data. Furthermore, it facilitates the automation and intelligent development of orchard management. [Methods] The 4- to 8-year-old kiwifruit trees were chosen and remote sensing images of winter and summer via unmanned aerial vehicles were obtain as the primary analysis visuals. To tackle the challenge of branch extraction in winter remote sensing images, a convolutional attention mechanism was integrated into the PSP-Net network, along with a joint attention loss function. This was designed to boost the network's focus on branches, enhance the recognition and targeting capabilities of the target area, and ultimately improve the accuracy of semantic segmentation for fruit tree branches.For the generation of the skeleton, digital image processing technology was employed for screening. The discrete information of tree branches was transformed into the skeleton data of a single fruit tree using growth seed points. Subsequently, the semantic segmentation results were optimized through mathematical morphology calculations, enabling smooth connection of the branches. In response to the issue of single tree canopy segmentation in summer, the growth characteristics of kiwifruit trees were taken into account, utilizing the outward expansion of branches growing from the trunk.The growth of tree branches was simulated by using morphological expansion to predict the summer canopy. The canopy prediction results were analyzed under different operators and parameters, and the appropriate expansion operators along with their corresponding operation lengths were selected. The skeleton of a single tree was extracted from summer images. By combining deep learning with mathematical morphology methods through the above steps, the optimized single tree skeleton was used as a prior condition to achieve canopy segmentation. [Results and Discussions] In comparison to traditional methods, the accuracy of extracting kiwifruit tree canopy information images at each stage of the process has been significantly enhanced. The enhanced PSP Net was evaluated using three primary regression metrics: pixel accuracy (PA), mean intersection over union ratio (MIoU), and weighted F1 Score (WF1). The PA, MIoU and WF1 of the improved PSP-Net were 95.84%, 95.76% and 95.69% respectively, which were increased by 12.30%, 22.22% and 17.96% compared with U-Net, and 21.39% , 21.51% and 18.12% compared with traditional PSP-Net, respectively. By implementing this approach, the skeleton extraction function for a single fruit tree was realized, with the predicted PA of the canopy surpassing 95%, an MIoU value of 95.76%, and a WF1 of canopy segmentation approximately at 94.07%.The average segmentation precision of the approach surpassed 95%, noticeably surpassing the original skeleton's 81.5%. The average conformity between the predicted skeleton and the actual summer skeleton stand at 87%, showcasing the method's strong prediction performance. Compared with the original skeleton, the PA, MIoU and WF1 of the optimized skeleton increased by 13.2%, 10.9% and 18.4%, respectively. The continuity of the predicted skeleton had been optimized, resulting in a significant improvement of the canopy segmentation index. The solution effectively addresses the issue of semantic segmentation fracture, and a single tree canopy segmentation scheme that incorporates skeleton information could effectively tackle the problem of single fruit tree canopy segmentation in complex field environments. This provided a novel technical solution for efficient and low-cost orchard fine management. [Conclusions] A method for extracting individual kiwifruit plant skeletons and predicting canopies based on skeleton information was proposed. This demonstrates the enormous potential of drone remote sensing images for fine orchard management from the perspectives of method innovation, data collection, and problem solving. Compared with manual statistics, the overall efficiency and accuracy of kiwifruit skeleton extraction and crown prediction have significantly improved, effectively solving the problem of case segmentation in the crown segmentation process.The issue of semantic segmentation fragmentation has been effectively addressed, resulting in the development of a single tree canopy segmentation method that incorporates skeleton information. This approach can effectively tackle the challenges of single fruit tree canopy segmentation in complex field environments, thereby offering a novel technical solution for efficient and cost-effective orchard fine management. While the research is primarily centered on kiwifruit trees, the methodology possesses strong universality. With appropriate modifications, it can be utilized to monitor canopy changes in other fruit trees, thereby showcasing vast application potential.

  • Special Issue--Artificial Intelligence and Robot Technology for Smart Agriculture
    WANG Herong, CHEN Yingyi, CHAI Yingqian, XU Ling, YU Huihui
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(4): 137-149. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202310003

    [Objective] Intelligent feeding methods are significant for improving breeding efficiency and reducing water quality pollution in current aquaculture. Feeding image segmentation of fish schools is a critical step in extracting the distribution characteristics of fish schools and quantifying their feeding behavior for intelligent feeding method development. While, an applicable approach is lacking due to images challenges caused by blurred boundaries and similar individuals in practical aquaculture environment. In this study, a high-precision segmentation method was proposed for fish school feeding images and provides technical support for the quantitative analysis of fish school feeding behavior. [Methods] The novel proposed method for fish school feeding images segmentation combined VoVNetv2 with an attention mechanism named Shuffle Attention. Firstly, a fish feeding segmentation dataset was presented. The dataset was collected at the intensive aquaculture base of Laizhou Mingbo Company in Shandong province, with a focus on Oplegnathus punctatus as the research target. Cameras were used to capture videos of the fish school before, during, and after feeding. The images were annotated at the pixel level using Labelme software. According to the distribution characteristics of fish feeding and non-feeding stage, the data was classified into two semantic categories— non-occlusion and non-aggregation fish (fish1) and occlusion or aggregation fish (fish2). In the preprocessing stage, data cleaning and image augmentation were employed to further enhance the quality and diversity of the dataset. Initially, data cleaning rules were established based on the distribution of annotated areas within the dataset. Images with outlier annotations were removed, resulting in an improvement in the overall quality of the dataset. Subsequently, to prevent the risk of overfitting, five data augmentation techniques (random translation, random flip, brightness variation, random noise injection, random point addition) were applied for mixed augmentation on the dataset, contributing to an increased diversity of the dataset. Through data augmentation operations, the dataset was expanded to three times its original size. Eventually, the dataset was divided into a training dataset and testing dataset at a ratio of 8:2. Thus, the final dataset consisted of 1 612 training images and 404 testing images. In detail, there were a total of 116 328 instances of fish1 and 20 924 instances of fish2. Secondly, a fish feeding image segmentation method was proposed. Specifically, VoVNetv2 was used as the backbone network for the Mask R-CNN model to extract image features. VoVNetv2 is a backbone network with strong computational capabilities. Its unique feature aggregation structure enables effective fusion of features at different levels, extracting diverse feature representations. This facilitates better capturing of fish schools of different sizes and shapes in fish feeding images, achieving accurate identification and segmentation of targets within the images. To maximize feature mappings with limited resources, the experiment replaced the channel attention mechanism in the one-shot aggregation (OSA) module of VoVNetv2 with a more lightweight and efficient attention mechanism named shuffle attention. This improvement allowed the network to concentrate more on the location of fish in the image, thus reducing the impact of irrelevant information, such as noise, on the segmentation results. Finally, experiments were conducted on the fish segmentation dataset to test the performance of the proposed method. [Results and Discussions] The results showed that the average segmentation accuracy of the Mask R-CNN network reached 63.218% after data cleaning, representing an improvement of 7.018% compared to the original dataset. With both data cleaning and augmentation, the network achieved an average segmentation accuracy of 67.284%, indicating an enhancement of 11.084% over the original dataset. Furthermore, there was an improvement of 4.066% compared to the accuracy of the dataset after cleaning alone. These results demonstrated that data preprocessing had a positive effect on improving the accuracy of image segmentation. The ablation experiments on the backbone network revealed that replacing the ResNet50 backbone with VoVNetv2-39 in Mask R-CNN led to a 2.511% improvement in model accuracy. After improving VoVNetv2 through the Shuffle Attention mechanism, the accuracy of the model was further improved by 1.219%. Simultaneously, the parameters of the model decreased by 7.9%, achieving a balance between accuracy and lightweight design. Comparing with the classic segmentation networks SOLOv2, BlendMask and CondInst, the proposed model achieved the highest segmentation accuracy across various target scales. For the fish feeding segmentation dataset, the average segmentation accuracy of the proposed model surpassed BlendMask, CondInst, and SOLOv2 by 3.982%, 12.068%, and 18.258%, respectively. Although the proposed method demonstrated effective segmentation of fish feeding images, it still exhibited certain limitations, such as omissive detection, error segmentation, and false classification. [Conclusions] The proposed instance segmentation algorithm (SA_VoVNetv2_RCNN) effectively achieved accurate segmentation of fish feeding images. It can be utilized for counting the number and pixel quantities of two types of fish in fish feeding videos, facilitating quantitative analysis of fish feeding behavior. Therefore, this technique can provide technical support for the analysis of piscine feeding actions. In future research, these issues will be addressed to further enhance the accuracy of fish feeding image segmentation.

  • Special Issue--Artificial Intelligence and Robot Technology for Smart Agriculture
    LUBang, DONGWanjing, DINGYouchun, SUNYang, LIHaopeng, ZHANGChaoyu
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(4): 33-44. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202310004

    [Objective] Unmanned seeding of rapeseed is an important link to construct unmanned rapeseed farm. Aiming at solving the problems of cumbersome manual collection of small and medium-sized field boundary information in the south, the low efficiency of turnaround operation of autonomous tractor, and leaving a large leakage area at the turnaround point, this study proposes to build an unmanned rapeseed seeding operation system based on cloud-terminal high-precision maps, and to improve the efficiency of the turnaround operation and the coverage of the operation. [Methods] The system was mainly divided into two parts: the unmanned seeding control cloud platform for oilseed rape is mainly composed of a path planning module, an operation monitoring module and a real-time control module; the navigation and control platform for rapeseed live broadcasting units is mainly composed of a Case TM1404 tractor, an intelligent seeding and fertilizing machine, an angle sensor, a high-precision Beidou positioning system, an electric steering wheel, a navigation control terminal and an on-board controller terminal. The process of constructing the high-precision map was as follows: determining the operating field, laying the ground control points; collecting the positional data of the ground control points and the orthophoto data from the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV); processing the image data and constructing the complete map; slicing the map, correcting the deviation and transmitting it to the webpage. The field boundary information was obtained through the high-precision map. The equal spacing reduction algorithm and scanning line filling algorithm was adopted, and the spiral seeding operation path outside the shuttle row was automatically generated. According to the tractor geometry and kinematics model and the size of the distance between the tractor position and the field boundary, the specific parameters of the one-back and two-cut turning model were calculated, and based on the agronomic requirements of rapeseed sowing operation, the one-back-two-cut turn operation control strategy was designed to realize the rapeseed direct seeding unit's sowing operation for the omitted operation area of the field edges and corners. The test included map accuracy test, operation area simulation test and unmanned seeding operation field test. For the map accuracy test, the test field at the edge of Lake Yezhi of Huazhong Agricultural Universit was selected as the test site, where high-precision maps were constructed, and the image and position (POS) data collected by the UAV were processed, synthesized, and sliced, and then corrected for leveling according to the actual coordinates of the correction point and the coordinates of the image. Three rectangular fields of different sizes were selected for the operation area simulation test to compare the operation area and coverage rate of the three operation modes: set row, shuttle row, and shuttle row outer spiral. The Case TM1404 tractor equipped with an intelligent seeding and fertilizer application integrated machine was used as the test platform for the unmanned seeding operation test, and data such as tracking error and operation speed were recorded in real time by software algorithms. The data such as tracking error and operation speed were recorded in real-time. After the flowering of rapeseed, a series of color images of the operation fields were obtained by aerial photography using a drone during the flowering period of rapeseed, and the color images of the operation fields were spliced together, and then the seedling and non-seedling areas were mapped using map surveying and mapping software. [Results and Discussions] The results of the map accuracy test showed that the maximum error of the high-precision map ground verification point was 3.23 cm, and the results of the operation area simulation test showed that the full-coverage path of the helix outside the shuttle row reduced the leakage rate by 18.58%-26.01% compared with that of the shuttle row and the set of row path. The results of unmanned seeding operation field test showed that the average speed of unmanned seeding operation was 1.46 m/s, the maximum lateral deviation was 7.94 cm, and the maximum average absolute deviation was 1.85 cm. The test results in field showed that, the measured field area was 1 018.61 m2, and the total area of the non-growing oilseed rape area was 69.63 m2, with an operating area of 948.98 m2, and an operating coverage rate of 93.16%. [Conclusions] The effectiveness and feasibility of the constructed unmanned seeding operation system for rapeseed were demonstrated. This study can provide technical reference for unmanned seeding operation of rapeseed in small and medium-sized fields in the south. In the future, the unmanned seeding operation mode of rapeseed will be explored in irregular field conditions to further improve the applicability of the system.

