IFIP Advances in Information

and Communication Technology 344

Editor-in-Chief
A. Joe Turner, Seneca, SC, USA

Editorial Board
Foundations of Computer Science
Mike Hinchey, Lero, Limerick, Ireland
Software: Theory and Practice
Bertrand Meyer, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Education
Arthur Tatnall, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
Information Technology Applications
Ronald Waxman, EDA Standards Consulting, Beachwood, OH, USA
Communication Systems
Guy Leduc, Universit de Lige, Belgium
System Modeling and Optimization
Jacques Henry, Universit de Bordeaux, France
Information Systems
Jan Pries-Heje, Roskilde University, Denmark
Relationship between Computers and Society
Jackie Phahlamohlaka, CSIR, Pretoria, South Africa
Computer Systems Technology
Paolo Prinetto, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
Security and Privacy Protection in Information Processing Systems
Kai Rannenberg, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
Artificial Intelligence
Tharam Dillon, Curtin University, Bentley, Australia
Human-Computer Interaction
Annelise Mark Pejtersen, Center of Cognitive Systems Engineering, Denmark
Entertainment Computing
Ryohei Nakatsu, National University of Singapore
IFIP The International Federation for Information Processing
IFIP was founded in 1960 under the auspices of UNESCO, following the First
World Computer Congress held in Paris the previous year. An umbrella organi-
zation for societies working in information processing, IFIPs aim is two-fold:
to support information processing within its member countries and to encourage
technology transfer to developing nations. As its mission statement clearly states,

IFIPs mission is to be the leading, truly international, apolitical

organization which encourages and assists in the development, ex-
ploitation and application of information technology for the benefit
of all people.

IFIP is a non-profitmaking organization, run almost solely by 2500 volunteers. It

operates through a number of technical committees, which organize events and
publications. IFIPs events range from an international congress to local seminars,
but the most important are:

The IFIP World Computer Congress, held every second year;

Open conferences;
Working conferences.

The flagship event is the IFIP World Computer Congress, at which both invited
and contributed papers are presented. Contributed papers are rigorously refereed
and the rejection rate is high.

As with the Congress, participation in the open conferences is open to all and
papers may be invited or submitted. Again, submitted papers are stringently ref-
ereed.

The working conferences are structured differently. They are usually run by a
working group and attendance is small and by invitation only. Their purpose is
to create an atmosphere conducive to innovation and development. Refereeing is
less rigorous and papers are subjected to extensive group discussion.

Publications arising from IFIP events vary. The papers presented at the IFIP
World Computer Congress and at open conferences are published as conference
proceedings, while the results of the working conferences are often published as
collections of selected and edited papers.

Any national society whose primary activity is in information may apply to be-
come a full member of IFIP, although full membership is restricted to one society
per country. Full members are entitled to vote at the annual General Assembly,
National societies preferring a less committed involvement may apply for asso-
ciate or corresponding membership. Associate members enjoy the same benefits
as full members, but without voting rights. Corresponding members are not rep-
resented in IFIP bodies. Affiliated membership is open to non-national societies,
and individual and honorary membership schemes are also offered.
Daoliang Li Yande Liu Yingyi Chen (Eds.)

Computer
and Computing
Technologies
in Agriculture IV

4th IFIP TC 12 Conference, CCTA 2010

Nanchang, China, October 22-25, 2010
Selected Papers, Part I

13
Volume Editors

Daoliang Li
Yingyi Chen
China Agricultural University
EU-China Center for Information & Communication Technologies (CICTA)
17 Tsinghua East Road, Beijing, 100083, P.R. China
E-mail: {dliangl, chenyingyi}@cau.edu.cn

Yande Liu
East China Jiaotong University
College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering
Shuanggang Road, Nanchang, 330013 Jiangxi, China
E-mail: jxliuyd@163.com

ISSN 1868-4238 e-ISSN 1868-422X

ISBN 978-3-642-18332-4 e-ISBN 978-3-642-18333-1
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-18333-1
Springer Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010942867

CR Subject Classification (1998): I.2.11, H.4, C.3, C.2, D.2, K.4.4

IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is
concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting,
reproduction on microfilms or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication
or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965,
in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are liable
to prosecution under the German Copyright Law.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply,
even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws
and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Typesetting: Camera-ready by author, data conversion by Scientific Publishing Services, Chennai, India
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Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
 Preface