  • Special Issue--Monitoring Technology of Crop Information
    MAYujing, WUShangrong, YANGPeng, CAOHong, TANJieyang, ZHAORongkun
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(3): 1-16. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202303002

    [Significance] Oil crops play a significant role in the food supply, as well as the important source of edible vegetable oils and plant proteins. Real-time, dynamic and large-scale monitoring of oil crop growth is essential in guiding agricultural production, stabilizing markets, and maintaining health. Previous studies have made a considerable progress in the yield simulation of staple crops in regional scale based on remote sensing methods, but the yield simulation of oil crops in regional scale is still poor as its complexity of the plant traits and structural characteristics. Therefore, it is urgently needed to study regional oil crop yield estimation based on remote sensing technology. [Progress] This paper summarized the content of remote sensing technology in oil crop monitoring from three aspects: backgrounds, progressions, opportunities and challenges. Firstly, significances and advantages of using remote sensing technology to estimate the of oil crops have been expounded. It is pointed out that both parameter inversion and crop area monitoring were the vital components of yield estimation. Secondly, the current situation of oil crop monitoring was summarized based on remote sensing technology from three aspects of remote sensing parameter inversion, crop area monitoring and yield estimation. For parameter inversion, it is specified that optical remote sensors were used more than other sensors in oil crops inversion in previous studies. Then, advantages and disadvantages of the empirical model and physical model inversion methods were analyzed. In addition, advantages and disadvantages of optical and microwave data were further illustrated from the aspect of oil crops structure and traits characteristics. At last, optimal choice on the data and methods were given in oil crop parameter inversion. For crop area monitoring, this paper mainly elaborated from two parts of optical and microwave remote sensing data. Combined with the structure of oil crops and the characteristics of planting areas, the researches on area monitoring of oil crops based on different types of remote sensing data sources were reviewed, including the advantages and limitations of different data sources in area monitoring. Then, two yield estimation methods were introduced: remote sensing yield estimation and data assimilation yield estimation. The phenological period of oil crop yield estimation, remote sensing data source and modeling method were summarized. Next, data assimilation technology was introduced, and it was proposed that data assimilation technology has great potential in oil crop yield estimation, and the assimilation research of oil crops was expounded from the aspects of assimilation method and grid selection. All of them indicate that data assimilation technology could improve the accuracy of regional yield estimation of oil crops. Thirdly, this paper pointed out the opportunities of remote sensing technology in oil crop monitoring, put forward some problems and challenges in crop feature selection, spatial scale determination and remote sensing data source selection of oil crop yield, and forecasted the development trend of oil crop yield estimation research in the future. Conclusions and Prospects The paper puts forward the following suggestions for the three aspects: (1) Regarding crop feature selection, when estimating yields for oil crops such as rapeseed and soybeans, which have active photosynthesis in siliques or pods, relying solely on canopy leaf area index (LAI) as the assimilation state variable for crop yield estimation may result in significant underestimation of yields, thereby impacting the accuracy of regional crop yield simulation. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the crop plant characteristics and the agronomic mechanism of yield formation through siliques or pods when estimating yields for oil crops. (2) In determining the spatial scale, some oil crops are distributed in hilly and mountainous areas with mixed land cover. Using regularized yield simulation grids may result in the confusion of numerous background objects, introducing additional errors and affecting the assimilation accuracy of yield estimation. This poses a challenge to yield estimation research. Thus, it is necessary to choose appropriate methods to divide irregular unit grids and determine the optimal scale for yield estimation, thereby improving the accuracy of yield estimation. (3) In terms of remote sensing data selection, the monitoring of oil crops can be influenced by crop structure and meteorological conditions. Depending solely on spectral data monitoring may have a certain impact on yield estimation results. It is important to incorporate radar off-nadir remote sensing measurement techniques to perceive the response relationship between crop leaves and siliques or pods and remote sensing data parameters. This can bridge the gap between crop characteristics and remote sensing information for crop yield simulation. This paper can serve as a valuable reference and stimulus for further research on regional yield estimation and growth monitoring of oil crops. It supplements existing knowledge and provides insightful considerations for enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of oil crop production monitoring and management.

  • Special Issue--Agricultural Information Perception and Models
    SHENYanyan, ZHAOYutao, CHENGengshen, LYUZhengang, ZHAOFeng, YANGWanneng, MENGRan
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(2): 28-39. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202310016

    [Objective] In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the severity of leaf diseases in maize, with a noticeable trend of mixed occurrence. This poses a serious threat to the yield and quality of maize. However, there is a lack of studies that combine the identification of different types of leaf diseases and their severity classification, which cannot meet the needs of disease prevention and control under the mixed occurrence of different diseases and different severities in actual maize fields. [Methods] A method was proposed for identifying the types of typical leaf diseases in maize and classifying their severity using hyperspectral technology. Hyperspectral data of three leaf diseases of maize: northern corn leaf blight (NCLB), southern corn leaf blight (SCLB) and southern corn rust (SCR), were obtained through greenhouse pathogen inoculation and natural inoculation. The spectral data were preprocessed by spectral standardization, SG filtering, sensitive band extraction and vegetation index calculation, to explore the spectral characteristics of the three leaf diseases of maize. Then, the inverse frequency weighting method was utilized to balance the number of samples to reduce the overfitting phenomenon caused by sample imbalance. Relief-F and variable selection using random forests (VSURF) method were employed to optimize the sensitive spectral features, including band features and vegetation index features, to construct models for disease type identification based on the full stages of disease development (including all disease severities) and for individual disease severities using several representative machine learning approaches, demonstrating the effectiveness of the research method. Furthermore, the study individual occurrence severity classification models were also constructed for each single maize leaf disease, including the NCLB, SCLB and SCR severity classification models, respectively, aiming to achieve full-process recognition and disease severity classification for different leaf diseases. Overall accuracy (OA) and Macro F1 were used to evaluate the model accuracy in this study. Results and Discussion The research results showed significant spectrum changes of three kinds of maize leaf diseases primarily focusing on the visible (550-680 nm), red edge (740-760 nm), near-infrared (760-1 000 nm) and shortwave infrared (1 300-1 800 nm) bands. Disease-specific spectral features, optimized based on disease spectral response rules, effectively identified disease species and classify their severity. Moreover, vegetation index features were more effective in identifying disease-specific information than sensitive band features. This was primarily due to the noise and information redundancy present in the selected hyperspectral sensitive bands, whereas vegetation index could reduce the influence of background and atmospheric noise to a certain extent by integrating relevant spectral signals through band calculation, so as to achieve higher precision in the model. Among several machine learning algorithms, the support vector machine (SVM) method exhibited better robustness than random forest (RF) and decision tree (DT). In the full stage of disease development, the optimal overall accuracy (OA) of the disease classification model constructed by SVM based on vegetation index reached 77.51%, with a Macro F1 of 0.77, representing a 28.75% increase in OA and 0.30 higher of Macro F1 compared to the model based on sensitive bands. Additionally, the accuracy of the disease classification model with a single severity of the disease increased with the severity of the disease. The accuracy of disease classification during the early stage of disease development (OA=70.31%) closely approached that of the full disease development stage (OA=77.51%). Subsequently, in the moderate disease severity stage, the optimal accuracy of disease classification (OA=80.00%) surpassed the optimal accuracy of disease classification in the full disease development stage. Furthermore, the optimal accuracy of disease classification under severe severity reached 95.06%, with a Macro F1 of 0.94. This heightened accuracy during the severity stage can be attributed to significant changes in pigment content, water content and cell structure of the diseased leaves, intensifying the spectral response of each disease and enhancing the differentiation between different diseases. In disease severity classification model, the optimal accuracy of the three models for maize leaf disease severity all exceeded 70%. Among the three kinds of disease severity classification results, the NCLB severity classification model exhibited the best performance. The NCLB severity classification model, utilizing SVM based on the optimal vegetation index features, achieved an OA of 86.25%, with a Macro F1 of 0.85. In comparison, the accuracy of the SCLB severity classification model (OA=70.35%, Macro F1=0.70) and SCR severity classification model (OA=71.39%, Macro F1=0.69) were lower than that of NCLB. [Conclusions] The aforementioned results demonstrate the potential to effectively identify and classify the types and severity of common leaf diseases in maize using hyperspectral data. This lays the groundwork for research and provides a theoretical basis for large-scale crop disease monitoring, contributing to precision prevention and control as well as promoting green agriculture.

  • Special Issue--Monitoring Technology of Crop Information
    YANGZhenyu, TANGHao, GEWei, XIAQian, TONGDezhi, FULijiang, GUOYa
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(3): 154-165. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202306006

    Objective Chlorophyll fluorescence (ChlF) emission from photosystem II (PSII) is closely coupled with photochemical reactions. As an efficient and non-destructive means of obtaining plant photosynthesis efficiency and physiological state information, the collection of fluorescence signals is often used in many fields such as plant physiological research, smart agricultural information sensing, etc. Chlorophyll fluorescence imaging systems, which is the experimental device for collecting the fluorescence signal, have difficulties in application due to their high price and complex structure. In order to solve the issues, this paper investigates and constructs a low-cost chlorophyll fluorescence imaging system based on a micro complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) camera and a smartphone, and carries out experimental verifications and applications on it. Method The chlorophyll fluorescence imaging system is mainly composed of three parts: excitation light, CMOS camera and its control circuit, and a upper computer based on a smartphone. The light source of the excitation light group is based on the principle and characteristics of chlorophyll fluorescence, and uses a blue light source of 460 nm band to achieve the best fluorescence excitation effect. In terms of structure, the principle of integrating sphere was borrowed, the bowl-shaped light source structure was adopted, and the design of the LED surface light source was used to meet the requirements of chlorophyll fluorescence signal measurement for the uniformity of the excitation light field. For the adjustment of light source intensity, the control scheme of pulse width modulation was adopted, which could realize sequential control of different intensities of excitation light. Through the simulation analysis of the light field, the light intensity and distribution characteristics of the light field were stuidied, and the calibration of the excitation light group was completed according to the simulation results. The OV5640 micro CMOS camera was used to collect fluorescence images. Combined with the imaging principle of the CMOS camera, the fluorescence imaging intensity of the CMOS camera was calculated, and its ability to collect chlorophyll fluorescence was analyzed and discussed. The control circuit of the CMOS camera uses an STM32 microcontroller as the microcontroller unit, and completes the data communication between the synchronous light group control circuit and the smartphone through the RS232 to TTL serial communication module and the full-speed universal serial bus, respectively. The smartphone upper computer software is the operating software of the chlorophyll fluorescence imaging system user terminal and the overall control program for fluorescence image acquisition. The overall workflow could be summarized as the user sets the relevant excitation light parameters and camera shooting instructions in the upper computer as needed, sends the instructions to the control circuit through the universal serial bus and serial port, and completes the control of excitation light and CMOS camera image acquisition. After the chlorophyll fluorescence image collection was completed, the data would be sent back to the smart phone or server for analysis, processing, storage, and display. In order to verify the design of the proposed scheme, a prototype of the chlorophyll fluorescence imaging system based on this scheme was made for experimental verification. Firstly, the uniformity of the light field was measured on the excitation light to test the actual performance of the excitation light designed in this article. On this basis, a chlorophyll fluorescence imaging experiment under continuous light excitation and modulated pulse light protocols was completed. Through the analysis and processing of the experimental results and comparison with mainstream chlorophyll fluorometers, the fluorescence imaging capabilities and low-cost advantages of this chlorophyll fluorometer were further verified. [Results and Discussions] The maximum excitation light intensity of the chlorophyll fluorescence imaging system designed in this article was 6250 µmol/(m2·s). Through the simulation analysis of the light field and the calculation and analysis of the fluorescence imaging intensity of the CMOS camera, the feasibility of collecting chlorophyll fluorescence images by the OV5640 micro CMOS camera was demonstrated, which provided a basis for the specific design and implementation of the fluorometer. In terms of hardware circuits, it made full use of the software and hardware advantages of smartphones, and only consisted of the control circuits of the excitation light and CMOS camera and the corresponding communication modules to complete the fluorescence image collection work, simplifying the circuit structure and reducing hardware costs to the greatest extent. The final fluorescence instrument achieved a collection resolution of 5 million pixels, a spectral range of 400~1000 nm, and a stable acquisition frequency of up to 42 f/s. Experimental results showed that the measured data was consistent with theoretical analysis and simulation, which could meet the requirements of fluorescence detection. The instrument was capable of collecting images of chlorophyll fluorescence under continuous light excitation or the protocol of modulated pulsed light. The acquired chlorophyll fluorescence images could reflect the two-dimensional heterogeneity of leaves and could effectively distinguish the photosynthetic characteristics of different leaves. Typical chlorophyll fluorescence parameter images of Fv/Fm, Rfd, etc. were in line with expectations. Compared with the existing chlorophyll fluorescence imaging system, the chlorophyll fluorescence imaging system designed in this article has obvious cost advantages while realizing the rapid detection function of chlorophyll fluorescence. [Conclusions] The instrument is with a simple structure and low cost, and has good application value for the detection of plant physiology and environmental changes. The system is useful for developing other fluorescence instruments.

  • Special Issue--Monitoring Technology of Crop Information
    YEDapeng, CHENChen, LIHuilin, LEIYingxiao, WENGHaiyong, QUFangfang
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(3): 132-141. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202307011

    [Objective] JUNCAO, a perennial herbaceous plant that can be used as medium for cultivating edible and medicinal fungi. It has important value for promotion, but the problem of overwintering needs to be overcome when planting in the temperate zone. Low-temperature stress can adversely impact the growth of JUNCAO plants. Malondialdehyde (MDA) is a degradation product of polyunsaturated fatty acid peroxides, which can serve as a useful diagnostic indicator for studying plant growth dynamics. Because the more severe the damage caused by low temperature stress on plants, the higher their MDA content. Therefore, the detection of MDA content can provide instruct for low-temperature stress diagnosis and JUNCAO plants breeding. With the development of optical sensors and machine learning technologies, visible/near-infrared spectroscopy technology combined with algorithmic models has great potential in rapid, non-destructive and high-throughput inversion of MDA content and evaluation of JUNCAO growth dynamics. [Methods] In this research, six varieties of JUNCAO plants were selected as experimental subjects. They were divided into a control group planted at ambient temperature (28°C) and a stress group planted at low temperature (4°C). The hyperspectral reflectances of JUNCAO seedling leaves during the seedling stage were collected using an ASD spectroradiomete and a near-infrared spectrometer, and then the leaf physiological indicators were measured to obtain leaf MDA content. Machine learning methods were used to establish the MDA content inversion models based on the collected spectral reflectance data. To enhance the prediction accuracy of the model, an improved one-dimensional deep convolutional generative adversarial network (DCAGN ) was proposed to increase the sample size of the training set. Firstly, the original samples were divided into a training set (96 samples) and a prediction set (48 samples) using the Kennard stone (KS) algorithm at a ratio of 2:1. Secondly, the 96 training set samples were generated through the DCGAN model, resulting in a total of 384 pseudo samples that were 4 times larger than the training set. The pseudo samples were randomly shuffled and sequentially added to the training set to form an enhanced modeling set. Finally, the MDA quantitative detection models were established based on random forest (RF), partial least squares regression (PLSR), and convolutional neural network (CNN) algorithms. By comparing the prediction accuracies of the three models after increasing the sample size of the training set, the best MDA regression detection model of JUNCAO was obtained. [Results and Discussions] (1) The MDA content of the six varieties of JUNCAO plants ranged from 12.1988 to 36.7918 nmol/g. Notably, the MDA content of JUNCAO under low-temperature stress was remarkably increased compared to the control group with significant differences (P<0.05). Moreover, the visible/near-infrared spectral reflectance in the stressed group also exhibited an increasing trend compared to the control group. (2) Samples generated by the DCAGN model conformed to the distribution patterns of the original samples. The spectral curves of the generated samples retained the shape and trends of the original data. The corresponding MDA contented of generated samples consistently falling within the range of the original samples, with the average and standard deviation only decreased by 0.6650 and 0.9743 nmol/g, respectively. (3) Prior to the inclusion of generated samples, the detection performance of the three models differed significantly, with a correlation coefficient (R2) of 0.6967 for RF model, that of 0.6729 for CNN model, and that of 0.5298 for the PLSR model. After the introduction of generated samples, as the number of samples increased, all three models exhibited an initial increase followed by a decrease in R2 on the prediction set, while the root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) first decreased and then increased. (4) The prediction results of the three regression models indicated that augmenting the sample size by using DCGAN could effectively enhance the prediction performance of models. Particularly, utilizing DCGAN in combination with the RF model achieved the optimal MDA content detection performance, with the R2 of 0.7922 and the RMSEP of 2.1937. [Conclusions] Under low temperature stress, the MDA content and spectral reflectance of the six varieties of JUNCAO leaves significantly increased compared to the control group, which might due to the damage of leaf pigments and tissue structure, and the decrease in leaf water content. Augmenting the sample size using DCGAN effectively enhanced the reliability and detection accuracy of the models. This improvement was evident across different regression models, illustrating the robust generalization capabilities of this DCGAN deep learning network. Specifically, the combination of DCGAN and RF model achieved optimal MDA content detection performance, as expanding to a sufficient sample dataset contributed to improve the modeling accuracy and stability. This research provides valuable insights for JUNCAO plants breeding and the diagnosis of low-temperature stress based on spectral technology and machine learning methods, offering a scientific basis for achieving high, stable, and efficient utilization of JUNCAO plants.

  • Special Issue--Monitoring Technology of Crop Information
    PANWeiting, SUNMengli, YUNYan, LIUPing
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(3): 110-120. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202304006

    [Objective] Wheat serves as the primary source of dietary carbohydrates for the human population, supplying 20% of the required caloric intake. Currently, the primary objective of wheat breeding is to develop wheat varieties that exhibit both high quality and high yield, ensuring an overall increase in wheat production. Additionally, the consideration of phenotype parameters, such as grain length and width, holds significant importance in the introduction, screening, and evaluation of germplasm resources. Notably, a noteworthy positive association has been observed between grain size, grain shape, and grain weight. Simultaneously, within the scope of wheat breeding, the occurrence of inadequate harvest and storage practices can readily result in damage to wheat grains, consequently leading to a direct reduction in both emergence rate and yield. In essence, the integrity of wheat grains directly influences the wheat breeding process. Nevertheless, distinguishing between intact and damaged grains remains challenging due to the minimal disparities in certain characteristics, thereby impeding the accurate identification of damaged wheat grains through manual means. Consequently, this study aims to address this issue by focusing on the detection of wheat kernel integrity and completing the attainment of grain phenotype parameters. [Methods] This study presented an enhanced approach for addressing the challenges of low detection accuracy, unclear segmentation of wheat grain contour, and missing detection. The proposed strategy involves utilizing the Cascade Mask R-CNN model and replacing the backbone network with ResNeXt to mitigate gradient dispersion and minimize the model's parameter count. Furthermore, the inclusion of Mish as an activation function enhanced the efficiency and versatility of the detection model. Additionally, a multilayer convolutional structure was introduced in the detector to thoroughly investigate the latent features of wheat grains. The Soft-NMS algorithm was employed to identify the candidate frame and achieve accurate segmentation of the wheat kernel adhesion region. Additionally, the ImCascade R-CNN model was developed. Simultaneously, to address the issue of low accuracy in obtaining grain contour parameters due to disordered grain arrangement, a grain contour-based algorithm for parameter acquisition was devised. Wheat grain could be approximated as an oval shape, and the grain edge contour could be obtained according to the mask, the distance between the farthest points could be iteratively obtained as the grain length, and the grain width could be obtained according to the area. Ultimately, a method for wheat kernel phenotype identification was put forth. The ImCascade R-CNN model was utilized to analyze wheat kernel images, extracting essential features and determining the integrity of the kernels through classification and boundary box regression branches. The mask generation branch was employed to generate a mask map for individual wheat grains, enabling segmentation of the grain contours. Subsequently, the number of grains in the image was determined, and the length and width parameters of the entire wheat grain were computed. [Results and Discussions] In the experiment on wheat kernel phenotype recognition, a comparison and improvement were conducted on the identification results of the Cascade Mask R-CNN model and the ImCascade R-CNN model across various modules. Additionally, the efficacy of the model modification scheme was verified. The comparison of results between the Cascade Mask R-CNN model and the ImCascade R-CNN model served to validate the proposed model's ability to significantly decrease the missed detection rate. The effectiveness and advantages of the ImCascade R-CNN model were verified by comparing its loss value, P-R value, and mAP_50 value with those of the Cascade Mask R-CNN model. In the context of wheat grain identification and segmentation, the detection results of the ImCascade R-CNN model were compared to those of the Cascade Mask R-CNN and Deeplabv3+ models. The comparison confirmed that the ImCascade R-CNN model exhibited superior performance in identifying and locating wheat grains, accurately segmenting wheat grain contours, and achieving an average accuracy of 90.2% in detecting wheat grain integrity. These findings serve as a foundation for obtaining kernel contour parameters. The grain length and grain width exhibited average error rates of 2.15% and 3.74%, respectively, while the standard error of the aspect ratio was 0.15. The statistical analysis and fitting of the grain length and width, as obtained through the proposed wheat grain shape identification method, yielded determination coefficients of 0.9351 and 0.8217, respectively. These coefficients demonstrated a strong agreement with the manually measured values, indicating that the method is capable of meeting the demands of wheat seed testing and providing precise data support for wheat breeding. [Conclusions] The findings of this study can be utilized for the rapid and precise detection of wheat grain integrity and the acquisition of comprehensive grain contour data. In contrast to current wheat kernel recognition technology, this research capitalizes on enhanced grain contour segmentation to furnish data support for the acquisition of wheat kernel contour parameters. Additionally, the refined contour parameter acquisition algorithm effectively mitigates the impact of disordered wheat kernel arrangement, resulting in more accurate parameter data compared to existing kernel appearance detectors available in the market, providing data support for wheat breeding and accelerating the cultivation of high-quality and high-yield wheat varieties.

  • Overview Article
    YANGYinsheng, WEIXin
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(4): 150-159. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202304008

    [Significance With the escalating global climate change and ecological pollution issues, the "dual carbon" target of Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality has been incorporated into various sectors of China's social development. To ensure the green and sustainable development of agriculture, it is imperative to minimize energy consumption and reduce pollution emissions at every stage of agricultural mechanization, meet the diversified needs of agricultural machinery and equipment in the era of intelligent information, and develop low-carbon agricultural mechanization. The development of low-carbon agricultural mechanization is not only an important part of the transformation and upgrading of agricultural mechanization in China but also an objective requirement for the sustainable development of agriculture under the "dual carbon" target. [Progress] The connotation and objectives of low-carbon agricultural mechanization are clarified and the development logic of low-carbon agricultural mechanization from three dimensions: theoretical, practical, and systematic are expounded. The "triple-win" of life, production, and ecology is proposed, it is an important criterion for judging the functional realization of low-carbon agricultural mechanization system from a theoretical perspective. The necessity and urgency of low-carbon agricultural mechanization development from a practical perspective is revealed. The "human-machine-environment" system of low-carbon agricultural mechanization development is analyzed and the principles and feasibility of coordinated development of low-carbon agricultural mechanization based on a systemic perspective is explained. Furthermore, the deep-rooted reasons affecting the development of low-carbon agricultural mechanization from six aspects are analyzed: factor conditions, demand conditions, related and supporting industries, production entities, government, and opportunities. [Conclusion and Prospects] Four approaches are proposed for the realization of low-carbon agricultural mechanization development: (1) Encouraging enterprises to implement agricultural machinery ecological design and green manufacturing throughout the life cycle through key and core technology research, government policies, and financial support; (2) Guiding agricultural entities to implement clean production operations in agricultural mechanization, including but not limited to innovative models of intensive agricultural land, exploration and promotion of new models of clean production in agricultural mechanization, and the construction of a carbon emission measurement system for agricultural low-carbonization; (3) Strengthening the guidance and implementation of the concept of socialized services for low-carbon agricultural machinery by government departments, constructing and improving a "8S" system of agricultural machinery operation services mainly consisting of Sale, Spare part, Service, Survey, Show, School, Service, and Scrap, to achieve the long-term development of dematerialized agricultural machinery socialized services and green shared operation system; (4) Starting from concept guidance, policy promotion, and financial support, comprehensively advancing the process of low-carbon disposal and green remanufacturing of retired and waste agricultural machinery by government departments.

  • Special Issue--Monitoring Technology of Crop Information
    ZUOHaoxuan, HUANGQicheng, YANGJiahao, MENGFanjia, LISien, LILi
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(3): 86-95. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202309004

    Objective The width of maize stalks is an important indicator affecting the lodging resistance of maize. The measurement of maize stalk width has many problems, such as cumbersome manual collection process and large errors in the accuracy of automatic equipment collection and recognition, and it is of great application value to study a method for in-situ detection and high-precision identification of maize stalk width. [Methods] The ZED2i binocular camera was used and fixed in the field to obtain real-time pictures from the left and right sides of maize stalks together. The picture acquisition system was based on the NVIDIA Jetson TX2 NX development board, which could achieve timed shooting of both sides view of the maize by setting up the program. A total of maize original images were collected and a dataset was established. In order to observe more features in the target area from the image and provide assistance to improve model training generalization ability, the original images were processed by five processing methods: image saturation, brightness, contrast, sharpness and horizontal flipping, and the dataset was expanded to 3500 images. YOLOv8 was used as the original model for identifying maize stalks from a complex background. The coordinate attention (CA) attention mechanism can bring huge gains to downstream tasks on the basis of lightweight networks, so that the attention block can capture long-distance relationships in one direction while retaining spatial information in the other direction, so that the position information can be saved in the generated attention map to focus on the area of interest and help the network locate the target better and more accurately. By adding the CA module multiple times, the CA module was fused with the C2f module in the original Backbone, and the Bottleneck in the original C2f module was replaced by the CA module, and the C2fCA network module was redesigned. Replacing the loss function Efficient IoU Loss(EIoU) splits the loss term of the aspect ratio into the difference between the predicted width and height and the width and height of the minimum outer frame, which accelerated the convergence of the prediction box, improved the regression accuracy of the prediction box, and further improved the recognition accuracy of maize stalks. The binocular camera was then calibrated so that the left and right cameras were on the same three-dimensional plane. Then the three-dimensional reconstruction of maize stalks, and the matching of left and right cameras recognition frames was realized through the algorithm, first determine whether the detection number of recognition frames in the two images was equal, if not, re-enter the binocular image. If they were equal, continue to judge the coordinate information of the left and right images, the width and height of the bounding box, and determine whether the difference was less than the given Ta. If greater than the given Ta, the image was re-imported; If it was less than the given Ta, the confidence level of the recognition frame of the image was determined whether it was less than the given Tb. If greater than the given Tb, the image is re-imported; If it is less than the given Tb, it indicates that the recognition frame is the same maize identified in the left and right images. If the above conditions were met, the corresponding point matching in the binocular image was completed. After the three-dimensional reconstruction of the binocular image, the three-dimensional coordinates (Ax, Ay, Az) and (Bx, By, Bz) in the upper left and upper right corners of the recognition box under the world coordinate system were obtained, and the distance between the two points was the width of the maize stalk. Finally, a comparative analysis was conducted among the improved YOLOv8 model, the original YOLOv8 model, faster region convolutional neural networks (Faster R-CNN), and single shot multiBox detector (SSD)to verify the recognition accuracy and recognition accuracy of the model. [Results and Discussions] The precision rate (P)、recall rate (R)、average accuracy mAP0.5、average accuracy mAP0.5:0.95 of the improved YOLOv8 model reached 96.8%、94.1%、96.6% and 77.0%. Compared with YOLOv7, increased by 1.3%、1.3%、1.0% and 11.6%, compared with YOLOv5, increased by 1.8%、2.1%、1.2% and 15.8%, compared with Faster R-CNN, increased by 31.1%、40.3%、46.2%、and 37.6%, and compared with SSD, increased by 20.6%、23.8%、20.9% and 20.1%, respectively. Respectively, and the linear regression coefficient of determination R2, root mean square error RMSE and mean absolute error MAE were 0.373, 0.265 cm and 0.244 cm, respectively. The method proposed in the research can meet the requirements of actual production for the measurement accuracy of maize stalk width. [Conclusions] In this study, the in-situ recognition method of maize stalk width based on the improved YOLOv8 model can realize the accurate in-situ identification of maize stalks, which solves the problems of time-consuming and laborious manual measurement and poor machine vision recognition accuracy, and provides a theoretical basis for practical production applications.

  • Special Issue--Monitoring Technology of Crop Information
    TANGHui, WANGMing, YUQiushi, ZHANGJiaxi, LIULiantao, WANGNan
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(3): 96-109. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202308003

    Objective The root system is an important component of plant composition, and its growth and development are crucial for plants. Root image segmentation is an important method for obtaining root phenotype information and analyzing root growth patterns. Research on root image segmentation still faces difficulties, because of the noise and image quality limitations, the intricate and diverse soil environment, and the ineffectiveness of conventional techniques. This paper proposed a multi-scale feature extraction root segmentation algorithm that combined data augmentation and transfer learning to enhance the generalization and universality of the root image segmentation models in order to increase the speed, accuracy, and resilience of root image segmentation. [Methods] Firstly, the experimental datasets were divided into a single dataset and a mixed dataset. The single dataset acquisition was obtained from the experimental station of Hebei Agricultural University in Baoding city. Additionally, a self-made RhizoPot device was used to collect images with a resolution pixels of 10,200×14,039, resulting in a total of 600 images. In this experiment, 100 sheets were randomly selected to be manually labeled using Adobe Photoshop CC2020 and segmented into resolution pixels of 768×768, and divided into training, validation, and test sets according to 7:2:1. To increase the number of experimental samples, an open source multi-crop mixed dataset was obtained in the network as a supplement, and it was reclassified into training, validation, and testing sets. The model was trained using the data augmentation strategy, which involved performing data augmentation operations at a set probability of 0.3 during the image reading phase, and each method did not affect the other. When the probability was less than 0.3, changes would be made to the image. Specific data augmentation methods included changing image attributes, randomly cropping, rotating, and flipping those images. The UNet structure was improved by designing eight different multi-scale image feature extraction modules. The module structure mainly included two aspects: Image convolution and feature fusion. The convolution improvement included convolutional block attention module (CBAM), depthwise separable convolution (DP Conv), and convolution (Conv). In terms of feature fusion methods, improvements could be divided into concatenation and addition. Subsequently, ablation tests were conducted based on a single dataset, data augmentation, and random loading of model weights, and the optimal multi-scale feature extraction module was selected and compared with the original UNet. Similarly, a single dataset, data augmentation, and random loading of model weights were used to compare and validate the advantages of the improved model with the PSPNet, SegNet, and DeeplabV3Plus algorithms. The improved model used pre-trained weights from a single dataset to load and train the model based on mixed datasets and data augmentation, further improving the model's generalization ability and root segmentation ability. [Results and Discussions] The results of the ablation tests indicated that Conv_ 2+Add was the best improved algorithm. Compared to the original UNet, the mIoU, mRecall, and root F1 values of the model increased by 0.37%, 0.99%, and 0.56%, respectively. And, comparative experiments indicate Unet+Conv_2+Add model was superior to the PSPNet, SegNet, and DeeplabV3Plus models, with the best evaluation results. And the values of mIoU, mRecall, and the harmonic average of root F1 were 81.62%, 86.90%, and 77.97%, respectively. The actual segmented images obtained by the improved model were more finely processed at the root boundary compared to other models. However, for roots with deep color and low contrast with soil particles, the improved model could only achieve root recognition and the recognition was sparse, sacrificing a certain amount of information extraction ability. This study used the root phenotype evaluation software Rhizovision to analyze the root images of the Unet+Conv_2+Add improved model, PSPNet, SegNet, and DeeplabV3Plu, respectively, to obtain the values of the four root phenotypes (total root length, average diameter, surface area, and capacity), and the results showed that the average diameter and surface area indicator values of the improved model, Unet+Conv_2+Add had the smallest differences from the manually labeled indicator values and the SegNet indicator values for the two indicators. Total root length and volume were the closest to those of the manual labeling. The results of transfer learning experiments proved that compared with ordinary training, the transfer training of the improved model UNet+Conv_2+Add increased the IoU value of the root system by 1.25%. The Recall value of the root system was increased by 1.79%, and the harmonic average value of F1 was increased by 0.92%. Moreover, the overall convergence speed of the model was fast. Compared with regular training, the transfer training of the original UNet improved the root IoU by 0.29%, the root Recall by 0.83%, and the root F1 value by 0.21%, which indirectly confirmed the effectiveness of transfer learning. [Conclusions] The multi-scale feature extraction strategy proposed in this study can accurately and efficiently segment roots, and further improve the model's generalization ability using transfer learning methods, providing an important research foundation for crop root phenotype research.

  • Topic--Intelligent Agricultural Sensor Technology
    LI Lu, GE Yuqing, ZHAO Jianlong
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(1): 28-35. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202309020

    Objective The soil moisture content is a crucial factor that directly affected the growth and yield of crops. By using a soil measurement instrument to measure the soil's moisture content, lots of powerful data support for the development of agriculture can be provided. Furthermore, these data have guiding significance for the implementation of scientific irrigation and water-saving irrigation in farmland. In order to develop a reliable and efficient soil moisture sensor, a new capacitive soil moisture sensor based on microfabrication technology was proposed in this study. Capacitive moisture sensors have the advantages of low power consumption, good performance, long-term stability, and easy industrialization. Method The forked electrode array consists of multiple capacitors connected in parallel on the same plane. The ideal design parameters of 10 μm spacing and 75 pairs of forked electrodes were obtained by calculating the design of forked finger logarithms, forked finger spacing, forked finger width, forked finger length, and electrode thickness, and studying the influence of electrode parameters on capacitance sensitivity using COMSOL Multiphysics software. The size obtained an initial capacitance on the order of picofarads, and was not easily breakdown or failed. The sensor was constructed using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology, where a 30 nm titanium adhesion layer was sputtered onto a glass substrate, followed by sputtering a 100 nm gold electrode to form a symmetrical structure of forked electrodes. Due to the strong adsorption capacity of water molecules of the MoS2 (molybdenum disulfide) layer, it exhibited high sensitivity to soil moisture and demonstrated excellent soil moisture sensing performance. The molybdenum disulfide was coated onto the completed electrodes as the humidity-sensitive material to create a humidity sensing layer. When the humidity changed, the dielectric constant of the electrode varied due to the moisture-absorbing characteristics of molybdenum disulfide, and the capacitance value of the device changed accordingly, thus enabling the measurement of soil moisture. Subsequently, the electrode was encapsulated with a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) polymer film. The electrode encapsulated with the microporous film could be directly placed in the soil, which avoided direct contact between the soil/sand particles and the molybdenum disulfide on the device and allowed the humidity sensing unit to only capture the moisture in the soil for measuring humidity. This ensured the device's sensitivity to water moisture and improved its long-term stability. The method greatly reduced the size of the sensor, making it an ideal choice for on-site dynamic monitoring of soil moisture. Results and Discussions The surface morphology of molybdenum disulfide was characterized and analyzed using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). It was observed that molybdenum disulfide nanomaterial exhibited a sheet-like two-dimensional structure, with smooth surfaces on the nanosheets. Some nanosheets displayed sharp edges or irregular shapes along the edges, and they were irregularly arranged with numerous gaps in between. The capacitive soil moisture sensor, which utilized molybdenum disulfide as the humidity-sensitive layer, exhibited excellent performance under varying levels of environmental humidity and soil moisture. At room temperature, a humidity generator was constructed using saturated salt solutions. Saturated solutions of lithium chloride, potassium acetate, magnesium chloride, copper chloride, sodium chloride, potassium chloride, and potassium sulfate were used to generate relative humidity levels of 11%, 23%, 33%, 66%, 75%, 84%, and 96%, respectively. The capacitance values of the sensor were measured at different humidity levels using an LCR meter (Agilent E4980A). The capacitance output of the sensor at a frequency of 200 Hz ranged from 12.13 pF to 187.42 nF as the relative humidity varied between 11% to 96%. The sensor exhibited high sensitivity and a wide humidity sensing range. Additionally, the frequency of the input voltage signal had a significant impact on the capacitance output of the sensor. As the testing frequency increased, the response of the sensor's system decreased. The humidity sensing performance of the sensor was tested in soil samples with moisture content of 8.66%, 13.91%, 22.02%, 31.11%, and 42.75%, respectively. As the moisture content in the soil increased from 8.66% to 42.75%, the capacitance output of the sensor at a frequency of 200 Hz increased from 119.51 nF to 377.98 nF, demonstrating a relatively high sensitivity. Similarly, as the frequency of the input voltage increased, the capacitance output of the sensor decreased. Additionally, the electrode exhibited good repeatability and the sensitivity of the sensor increased significantly as the testing frequency decreased. Conclusions The capacitive soil moisture sensor holds promise for effective and accurate monitoring of soil moisture levels, with its excellent performance, sensitivity, repeatability, and responsiveness to changes in humidity and soil moisture. The ultimate goal of this study is to achieve long-term monitoring of capacitance changes in capacitive soil moisture sensors, enabling monitoring of long-term changes in soil moisture. This will enable farmers to optimize irrigation systems, improve crop yields, and reduce water usage. In conclusion, the development of this innovative soil moisture sensor has the potential to promote agricultural modernization by providing accurate and reliable monitoring of soil moisture levels.

  • Special Issue--Monitoring Technology of Crop Information
    LIJiahao, QUHongjun, GAOMingzhe, TONGDezhi, GUOYa
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(3): 121-131. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202308005

    Objective To construct the 3D point cloud model of green plants a large number of clear images are needed. Due to the limitation of the depth of field of the lens, part of the image would be out of focus when the green plant image with a large depth of field is collected, resulting in problems such as edge blurring and texture detail loss, which greatly affects the accuracy of the 3D point cloud model. However, the existing processing algorithms are difficult to take into account both processing quality and processing speed, and the actual effect is not ideal. The purpose of this research is to improve the quality of the fused image while taking into account the processing speed. [Methods] A plant image fusion method based on non-subsampled shearlet transform (NSST) based parameter-adaptive dual channel pulse-coupled neural network (PADC-PCNN) and stationary wavelet transform (SWT) was proposed. Firstly, the RGB image of the plant was separated into three color channels, and the G channel with many features such as texture details was decomposed by NSST in four decomposition layers and 16 directions, which was divided into one group of low frequency subbands and 64 groups of high frequency subbands. The low frequency subband used the gradient energy fusion rule, and the high frequency subband used the PADC-PCNN fusion rule. In addition, the weighting of the eight-neighborhood modified Laplacian operator was used as the link strength of the high-frequency fusion part, which enhanced the fusion effect of the detailed features. At the same time, for the R and B channels with more contour information and background information, a SWT with fast speed and translation invariance was used to suppress the pseudo-Gibbs effect. Through the high-precision and high-stability multi-focal length plant image acquisition system, 480 images of 8 experimental groups were collected. The 8 groups of data were divided into an indoor light group, natural light group, strong light group, distant view group, close view group, overlooking group, red group, and yellow group. Meanwhile, to study the application range of the algorithm, the focus length of the collected clear plant image was used as the reference (18 mm), and the image acquisition was adjusted four times before and after the step of 1.5 mm, forming the multi-focus experimental group. Subjective evaluation and objective evaluation were carried out for each experimental group to verify the performance of the algorithm. Subjective evaluation was analyzed through human eye observation, detail comparison, and other forms, mainly based on the human visual effect. The image fusion effect of the algorithm was evaluated using four commonly used objective indicators, including average gradient (AG), spatial frequency (SF), entropy (EN), and standard deviation (SD). [Results and Discussions] The proposed PADC-PCNN-SWT algorithm and other five algorithms of common fast guided filtering algorithm (FGF), random walk algorithm (RW), non-subsampled shearlet transform based PCNN (NSST-PCNN) algorithm, SWT algorithm and non-subsampled shearlet transform based parameter-adaptive dual-channel pulse-coupled neural network (NSST-PADC) and were compared. In the objective evaluation data except for the red group and the yellow group, each index of the PADC-PCNN-SWT algorithm was second only to the NSST-PADC algorithm, but the processing speed was 200.0% higher than that of the NSST-PADC algorithm on average. At the same time, compared with the FDF, RW, NSST-PCNN, and SWT algorithms, the PADC-PCN -SWT algorithm improved the clarity index by 5.6%, 8.1%, 6.1%, and 17.6%, respectively, and improved the spatial frequency index by 2.9%, 4.8%, 7.1%, and 15.9%, respectively. However, the difference between the two indicators of information entropy and standard deviation was less than 1%, and the influence was ignored. In the yellow group and the red group, the fusion quality of the non-green part of the algorithm based on PADC-PCNN-SWT was seriously degraded. Compared with other algorithms, the sharpness index of the algorithm based on PADC-PCNN-SWT decreased by an average of 1.1%, and the spatial frequency decreased by an average of 5.1%. However, the indicators of the green part of the fused image were basically consistent with the previous several groups of experiments, and the fusion effect was good. Therefore, the algorithm based on PADC-PCNN-SWT only had a good fusion effect on green plants. Finally, by comparing the quality of four groups of fused images with different focal length ranges, the results showed that the algorithm based on PADC-PCNN-SWT had a better contour and color restoration effect for out-of-focus images in the range of 15-21 mm, and the focusing range based on PADC-PCNN-SWT was about 6 mm. [Conclusions] The multi-focal length image fusion algorithm based on PADC-PCNN-SWT achieved better detail fusion performance and higher image fusion efficiency while ensuring fusion quality, providing high-quality data, and saving a lot of time for building 3D point cloud model of green plants.

  • Special Issue--Agricultural Information Perception and Models
    WANGTong, WANGChunshan, LIJiuxi, ZHUHuaji, MIAOYisheng, WUHuarui
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(2): 85-94. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202311021

    [Objective] With the development of agricultural informatization, a large amount of information about agricultural diseases exists in the form of text. However, due to problems such as nested entities and confusion of entity types, traditional named entities recognition (NER) methods often face challenges of low accuracy when processing agricultural disease text. To address this issue, this study proposes a new agricultural disease NER method called RoFormer-PointerNet, which combines the RoFormer pre-trained model with the PointerNet baseline model. The aim of this method is to improve the accuracy of entity recognition in agricultural disease text, providing more accurate data support for intelligent analysis, early warning, and prevention of agricultural diseases. [Methods] This method first utilized the RoFormer pre-trained model to perform deep vectorization processing on the input agricultural disease text. This step was a crucial foundation for the subsequent entity extraction task. As an advanced natural language processing model, the RoFormer pre-trained model's unique rotational position embedding approach endowed it with powerful capabilities in capturing textual positional information. In agricultural disease text, due to the diversity of terminology and the existence of polysemy, traditional entity recognition methods often faced challenges in confusing entity types. However, through its unique positional embedding mechanism, the RoFormer model was able to incorporate more positional information into the vector representation, effectively enriching the feature information of words. This characteristic enabled the model to more accurately distinguish between different entity types in subsequent entity extraction tasks, reducing the possibility of type confusion. After completing the vectorization representation of the text, this study further emploied a pointer network for entity extraction. The pointer network was an advanced sequence labeling approach that utilizes head and tail pointers to annotate entities within sentences. This labeling method was more flexible compared to traditional sequence labeling methods as it was not restricted by fixed entity structures, enabling the accurate extraction of all types of entities within sentences, including complex entities with nested relationships. In agricultural disease text, entity extraction often faced the challenge of nesting, such as when multiple different entity types are nested within a single disease symptom description. By introducing the pointer network, this study effectively addressed this issue of entity nesting, improving the accuracy and completeness of entity extraction. [Results and Discussions] To validate the performance of the RoFormer-PointerNet method, this study constructed an agricultural disease dataset, which comprised 2 867 annotated corpora and a total of 10 282 entities, including eight entity types such as disease names, crop names, disease characteristics, pathogens, infected areas, disease factors, prevention and control methods, and disease stages. In comparative experiments with other pre-trained models such as Word2Vec, BERT, and RoBERTa, RoFormer-PointerNet demonstrated superiority in model precision, recall, and F1-Score, achieving 87.49%, 85.76% and 86.62%, respectively. This result demonstrated the effectiveness of the RoFormer pre-trained model. Additionally, to verify the advantage of RoFormer-PointerNet in mitigating the issue of nested entities, this study compared it with the widely used bidirectional long short-term memory neural network (BiLSTM) and conditional random field (CRF) models combined with the RoFormer pre-trained model as decoding methods. RoFormer-PointerNet outperformed the RoFormer-BiLSTM, RoFormer-CRF, and RoFormer-BiLSTM-CRF models by 4.8%, 5.67% and 3.87%, respectively. The experimental results indicated that RoFormer-PointerNet significantly outperforms other models in entity recognition performance, confirming the effectiveness of the pointer network model in addressing nested entity issues. To validate the superiority of the RoFormer-PointerNet method in agricultural disease NER, a comparative experiment was conducted with eight mainstream NER models such as BiLSTM-CRF, BERT-BiLSTM-CRF, and W2NER. The experimental results showed that the RoFormer-PointerNet method achieved precision, recall, and F1-Score of 87.49%, 85.76% and 86.62%, respectively in the agricultural disease dataset, reaching the optimal level among similar methods. This result further verified the superior performance of the RoFormer-PointerNet method in agricultural disease NER tasks. [Conclusions] The agricultural disease NER method RoFormer-PointerNet, proposed in this study and based on the RoFormer pre-trained model, demonstrates significant advantages in addressing issues such as nested entities and type confusion during the entity extraction process. This method effectively identifies entities in Chinese agricultural disease texts, enhancing the accuracy of entity recognition and providing robust data support for intelligent analysis, early warning, and prevention of agricultural diseases. This research outcome holds significant importance for promoting the development of agricultural informatization and intelligence.

  • Special Issue--Agricultural Information Perception and Models
    WUXiaoyan, GUOWei, ZHUYiping, ZHUHuaji, WUHuarui
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(2): 107-117. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202401008

    [Objective] Currently, the lack of computerized systems to monitor the quality of cabbage transplants is a notable shortcoming in the agricultural industry, where transplanting operations play a crucial role in determining the overall yield and quality of the crop. To address this problem, a lightweight and efficient algorithm was developed to monitor the status of cabbage transplants in a natural environment. [Methods] First, the cabbage image dataset was established, the cabbage images in the natural environment were collected, the collected image data were filtered and the transplanting status of the cabbage was set as normal seedling (upright and intact seedling), buried seedling (whose stems and leaves were buried by the soil) and exposed seedling (whose roots were exposed), and the dataset was manually categorized and labelled using a graphical image annotation tool (LabelImg) so that corresponding XML files could be generated. And the dataset was pre-processed with data enhancement methods such as flipping, cropping, blurring and random brightness mode to eliminate the scale and position differences between the cabbages in the test and training sets and to improve the imbalance of the data. Then, a cabbage transplantation state detection model based on YOLOv8s (You Only Look Once Version 8s) was designed. To address the problem that light and soil have a large influence on the identification of the transplantation state of cabbage in the natural environment, a multi-scale attention mechanism was embedded to increase the number of features in the model, and a multi-scale attention mechanism was embedded to increase the number of features in the model. Embedding the multi-scale attention mechanism to increase the algorithm's attention to the target region and improve the network's attention to target features at different scales, so as to improve the model's detection efficiency and target recognition accuracy, and reduce the leakage rate; by combining with deformable convolution, more useful target information was captured to improve the model's target recognition and convergence effect, and the model complexity increased by C3-layer convolution was reduced, which further reduced the model complexity. Due to the unsatisfactory localization effect of the algorithm, the focal extended intersection over union loss (Focal-EIoU Loss) was introduced to solve the problem of violent oscillation of the loss value caused by low-quality samples, and the influence weight of high-quality samples on the loss value was increased while the influence of low-quality samples was suppressed, so as to improve the convergence speed and localization accuracy of the algorithm. [Results and Discussions] Eventually, the algorithm was put through a stringent testing phase, yielding a remarkable recognition accuracy of 96.2% for the task of cabbage transplantation state. This was an improvement of 2.8% over the widely used YOLOv8s. Moreover, when benchmarked against other prominent target detection models, the algorithm emerged as a clear winner. It showcased a notable enhancement of 3% and 8.9% in detection performance compared to YOLOv3-tiny. Simultaneously, it also managed to achieve a 3.7% increase in the recall rate, a metric that measured the efficiency of the algorithm in identifying actual targets among false positives. On a comparative note, the algorithm outperformed YOLOv5 in terms of recall rate by 1.1%, 2% and 1.5%, respectively. When pitted against the robust faster region-based convolutional neural network (Faster R-CNN), the algorithm demonstrated a significant boost in recall rate by 20.8% and 11.4%, resulting in an overall improvement of 13%. A similar trend was observed when the algorithm was compared to the single shot multibox detector (SSD) model, with a notable 9.4% and 6.1% improvement in recall rate. The final experimental results show that when the enhanced model was compared with YOLOv7-tiny, the recognition accuracy was increased by 3%, and the recall rate was increased by 3.5%. These impressive results validated the superiority of the algorithm in terms of accuracy and localization ability within the target area. The algorithm effectively eliminates interferenced factors such as soil and background impurities, thereby enhancing its performance and making it an ideal choice for tasks such as cabbage transplantation state recognition. [Conclusions] The experimental results show that the proposed cabbage transplantation state detection method can meet the accuracy and real-time requirements for the identification of cabbage transplantation state, and the detection accuracy and localization accuracy of the improved model perform better when the target is smaller and there are weeds and other interferences in the background. Therefore, the method proposed in this study can improve the efficiency of cabbage transplantation quality measurement, reduce the time and labor, and improve the automation of field transplantation quality survey.

  • Topic--Intelligent Agricultural Sensor Technology
    HONGYan, WANGLe, WANGRujing, SUJingming, LIHao, ZHANGJiabao, GUOHongyan, CHENXiangyu
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(1): 18-27. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202309022

    [Objective] The content of nitrogen (N) and potassium (K) in the soil directly affects crop yield, making it a crucial indicator in agricultural production processes. Insufficient levels of the two nutrients can impede crop growth and reduce yield, while excessive levels can result in environmental pollution. Rapidly quantifying the N and K content in soil is of great importance for agricultural production and environmental protection. [Methods] A rapid and quantitative method was proposed for detecting N and K nutrient ions in soil based on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic chip electrophoresis and capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection (C4D). Microfluidic chip electrophoresis enables rapid separation of multiple ions in soil. The electrophoresis microfluidic chips have a cross-shaped channel layout and were fabricated using soft lithography technology. The sample was introduced into the microfluidic chip by applying the appropriate injection voltage at both ends of the injection channel. This simple and efficient procedure ensured an accurate sample introduction. Subsequently, an electrophoretic voltage was applied at both ends of the separation channel, creating a capillary zone electrophoresis that enables the rapid separation of different ions. This process offered high separation efficiency, required a short processing time, and had a small sample volume requirement. This enabled the rapid processing and analysis of many samples. C4D enabled precise measurement of changes in conductivity. The sensing electrodes were separated from the microfluidic chips and printed onto a printed circuit board (PCB) using an immersion gold process. The ions separated under the action of an electric field and sequentially reach the sensing electrodes. The detection circuit, connected to the sensing electrodes, received and regulated the conductivity signal to reflect the variance in conductivity between the sample and the buffer solution. The sensing electrodes were isolated from the sample solution to prevent interference from the high-voltage electric field used for electrophoresis. [Results and Discussions] The voltage used for electrophoresis, as well as the operating frequency and excitation voltage of the excitation signal in the detection system, had a significant effect on separation and detection performance. Based on the response characteristics of the system output, the optimal operating frequency of 1 000 kHz, excitation voltage of 50 V, and electrophoresis voltage of 1.5 kV were determined. A peak overshoot was observed in the electrophoresis spectrum, which was associated with the operating frequency of the system. The total noise level of the system was approximately 0.091 mV. The detection limit (S/N = 3) for soil nutrient ions was determined by analyzing a series of standard sample solutions with varying concentrations. The detection limited for potassium (K+), ammonium (NH4+), and nitrate (NO3) standard solutions were 0.5, 0.1 and 0.4 mg/L, respectively. For the quantitative determination of soil nutrient ion concentration, the linear relationship between peak area and corresponding concentration was investigated under optimal experimental conditions. K+, NH4+, and NO3 exhibit a strong linear relationship in the range of 0.5~40 mg/L, with linear correlation coefficients (R2) of 0.994, 0.997, and 0.990, respectively, indicating that this method could accurately quantify N and K ions in soil. At the same time, to evaluate the repeatability of the system, peak height, peak area, and peak time were used as evaluation indicators in repeatability experiments. The relative standard deviation (RSD) was less than 4.4%, indicating that the method shows good repeatability. In addition, to assess the ability of the C4D microfluidic system to detect actual soil samples, four collected soil samples were tested using MES/His and PVP/PTAE as running buffers. K+, NH4+,Na+, Chloride (Cl), NO3, and sulfate (SO43‒) were separated sequentially within 1 min. The detection efficiency was significantly improved. To evaluate the accuracy of this method, spiked recovery experiments were performed on four soil samples. The recovery rates ranged from 81.74% to 127.76%, indicating the good accuracy of the method. [Conclusions] This study provides a simple and effective method for the rapid detection of N and K nutrient ions in soil. The method is highly accurate and reliable, and it can quickly and efficiently detect the contents of N and K nutrient ions in soil. This contactless measurement method reduced costs and improved economic efficiency while extending the service life of the sensing electrodes and reducing the frequency of maintenance and replacement. It provided strong support for long-term, continuous conductivity monitoring.

  • Topic--Smart Agricultural Technology and Machinery in Hilly and Mountainous Areas
    ZHANGJun, CHENYuyan, QINZhenyu, ZHANGMengyao, ZHANGJun
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(3): 46-57. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202312028

    [Objective] The accurate estimation of terraced field areas is crucial for addressing issues such as slope erosion control, water retention, soil conservation, and increasing food production. The use of high-resolution remote sensing imagery for terraced field information extraction holds significant importance in these aspects. However, as imaging sensor technologies continue to advance, traditional methods focusing on shallow features may no longer be sufficient for precise and efficient extraction in complex terrains and environments. Deep learning techniques offer a promising solution for accurately extracting terraced field areas from high-resolution remote sensing imagery. By utilizing these advanced algorithms, detailed terraced field characteristics with higher levels of automation can be better identified and analyzed. The aim of this research is to explore a proper deep learning algorithm for accurate terraced field area extraction in high-resolution remote sensing imagery. [Methods] Firstly, a terraced dataset was created using high-resolution remote sensing images captured by the Gaofen-6 satellite during fallow periods. The dataset construction process involved data preprocessing, sample annotation, sample cropping, and dataset partitioning with training set augmentation. To ensure a comprehensive representation of terraced field morphologies, 14 typical regions were selected as training areas based on the topographical distribution characteristics of Yuanyang county. To address misclassifications near image edges caused by limited contextual information, a sliding window approach with a size of 256 pixels and a stride of 192 pixels in each direction was utilized to vary the positions of terraced fields in the images. Additionally, geometric augmentation techniques were applied to both images and labels to enhance data diversity, resulting in a high-resolution terraced remote sensing dataset. Secondly, an improved DeepLab v3+ model was proposed. In the encoder section, a lightweight MobileNet v2 was utilized instead of Xception as the backbone network for the semantic segmentation model. Two shallow features from the 4th and 7th layers of the MobileNet v2 network were extracted to capture relevant information. To address the need for local details and global context simultaneously, the multi-scale feature fusion (MSFF) module was employed to replace the atrous spatial pyramid pooling (ASPP) module. The MSFF module utilized a series of dilated convolutions with increasing dilation rates to handle information loss. Furthermore, a coordinate attention mechanism was applied to both shallow and deep features to enhance the network's understanding of targets. This design aimed to lightweight the DeepLab v3+ model while maintaining segmentation accuracy, thus improving its efficiency for practical applications. [Results and Discussions] The research findings reveal the following key points: (1) The model trained using a combination of near-infrared, red, and green (NirRG) bands demonstrated the optimal overall performance, achieving precision, recall, F1-Score, and intersection over union (IoU) values of 90.11%, 90.22%, 90.17% and 82.10%, respectively. The classification results indicated higher accuracy and fewer discrepancies, with an error in reference area of only 12 hm2. (2) Spatial distribution patterns of terraced fields in Yuanyang county were identified through the deep learning model. The majority of terraced fields were found within the slope range of 8º to 25º, covering 84.97% of the total terraced area. Additionally, there was a noticeable concentration of terraced fields within the altitude range of 1 000 m to 2 000 m, accounting for 95.02% of the total terraced area. (3) A comparison with the original DeepLab v3+ network showed that the improved DeepLab v3+ model exhibited enhancements in terms of precision, recall, F1-Score, and IoU by 4.62%, 2.61%, 3.81% and 2.81%, respectively. Furthermore, the improved DeepLab v3+ outperformed UNet and the original DeepLab v3+ in terms of parameter count and floating-point operations. Its parameter count was only 28.6% of UNet and 19.5% of the original DeepLab v3+, while the floating-point operations were only 1/5 of UNet and DeepLab v3+. This not only improved computational efficiency but also made the enhanced model more suitable for resource-limited or computationally less powerful environments. The lightweighting of the DeepLab v3+ network led to improvements in accuracy and speed. However, the slection of the NirGB band combination during fallow periods significantly impacted the model's generalization ability. [Conclusions] The research findings highlights the significant contribution of the near-infrared (NIR) band in enhancing the model's ability to learn terraced field features. Comparing different band combinations, it was evident that the NirRG combination resulted in the highest overall recognition performance and precision metrics for terraced fields. In contrast to PSPNet, UNet, and the original DeepLab v3+, the proposed model showcased superior accuracy and performance on the terraced field dataset. Noteworthy improvements were observed in the total parameter count, floating-point operations, and the Epoch that led to optimal model performance, outperforming UNet and DeepLab v3+. This study underscores the heightened accuracy of deep learning in identifying terraced fields from high-resolution remote sensing imagery, providing valuable insights for enhanced monitoring and management of terraced landscapes.

  • Special Issue--Artificial Intelligence and Robot Technology for Smart Agriculture
    LIUZhiyong, WENChangkai, XIAOYuejin, FUWeiqiang, WANGHao, MENGZhijun
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(4): 58-67. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202308012

    [Objective] The usual agricultural machinery navigation focuses on the tracking accuracy of the tractor, while the tracking effect of the trailed implement in the trailed agricultural vehicle is the core of the work quality. The connection mode of the tractor and the implement is non-rigid, and the implement can rotate around the hinge joint. In path tracking, this non-rigid structure, leads to the phenomenon of non-overlapping trajectories of the tractor and the implement, reduce the path tracking accuracy. In addition, problems such as large hysteresis and poor anti-interference ability are also very obvious. In order to solve the above problems, a tractor-implement path tracking control method based on variable structure sliding mode control was proposed, taking the tractor front wheel angle as the control variable and the trailed implement as the control target. [Methods] Firstly, the linear deviation model was established. Based on the structural relationship between the tractor and the trailed agricultural implements, the overall kinematics model of the vehicle was established by considering the four degrees of freedom of the vehicle: transverse, longitudinal, heading and articulation angle, ignoring the lateral force of the vehicle and the slip in the forward process. The geometric relationship between the vehicle and the reference path was integrated to establish the linear deviation model of vehicle-road based on the vehicle kinematic model and an approximate linearization method. Then, the control algorithm was designed. The switching function was designed considering three evaluation indexes: lateral deviation, course deviation and hinged angle deviation. The exponential reaching law was used as the reaching mode, the saturation function was used instead of the sign function to reduce the control variable jitter, and the convergence of the control law was verified by combining the Lyapunov function. The system was three-dimensional, in order to improve the dynamic response and steady-state characteristics of the system, the two conjugate dominant poles of the system were assigned within the required range, and the third point was kept away from the two dominant poles to reduce the interference on the system performance. The coefficient matrix of the switching function was solved based on the Ackermann formula, then the calculation formula of the tractor front wheel angle was obtained, and the whole control algorithm was designed. Finally, the path tracking control simulation experiment was carried out. The sliding mode controller was built in the MATLAB/Simulink environment, the controller was composed of the deviation calculation module and the control output calculation module. The tractor-implement model in Carsim software was selected with the front car as a tractor and the rear car as the single-axle implement, and tracking control simulation tests of different reference paths were conducted in the MATLAB/Carsim co-simulation environment. [Results and Discussions] Based on the co-simulation environment, the tracking simulation experiments of three reference paths were carried out. When tracking the double lane change path, the lateral deviation and heading deviation of the agricultural implement converged to 0 m and 0° after 8 s. When the reference heading changed, the lateral deviation and heading deviation were less than 0.1 m and less than 7°. When tracking the circular reference path, the lateral deviation of agricultural machinery tended to be stable after 7 s and was always less than 0.03 m, and the heading deviation of agricultural machinery tended to be stable after 7 s and remained at 0°. The simulation results of the double lane change path and the circular path showed that the controller could maintain good performance when tracking the constant curvature reference path. When tracking the reference path of the S-shaped curve, the tracking performance of the agricultural machinery on the section with constant curvature was the same as the previous two road conditions, and the maximum lateral deviation of the agricultural machinery at the curvature change was less than 0.05 m, the controller still maintained good tracking performance when tracking the variable curvature path. [Conclusions] The sliding mode variable structure controller designed in this study can effectively track the linear and circular reference paths, and still maintain a good tracking effect when tracking the variable curvature paths. Agricultural machinery can be on-line in a short time, which meets the requirements of speediness. In the tracking simulation test, the angle of the tractor front wheel and the articulated angle between the tractor and agricultural implement are kept in a small range, which meets the needs of actual production and reduces the possibility of safety accidents. In summary, the agricultural implement can effectively track the reference path and meet the requirements of precision, rapidity and safety. The model and method proposed in this study provide a reference for the automatic navigation of tractive agricultural implement. In future research, special attention will be paid to the tracking control effect of the control algorithm in the actual field operation and under the condition of large speed changes.

  • Special Issue--Agricultural Information Perception and Models
    ZHANGYuyu, BINGShuying, JIYuanhao, YANBeibei, XUJinpu
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(2): 118-127. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202401005

    [Objective] The fresh cut rose industry has shown a positive growth trend in recent years, demonstrating sustained development. Considering the current fresh cut roses grading process relies on simple manual grading, which results in low efficiency and accuracy, a new model named Flower-YOLOv8s was proposed for grading detection of fresh cut roses. [Methods] The flower head of a single rose against a uniform background was selected as the primary detection target. Subsequently, fresh cut roses were categorized into four distinct grades: A, B, C, and D. These grades were determined based on factors such as color, size, and freshness, ensuring a comprehensive and objective grading system. A novel dataset contenting 778 images was specifically tailored for rose fresh-cut flower grading and detection was constructed. This dataset served as the foundation for our subsequent experiments and analysis. To further enhance the performance of the YOLOv8s model, two cutting-edge attention convolutional block attention module (CBAM) and spatial attention module (SAM) were introduced separately for comparison experiments. These modules were seamlessly integrated into the backbone network of the YOLOv8s model to enhance its ability to focus on salient features and suppressing irrelevant information. Moreover, selecting and optimizing the SAM module by reducing the number of convolution kernels, incorporating a depth-separable convolution module and reducing the number of input channels to improve the module's efficiency and contribute to reducing the overall computational complexity of the model. The convolution layer (Conv) in the C2f module was replaced by the depth separable convolution (DWConv), and then combined with Optimized-SAM was introduced into the C2f structure, giving birth to the Flower-YOLOv8s model. Precision, recall and F1 score were used as evaluation indicators. [Results and Discussions] Ablation results showed that the Flower-YOLOv8s model proposed in this study, namely YOLOv8s+DWConv+Optimized-SAM, the recall rate was 95.4%, which was 3.8% higher and the average accuracy, 0.2% higher than that of YOLOv8s with DWConv alone. When compared to the baseline model YOLOv8s, the Flower-YOLOv8s model exhibited a remarkable 2.1% increase in accuracy, reaching a peak of 97.4%. Furthermore, mAP was augmented by 0.7%, demonstrating the model's superior performance across various evaluation metrics. The effectiveness of adding Optimized-SAM was proved. From the overall experimental results, the number of parameters of Flower-YOLOv8s was reduced by 2.26 M compared with the baseline model YOLOv8s, and the reasoning time was also reduced from 15.6 to 5.7 ms. Therefore, the Flower-YOLOv8s model was superior to the baseline model in terms of accuracy rate, average accuracy, number of parameters, detection time and model size. The performances of Flower-YOLOv8s network were compared with other target detection algorithms of Fast-RCNN, Faster-RCNN and first-stage target detection models of SSD, YOLOv3, YOLOv5s and YOLOv8s to verify the superiority under the same condition and the same data set. The average precision values of the Flower-YOLOv8s model proposed in this study were 2.6%, 19.4%, 6.5%, 1.7%, 1.9% and 0.7% higher than those of Fast-RCNN, Faster-RCNN, SSD, YOLOv3, YOLOv5s and YOLOv8s, respectively. Compared with YOLOv8s with higher recall rate, Flower-YOLOv8s reduced model size, inference time and parameter number by 4.5 MB, 9.9 ms and 2.26 M, respectively. Notably, the Flower-YOLOv8s model achieved these improvements while simultaneously reducing model parameters and computational complexity. [Conclusions] The Flower-YOLOv8s model not only demonstrated superior detection accuracy but also exhibited a reduction in model parameters and computational complexity. This lightweight yet powerful model is highly suitable for real-time applications, making it a promising candidate for flower grading and detection tasks in the agricultural and horticultural industries.

  • Special Issue--Artificial Intelligence and Robot Technology for Smart Agriculture
    ZHOUHuamao, WANGJing, YINHua, CHENQi
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(4): 117-126. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202309024

    [Objective]Pleurotus geesteranus is a rare edible mushroom with a fresh taste and rich nutritional elements, which is popular among consumers. It is not only cherished for its unique palate but also for its abundant nutritional elements. The phenotype of Pleurotus geesteranus is an important determinant of its overall quality, a specific expression of its intrinsic characteristics and its adaptation to various cultivated environments. It is crucial to select varieties with excellent shape, integrity, and resistance to cracking in the breeding process. However, there is still a lack of automated methods to measure these phenotype parameters. The method of manual measurement is not only time-consuming and labor-intensive but also subjective, which lead to inconsistent and inaccurate results. Thus, the traditional approach is unable to meet the demand of the rapid development Pleurotus geesteranus industry. [Methods] To solve the problems which mentioned above, firstly, this study utilized an industrial-grade camera (Daheng MER-500-14GM) and a commonly available smartphone (Redmi K40) to capture high-resolution images in DongSheng mushroom industry (Jiujiang, Jiangxi province). After discarding blurred and repetitive images, a total of 344 images were collected, which included two commonly distinct varieties, specifically Taixiu 57 and Gaoyou 818. A series of data augmentation algorithms, including rotation, flipping, mirroring, and blurring, were employed to construct a comprehensive Pleurotus geesteranus image dataset. At the end, the dataset consisted of 3 440 images and provided a robust foundation for the proposed phenotype recognition model. All images were divided into training and testing sets at a ratio of 8:2, ensuring a balanced distribution for effective model training. In the second part, based upon foundational structure of classical Mask R-CNN, an enhanced version specifically tailored for Pleurotus geesteranus phenotype recognition, aptly named PG-Mask R-CNN (Pleurotus geesteranus-Mask Region-based Convolutional Neural Network) was designed. The PG-Mask R-CNN network was refined through three approaches: 1) To take advantage of the attention mechanism, the SimAM attention mechanism was integrated into the third layer of ResNet101feature extraction network after analyzing and comparing carefully, it was possible to enhance the network's performance without increasing the original network parameters. 2) In order to avoid the problem of Mask R-CNN's feature pyramid path too long to split low-level feature and high-level feature, which may impair the semantic information of the high-level feature and lose the positioning information of the low-level feature, an improved feature pyramid network was used for multiscale fusion, which allowed us to amalgamate information from multiple levels for prediction. 3) To address the limitation of IoU (Intersection over Union) bounding box, which only considered the overlapping area between the prediction box and target box while ignoring the non-overlapping area, a more advanced loss function called GIoU (Generalized Intersection over Union) was introduced. This replacement improved the calculation of image overlap and enhanced the performance of the model. Furthermore, to evaluate crack state of Pleurotus geesteranus more scientifically, reasonably and accurately, the damage rate as a new crack quantification evaluation method was introduced, which was calculated by using the proportion of cracks in the complete pileus of the mushroom and utilized the MRE (Mean Relative Error) to calculate the mean relative error of the Pleurotus geesteranus's damage rate. Thirdly, the PG-Mask R-CNN network was trained and tested based on the Pleurotus geesteranus image dataset. According to the detection and segmentation results, the measurement and accuracy verification were conducted. Finally, considering that it was difficult to determine the ground true of the different shapes of Pleurotus geesteranus, the same method was used to test 4 standard blocks of different specifications, and the rationality of the proposed method was verified. [Results and Discussions] In the comparative analysis, the PG-Mask R-CNN model was superior to Grabcut algorithm and other 4 instance segmentation models, including YOLACT (You Only Look At Coefficien Ts), InstaBoost, QueryInst, and Mask R-CNN. In object detection tasks, the experimental results showed that PG-Mask R-CNN model achieved a mAP of 84.8% and a mAR (mean Average Recall) of 87.7%, respectively, higher than the five methods were mentioned above. Furthermore, the MRE of the instance segmentation results was 0.90%, which was consistently lower than that of other instance segmentation models. In addition, from a model size perspective, the PG-Mask R-CNN model had a parameter count of 51.75 M, which was slightly larger than that of the unimproved Mask R-CNN model but smaller than other instance segmentation models. With the instance segmentation results on the pileus and crack, the MRE were 1.30% and 7.54%, respectively, while the MAE of the measured damage rate was 0.14%. [Conclusions] The proposed PG-Mask R-CNN model demonstrates a high accuracy in identifying and segmenting the stipe, pileus, and cracks of Pleurotus geesteranus. Thus, it can help the automated measurements of phenotype measurements of Pleurotus geesteranus, which lays a technical foundation for subsequent intelligent breeding, smart cultivation and grading of Pleurotus geesteranus.

  • Topic--Intelligent Agricultural Sensor Technology
    SHUHongwei, WANGYuwei, RAOYuan, ZHUHaojie, HOUWenhui, WANGTan
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(1): 63-75. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202311018

    [Objective] The investigation of plant photosynthetic phenotypes is essential for unlocking insights into plant physiological characteristics and dissecting morphological traits. However, traditional two-dimensional chlorophyll fluorescence imaging methods struggle to capture the complex three-dimensional spatial variations inherent in plant photosynthetic processes. To boost the efficacy of plant phenotyping and meet the increasingly demand for high-throughput analysis of photosynthetic phenotypes, the development and validation of a novel plant photosynthetic phenotype imaging system was explored, which uniquely combines three-dimensional structured light techniques with chlorophyll fluorescence technology. [Methods] The plant photosynthetic phenotype imaging system was composed of three primary parts: A tailored light source and projector, a camera, and a motorized filter wheel fitted with filters of various bandwidths, in addition to a terminal unit equipped with a development board and a touchscreen interface. The system was based on the principles and unique characteristics of chlorophyll fluorescence and structured light phase-shifted streak 3D reconstruction techniques. It utilized the custom-designed light source and projector, together with the camera's capability to choose specific wavelength bands, to its full potential. The system employed low-intensity white light within the 400–700 nm spectrum to elicit stable fluorescence, with blue light in the 440–450 nm range optimally triggering the fluorescence response. A projector was used to project dual-frequency, twelve-step phase-shifted stripes onto the plant, enabling the capture of both planar and stripe images, which were essential for the reconstruction of the plant's three-dimensional structure. An motorized filter wheel containing filters for red, green, blue, and near-infrared light, augmented by a filter less wheel for camera collaboration, facilitated the collection of images of plants at different wavelengths under varying lighting conditions. When illuminated with white light, filters corresponding to the red, green, and blue bands were applied to capture multiband images, resulting in color photographs that provides a comprehensive documentation of the plant's visual features. Upon exposure to blue light, the near-infrared filter was employed to capture near-infrared images, yielding data on chlorophyll fluorescence intensity. During the structured light streak projection, no filter was applied to obtain both planar and streak images of the plant, which were then employed in the 3D morphological reconstruction of the plant. The terminal, incorporating a development board and a touch screen, served as the control hub for the data acquisition and subsequent image processing within the plant photosynthetic phenotypic imaging system. It enabled the switching of light sources and the selection of camera bands through a combination of command and serial port control circuits. Following image acquisition, the data were transmitted back to the development board for analysis, processing, storage, and presentation. To validate the accuracy of 3D reconstruction and the reliability of photosynthetic efficiency assessments by the system, a prototype of the plant photosynthetic phenotypic imaging system was developed using 3D structured light and chlorophyll fluorescence technology, in accordance with the aforementioned methods, serving as an experimental validation platform. The accuracy of 3D reconstruction and the effectiveness of photosynthetic analysis capabilities of this imaging system were further confirmed through the analysis and processing of the experimental results, with comparative evaluations conducted against conventional 3D reconstruction methods and traditional chlorophyll fluorescence-based photosynthetic efficiency analyses. [Results and Discussions] The imaging system utilized for plant photosynthetic phenotypes incorporates a dual-frequency phase-shift algorithm to facilitate the reconstruction of three-dimensional (3D) plant phenotypes. Simultaneously, plant chlorophyll fluorescence images were employed to evaluate the plant's photosynthetic efficiency. This method enabled the analysis of the distribution of photosynthetic efficiency within a 3D space, offering a significant advancement over traditional plant photosynthetic imaging techniques. The 3D phenotype reconstructed using this method exhibits high precision, with an overall reconstruction accuracy of 96.69%. The total error was merely 3.31%, and the time required for 3D reconstruction was only 1.11 s. A comprehensive comparison of the 3D reconstruction approach presented with conventional methods had validated the accuracy of this technique, laying a robust foundation for the precise estimation of a plant's 3D photosynthetic efficiency. In the realm of photosynthetic efficiency analysis, the correlation coefficient between the photosynthetic efficiency values inferred from the chlorophyll fluorescence image analysis and those determined by conventional analysis exceeded 0.9. The experimental findings suggest a significant correlation between the photosynthetic efficiency values obtained using the proposed method and those from traditional methods, which could be characterized by a linear relationship, thereby providing a basis for more precise predictions of plant photosynthetic efficiency. [Conclusions] The method melds the 3D phenotype of plants with an analysis of photosynthetic efficiency, allowing for a more holistic assessment of the spatial heterogeneity in photosynthetic efficiency among plants by examining the pseudo-color images of chlorophyll fluorescence's spatial distribution. This approach elucidates the discrepancies in photosynthetic efficiency across various regions. The plant photosynthetic phenotype imaging system affords an intuitive and comprehensive view of the photosynthetic efficiency in plants under diverse stress conditions. Additionally, It provides technical support for the analysis of the spatial heterogeneity of high-throughput photosynthetic efficiency in plants.

  • Special Issue--Agricultural Information Perception and Models
    ZHANGJing, ZHAOZexuan, ZHAOYanru, BUHongchao, WUXingyu
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(2): 40-48. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202310010

    [Objective] The widespread prevalence of sclerotinia disease poses a significant challenge to the cultivation and supply of oilseed rape, not only results in substantial yield losses and decreased oil content in infected plant seeds but also severely impacts crop productivity and quality, leading to significant economic losses. To solve the problems of complex operation, environmental pollution, sample destruction and low detection efficiency of traditional chemical detection methods, a Bi-directional Gate Recurrent Unit (Bi-GRU) model based on space-spectrum feature fusion was constructed to achieve hyperspectral images (HSIs) segmentation of oilseed rape sclerotinia infected area. [Methods] The spectral characteristics of sclerotinia disease from a spectral perspective was initially explored. Significantly varying spectral reflectance was notably observed around 550 nm and within the wavelength range of 750-1 000 nm at different locations on rapeseed leaves. As the severity of sclerotinia infection increased, the differences in reflectance at these wavelengths became more pronounced. Subsequently, a rapeseed leaf sclerotinia disease dataset comprising 400 HSIs was curated using an intelligent data annotation tool. This dataset was divided into three subsets: a training set with 280 HSIs, a validation set with 40 HSIs, and a test set with 80 HSIs. Expanding on this, a 7×7 pixel neighborhood was extracted as the spatial feature of the target pixel, incorporating both spatial and spectral features effectively. Leveraging the Bi-GRU model enabled simultaneous feature extraction at any point within the sequence data, eliminating the impact of the order of spatial-spectral data fusion on the model's performance. The model comprises four key components: an input layer, hidden layers, fully connected layers, and an output layer. The Bi-GRU model in this study consisted of two hidden layers, each housing 512 GRU neurons. The forward hidden layer computed sequence information at the current time step, while the backward hidden layer retrieves the sequence in reverse, incorporating reversed-order information. These two hidden layers were linked to a fully connected layer, providing both forward and reversed-order information to all neurons during training. The Bi-GRU model included two fully connected layers, each with 1 000 neurons, and an output layer with two neurons representing the healthy and diseased classes, respectively. [Results and Discussions] To thoroughly validate the comprehensive performance of the proposed Bi-GRU model and assess the effectiveness of the spatial-spectral information fusion mechanism, relevant comparative analysis experiments were conducted. These experiments primarily focused on five key parameters—ClassAP(1), ClassAP(2), mean average precision (mAP), mean intersection over union (mIoU), and Kappa coefficient—to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the Bi-GRU model's performance. The comprehensive performance analysis revealed that the Bi-GRU model, when compared to mainstream convolutional neural network (CNN) and long short-term memory (LSTM) models, demonstrated superior overall performance in detecting rapeseed sclerotinia disease. Notably, the proposed Bi-GRU model achieved an mAP of 93.7%, showcasing a 7.1% precision improvement over the CNN model. The bidirectional architecture, coupled with spatial-spectral fusion data, effectively enhanced detection accuracy. Furthermore, the study visually presented the segmentation results of sclerotinia disease-infected areas using CNN, Bi-LSTM, and Bi-GRU models. A comparison with the Ground-Truth data revealed that the Bi-GRU model outperformed the CNN and Bi-LSTM models in detecting sclerotinia disease at various infection stages. Additionally, the Dice coefficient was employed to comprehensively assess the actual detection performance of different models at early, middle, and late infection stages. The dice coefficients for the Bi-GRU model at these stages were 83.8%, 89.4% and 89.2%, respectively. While early infection detection accuracy was relatively lower, the spatial-spectral data fusion mechanism significantly enhanced the effectiveness of detecting early sclerotinia infections in oilseed rape. [Conclusions] This study introduces a Bi-GRU model that integrates spatial and spectral information to accurately and efficiently identify the infected areas of oilseed rape sclerotinia disease. This approach not only addresses the challenge of detecting early stages of sclerotinia infection but also establishes a basis for high-throughput non-destructive detection of the disease.

  • Special Issue--Agricultural Information Perception and Models
    XURuifeng, WANGYaohua, DINGWenyong, YUJunqi, YANMaocang, CHENChen
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(2): 62-71. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA201311014

    [Objective] In recent years, there has been a steady increase in the occurrence and fatality rates of shrimp diseases, causing substantial impacts in shrimp aquaculture. These diseases are marked by their swift onset, high infectivity, complex control requirements, and elevated mortality rates. With the continuous growth of shrimp factory farming, traditional manual detection approaches are no longer able to keep pace with the current requirements. Hence, there is an urgent necessity for an automated solution to identify shrimp diseases. The main goal of this research is to create a cost-effective inspection method using computer vision that achieves a harmonious balance between cost efficiency and detection accuracy. The improved YOLOv8 (You Only Look Once) network and multiple features were employed to detect shrimp diseases. [Methods] To address the issue of surface foam interference, the improved YOLOv8 network was applied to detect and extract surface shrimps as the primary focus of the image. This target detection approach accurately recognizes objects of interest in the image, determining their category and location, with extraction results surpassing those of threshold segmentation. Taking into account the cost limitations of platform computing power in practical production settings, the network was optimized by reducing parameters and computations, thereby improving detection speed and deployment efficiency. Additionally, the Farnberck optical flow method and gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) were employed to capture the movement and image texture features of shrimp video clips. A dataset was created using these extracted multiple feature parameters, and a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier was trained to categorize the multiple feature parameters in video clips, facilitating the detection of shrimp health. [Results and Discussions] The improved YOLOv8 in this study effectively enhanced detection accuracy without increasing the number of parameters and flops. According to the results of the ablation experiment, replacing the backbone network with FasterNet lightweight backbone network significantly reduces the number of parameters and computation, albeit at the cost of decreased accuracy. However, after integrating the efficient multi-scale attention (EMA) on the neck, the mAP0.5 increased by 0.3% compared to YOLOv8s, while mAP0.95 only decreased by 2.1%. Furthermore, the parameter count decreased by 45%, and FLOPs decreased by 42%. The improved YOLOv8 exhibits remarkable performance, ranking second only to YOLOv7 in terms of mAP0.5 and mAP0.95, with respective reductions of 0.4% and 0.6%. Additionally, it possesses a significantly reduced parameter count and FLOPS compared to YOLOv7, matching those of YOLOv5. Despite the YOLOv7-Tiny and YOLOv8-VanillaNet models boasting lower parameters and Flops, their accuracy lags behind that of the improved YOLOv8. The mAP0.5 and mAP0.95 of YOLOv7-Tiny and YOLOv8-VanillaNet are 22.4%, 36.2%, 2.3%, and 4.7% lower than that of the improved YOLOv8, respectively. Using a support vector machine (SVM) trained on a comprehensive dataset incorporating multiple feature, the classifier achieved an impressive accuracy rate of 97.625%. The 150 normal fragments and the 150 diseased fragments were randomly selected as test samples. The classifier exhibited a detection accuracy of 89% on this dataset of the 300 samples. This result indicates that the combination of features extracted using the Farnberck optical flow method and GLCM can effectively capture the distinguishing dynamics of movement speed and direction between infected and healthy shrimp. In this research, the majority of errors stem from the incorrect recognition of diseased segments as normal segments, accounting for 88.2% of the total error. These errors can be categorized into three main types: 1) The first type occurs when floating foam obstructs the water surface, resulting in a small number of shrimp being extracted from the image. 2) The second type is attributed to changes in water movement. In this study, nanotubes were used for oxygenation, leading to the generation of sprays on the water surface, which affected the movement of shrimp. 3) The third type of error is linked to video quality. When the video's pixel count is low, the difference in optical flow between diseased shrimp and normal shrimp becomes relatively small. Therefore, it is advisable to adjust the collection area based on the actual production environment and enhance video quality. [Conclusions] The multiple features introduced in this study effectively capture the movement of shrimp, and can be employed for disease detection. The improved YOLOv8 is particularly well-suited for platforms with limited computational resources and is feasible for deployment in actual production settings. However, the experiment was conducted in a factory farming environment, limiting the applicability of the method to other farming environments. Overall, this method only requires consumer-grade cameras as image acquisition equipment and has lower requirements on the detection platform, and can provide a theoretical basis and methodological support for the future application of aquatic disease detection methods.

  • Topic--Intelligent Agricultural Sensor Technology
    HONGYujiao, ZHANGShuo, LILi
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(1): 46-62. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202308019

    [Significance] Crop production is related to national food security, economic development and social stability, so timely information on the growth of major crops is of great significance for strengthening the crop production management and ensuring food security. The traditional crop growth monitoring mainly judges the growth of crops by manually observing the shape, color and other appearance characteristics of crops through the external industry, which has better reliability and authenticity, but it will consume a lot of manpower, is inefficient and difficult to carry out monitoring of a large area. With the development of space technology, satellite remote sensing technology provides an opportunity for large area crop growth monitoring. However, the acquisition of optical remote sensing data is often limited by the weather during the peak crop growth season when rain and heat coincide. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) compensates well for the shortcomings of optical remote sensing, and has a wide demand and great potential for application in crop growth monitoring. However, the current research on crop growth monitoring using SAR data is still relatively small and lacks systematic sorting and summarization. In this paper, the research progress of SAR inversion of crop growth parameters were summarized through comprehensive analysis of existing literature, clarify the main technical methods and application of SAR monitoring of crop growth, and explore the existing problems and look forward to its future research direction. Progress] The current research status of SAR crop growth monitoring were reviewed, the application of SAR technology had gone through several development stages: from the early single-polarization, single-band stage, gradually evolving to the mid-term multi-polarization, multi-band stage, and then to the stage of joint application of tight polarization and optical remote sensing. Then, the research progress and milestone achievements of crop growth monitoring based on SAR data were summarized in three aspects, namely, crop growth SAR remote sensing monitoring indexes, crop growth SAR remote sensing monitoring data and crop growth SAR remote sensing monitoring methods. First, the key parameters of crop growth were summarized, and the crop growth monitoring indexes were divided into morphological indicators, physiological and biochemical indicators, yield indicators and stress indicators. Secondly, the core principle of SAR monitoring of crop growth parameters was introduced, which was based on the interaction between SAR signals and vegetation, and then the specific scattering model and inversion algorithm were used to estimate the crop growth parameters. Then, a detailed summary and analysis of the radar indicators mainly applied to crop growth monitoring were also presented. Finally, SAR remote sensing methods for crop growth monitoring, including mechanistic modeling, empirical modeling, semi-empirical modeling, direct monitoring, and assimilation monitoring of crop growth models, were described, and their applicability and applications in growth monitoring were analyzed. [Conclusions and Prospects] Four challenges exist in SAR crop growth monitoring are proposed: 1) Compared with the methods of crop growth monitoring using optical remote sensing data, the methods of crop growth monitoring using SAR data are obviously relatively small. The reason may be that SAR remote sensing itself has some inherent shortcomings; 2) Insufficient mining of microwave scattering characteristics, at present, a large number of studies have applied the backward scattering intensity and polarization characteristics to crop growth monitoring, but few have applied the phase information to crop growth monitoring, especially the application study of polarization decomposition parameters to growth monitoring. The research on the application of polarization decomposition parameter to crop growth monitoring is still to be deepened; 3) Compared with the optical vegetation index, the radar vegetation index applied to crop growth monitoring is relatively less; 4 ) Crop growth monitoring based on SAR scattered intensity is mainly based on an empirical model, which is difficult to be extended to different regions and types of crops, and the existence of this limitation prevents the SAR scattering intensity-based technology from effectively realizing its potential in crop growth monitoring. Finally, future research should focus on mining microwave scattering features, utilizing SAR polarization decomposition parameters, developing and optimizing radar vegetation indices, and deepening scattering models for crop growth monitoring.

  • Topic--Intelligent Agricultural Sensor Technology
    ZHANGQing, LIYang, YOUYong, WANGDecheng, HUIYunting
    Smart Agriculture. 2024, 6(1): 111-122. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202306010

    [Objective] During the operation of the silage machine, the inclusion of ferrous metal foreign objects such as stray iron wires can inflict severe damage to the machine's critical components and livestock organs. To safeguard against that, a metal detection system with superior performance was developed in this research to enable precise and efficient identification of metal foreign bodies during field operations, ensuring the integrity of the silage process and the well-being of the animals. [Methods] The ferrous metal detection principle of silage machine was firstly analyzed. The detection coil is the probe of the metal detection system. After being connected in parallel with a capacitor, it is connected to the detection module. The detection coil received the alternating signal generated by the detection module to generate an alternating magnetic field. After the metal object entered the magnetic field, it affects the equivalent resistance and equivalent inductance of the detection coil. The detection module detected the change of the equivalent resistance and equivalent inductance, and then transmited the signal to the control module through the serial peripheral interface (SPI). The control module filtered the signal and transmited it to the display terminal through the serial port. The display terminal could set the threshold. When the data exceeded the threshold, the system performed sound and light alarm and other processing. Hardware part of the metal detection system of silage machine were firstly design. The calculation of the planar spiral coil and the cylindrical coil was carried out and the planar spiral coil was selected as the research object. By using the nondominated sorting genetic algorithm-Ⅱ (NSGA-II) combined with the method of finite element simulation analysis, the wire diameter, inner diameter, outer diameter, layer number and frequency of the coil were determined, and the calculation of the bent coil and the unbent coil and the array coil was carried out. The hardware system was integrated. The software system for the metal detection system was also designed, utilizing an STM32 microcontroller as the control module and LabView for writing the primary program on the upper computer. The system continuously displayed the read data and time-equivalent impedance graph in real-time, allowing for the setting of upper and lower alarm thresholds. When a metal foreign object was detected, the warning light turned red and an alarm sound was emitted, causing the feed roll to stop. To simulate the scenario of metal detection during the operation of a silage machine, a test bench was set up to validate the performance of the metal detection system. [Results and Discussions] The test results of the metal detection function showed that for a metal wire with a diameter of 0.6 mm and a length of 20 mm, as the inner diameter of the detection coil increased, the maximum alarm distance increased first and then decreased. The maximum alarm distance occured when the inner diameter was 35 mm, which was consistent with the optimization result. The maximum alarm distance was the largest when the detection coil was two layers, and there was no data readout when it was three layers. Therefore, the optimal thickness of the detection coil for this metal detection system was two layers. When the detection distance was greater than 80 mm, the alarm rate began to decrease, and the detection effect was weakened. When the detection distance was within 70 mm, the metal detection system could achieve a 100% alarm rate. The test results of the system response time showed that the average system response time was 0.105 0 s, which was less than the safe transportation time of 0.202 0 s. The system can give an alarm before the metal foreign object reaches the cutter, so the system is safe and effective. [Conclusion] In this study, a metal detection system for silage machines was designed. A set of optimization methods for metal detection coils was proposed, and the corresponding metal detection software and hardware systems were developed, and the functions of the metal detection system were verified through experiments, which could provide strong technical support for the safe operation of silage machines.

  • Special Issue--Artificial Intelligence and Robot Technology for Smart Agriculture
    XUJiping, LIHui, WANGHaoyu, ZHOUYan, WANGZhaoyang, YUChongchong
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(4): 79-91. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202309012

    [Objective] The flow of private data elements plays a crucial role in the food supply chain, and the safe and efficient operation of the food supply chain can be ensured through the effective management and flow of private data elements. Through collaborative computing among the whole chain of the food supply chain, the production, transportation and storage processes of food can be better monitored and managed, so that possible quality and safety problems can be detected and solved in a timely manner, and the health and rights of consumers can be safeguarded. It can also be applied to the security risk assessment and early warning of the food supply chain. By analyzing big data, potential risk factors and abnormalities can be identified, and timely measures can be taken for early warning and intervention to reduce the possibility of quality and safety risks. This study combined the industrial Internet identification and resolution system with the federated learning algorithm, which can realize collaborative learning among multiple enterprises, and each enterprise can carry out collaborative training of the model without sharing the original data, which protects the privacy and security of the data while realizing the flow of the data, and it can also make use of the data resources distributed in different segments, which can realize more comprehensive and accurate collaborative calculations, and improve the safety and credibility of the industrial Internet system's security and credibility. [Methods] To address the problem of not being able to share and participate in collaborative computation among different subjects in the grain supply chain due to the privacy of data elements, this study first analyzed and summarized the characteristics of data elements in the whole link of grain supply chain, and proposed a grain supply chain data flow and collaborative computation architecture based on the combination of the industrial Internet mark resolution technology and the idea of federated learning, which was constructed in a layered and graded model to provide a good infrastructure for the decentralized between the participants. The data identification code for the flow of food supplied chain data elements and the task identification code for collaborative calculation of food supply chain, as well as the corresponding parameter data model, information data model and evaluation data model, were designed to support the interoperability of federated learning data. A single-link horizontal federation learning model with isomorphic data characteristics of different subjects and a cross-link vertical federation learning model with heterogeneous data characteristics were constructed, and the model parameters were quickly adjusted and calculated based on logistic regression algorithm, neural network algorithm and other algorithms, and the food supply chain security risk assessment scenario was taken as the object of the research, and the research was based on the open source FATE (Federated AI Technology) federation learning model. Enabler (Federated AI Technology) federated learning platform for testing and validation, and visualization of the results to provide effective support for the security management of the grain supply chain. [Results and Discussion] Compared with the traditional single-subject assessment calculation method, the accuracy of single-session isomorphic horizontal federation learning model assessment across subjects was improved by 6.7%, and the accuracy of heterogeneous vertical federation learning model assessment across sessions and subjects was improved by 8.3%. This result showed that the single-session isomorphic horizontal federated learning model assessment across subjects could make full use of the data information of each subject by merging and training the data of different subjects in the same session, thus improving the accuracy of security risk assessment. The heterogeneous vertical federated learning model assessment of cross-session and cross-subject further promotes the application scope of collaborative computing by jointly training data from different sessions and subjects, which made the results of safety risk assessment more comprehensive and accurate. The advantage of combining federated learning and logo resolution technology was that it could conduct model training without sharing the original data, which protected data privacy and security. At the same time, it could also realize the effective use of data resources and collaborative computation, improving the efficiency and accuracy of the assessment process. [Conclusions] The feasibility and effectiveness of this study in practical applications in the grain industry were confirmed by the test validation of the open-source FATE federated learning platform. This provides reliable technical support for the digital transformation of the grain industry and the security management of the grain supply chain, and helps to improve the intelligence level and competitiveness of the whole grain industry. Therefore, this study can provide a strong technical guarantee for realizing the safe, efficient and sustainable development of the grain supply chain.

  • Special Issue--Artificial Intelligence and Robot Technology for Smart Agriculture
    XUJishuang, JIAOJun, LIMiao, LIHualong, YANGXuanjiang, LIUXianwang, GUOPanpan, MAZhirun
    Smart Agriculture. 2023, 5(4): 127-136. https://doi.org/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202308001

    [Objective] A key challenge for the harmless treatment center of sick and dead animal is to prevent secondary environmental pollution, especially during the process of transporting the animals from cold storage to intelligent treatment facilities. In order to solve this problem and achieve the intelligent equipment process of transporting sick and dead animal from storage cold storage to harmless treatment equipment in the harmless treatment center, it is necessary to conduct in-depth research on the key technical problems of path planning and autonomous walking of transport robots. [Methods] A * algorithm is mainly adopted for the robot path planning algorithm for indoor environments, but traditional A * algorithms have some problems, such as having many inflection points, poor smoothness, long calculation time, and many traversal nodes. In order to solve these problems, a path planning method for the harmless treatment of diseased and dead animal using transport robots based on the improved A algorithm was constructed, as well as a motion control method based on fuzzy proportional integral differential (PID). The Manhattan distance method was used to replace the heuristic function of the traditional A * algorithm, improving the efficiency of calculating the distance between the starting and ending points in the path planning process. Referring to the actual location of the harmless treatment site for sick and dead animal, vector cross product calculation was performed based on the vector from the starting point to the target point and the vector from the current position to the endpoint target. Additional values were added and dynamic adjustments were implemented, thereby changing the value of the heuristic function. In order to further improve the efficiency of path planning and reduce the search for nodes in the planning process, a method of adding function weights to the heuristic function was studied based on the actual situation on site, to change the weights according to different paths. When the current location node was relatively open, the search efficiency was improved by increasing the weight. When encountering situations such as corners, the weight was reduced to improve the credibility of the path. By improving the heuristic function, a driving path from the starting point to the endpoint was quickly obtained, but the resulting path was not smooth enough. Meanwhile, during the tracking process, the robot needs to accelerate and decelerate frequently to adapt to the path, resulting in energy loss. Therefore, according to the different inflection points and control points of the path, different orders of Bessel functions were introduced to smooth the planning process for the path, in order to achieve practical application results. By analyzing the kinematics of robot, the differential motion method of the track type was clarified. On this basis, a walking control algorithm for the robot based on fuzzy PID control was studied and proposed. Based on the actual operation status of the robot, the fuzzy rule conditions were recorded into a fuzzy control rule table, achieving online identification of the characteristic parameters of the robot and adjusting the angular velocity deviation of robot. When the robot controller received a fuzzy PID control signal, the angular velocity output from the control signal was converted into a motor rotation signal, which changed the motor speed on both sides of the robot to achieve differential control and adjust the steering of the robot. [Results and Discussions] Simulation experiments were conducted using the constructed environmental map obtained, verifying the effectiveness of the path planning method for the harmless treatment of sick and dead animal using the improved A algorithm. The comparative experiments between traditional A * algorithm and improved algorithm were conducted. The experimental results showed that the average traversal nodes of the improved A * algorithm decreased from 3 067 to 1 968, and the average time of the algorithm decreased from 20.34 s to 7.26 s. Through on-site experiments, the effectiveness and reliability of the algorithm were further verified. Different colors were used to identify the planned paths, and optimization comparison experiments were conducted on large angle inflection points, U-shaped inflection points, and continuous inflection points in the paths, verifying the optimization effect of the Bessel function on path smoothness. The experimental results showed that the path optimized by the Bessel function was smoother and more suitable for the walking of robot in practical scenarios. Fuzzy PID path tracking experiment results showed that the loading truck can stay close to the original route during both straight and turning driving, demonstrating the good effect of fuzzy PID on path tracking. Further experiments were conducted on the harmless treatment center to verify the effectiveness and practical application of the improved algorithm. Based on the path planning algorithm, the driving path of robot was quickly planned, and the fuzzy PID control algorithm was combined to accurately output the angular velocity, driving the robot to move. The transport robots quickly realized the planning of the transportation path, and during the driving process, could always be close to the established path, and the deviation error was maintained within a controllable range. [Conclusions] A path planning method for the harmless treatment of sick and dead animal using an transport robots based on an improved A * algorithm combined with a fuzzy PID motion control was proposed in this study. This method could effectively shorten the path planning time, reduce traversal nodes, and improve the efficiency and smoothness of path planning.