I want to express my sincere thanks to all authors who submitted research pa-
pers to the 4th IFIP International Conference on Computer and Computing
Technologies in Agriculture and the 4th Symposium on Development of Rural
Information (CCTA 2010) that were held in Nanchang, China, 2225 October
2010.
This conference was hosted by CICTA (EU-China Centre for Information
& Communication Technologies, China Agricultural University); China Agricul-
tural University; China Society of Agricultural Engineering, China; International
Federation for Information Processing (TC12); Beijing Society for Information
Technology in Agriculture, China. It was organized by East China Jiaotong
University.
CICTA focuses on research and development of advanced and practical tech-
nologies applied in agriculture and aims at promoting international communica-
tion and cooperation.
Sustainable agriculture is currently the focus of the whole world, and the
application of information technology in agriculture has become more and more
important. Informatized agriculture has been the goal of many countries re-
cently in order to scientically manage agriculture to achieve low costs and high
income.
The topics of CCTA 2010 covered a wide range of interesting theories and ap-
plications of information technology in agriculture, including simulation models
and decision-support systems for agricultural production, agricultural product
quality testing, traceability and e-commerce technology, the application of infor-
mation and communication technology in agriculture, and universal information
service technology and service systems development in rural areas. We selected
352 best papers among those submitted to CCTA 2010 for these proceedings.
It is always exciting to have experts, professionals and scholars getting together
with creative contributions and sharing inspiring ideas which will hopefully lead
to great developments in these technologies.
Finally, I would like also to express my sincere thanks to all the authors,
speakers, session chairs and attendees for their active participation and support
of this conference.

October 2010 Daoliang Li

 Conference Organization

Organizer
East China Jiaotong University

Organizing Committee Chair

Yande Liu

Academic Committee Chair

Daoliang Li

Conference Secretariat
Lingling Gao

Sponsors
China Agricultural University
China Society of Agricultural Engineering, China
International Federation for Information Processing, Austria
Beijing Society for Information Technology in Agriculture, China
National Natural Science Foundation of China
 Table of Contents Part I

3-D Turbulence Numerical Simulation for the Flow Field of Suction

Cylinder-Seeder with Socket-Slots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Yanjun Zuo, Xu Ma, Long Qi, and Xinglong Liao
An Architecture for the Agricultural Machinery Intelligent Scheduling
in Cross-Regional Work Based on Cloud Computing and Internet of
Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Zhiguo Sun, Hui Xia, and Wensheng Wang
A Comparative Study of Modied Materials of Acetylcholinesterase
Biosensor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Xia Sun, Xiangyou Wang, Wenping Zhao, Shuyuan Du,
Qingqing Li, and Xiangbo Han
A Detection Method of Rice Process Quality Based on the Color and
BP Neural Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Peng Wan, Changjiang Long, and Xiaomao Huang
A Digital Management System of Cow Diseases on Dairy Farm . . . . . . . . 35
Lin Li, Hongbin Wang, Yong Yang, Jianbin He, Jing Dong, and
Honggang Fan
A General Agriculture Mobile Service Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Haiyan Hu and Xiaolu Su
A Halal and Quality Attributes Driven Animal Products Formal
Producing System Based on HQESPNM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Qiang Han and Wenxing Bao
A Metadata Based Agricultural Universal Scientic and Technical
Information Fusion and Service Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Cui Yunpeng, Liu Shihong, Sun SuFen, Zhang Junfeng, and
Zheng Huaiguo
A Method to Calibrate the Electromagnetic Tracking Instrument When
Measuring Branches of Fruit Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Ding-Feng Wu, Jian Wang, Guo-Min Zhou, and Li-Bo Liu
A Method of Deduplication for Data Remote Backup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Jingyu Liu, Yu-an Tan, Yuanzhang Li, Xuelan Zhang, and
Zexiang Zhou
A Localization Algorithm for Sparse-Anchored WSN in Agriculture . . . . 76
Chunjiang Zhao, Shufeng Wang, Kaiyi Wang, Zhongqiang Liu,
Feng Yang, and Xiandi Zhang
VIII Table of Contents Part I

A New Method of Transductive SVM-Based Network Intrusion

Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Manfu Yan and Zhifang Liu

Design and Simulation of Jujube Sapling Transplanter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Wangyuan Zong, Wei Wang, Yonghua Sun, and Hong Zhang

A Precision Subsidy Management System for Strawberry Planting in

ChangPing Distinct of BeiJing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Chi Zhang, Tianen Chen, and Liping Chen

A Semantic Search Engine Based on SKOS Model Ontology in

Agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Yong Yang, Jinhui Xiong, and Shuyan Wang

A System for Detection and Recognition of Pests in Stored-Grain

Based on Video Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Ying Yang, Bo Peng, and Jianqin Wang

A Tabu Search Approach to Fuzzy Optimization of Camellia Oleifera

Fertilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Qin Song, Fukuan Zhao, and Yujun Zheng

AgOnt: Ontology for Agriculture Internet of Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

Siquan Hu, Haiou Wang, Chundong She, and Junfeng Wang

Auto Recognition of Navigation Path for Harvest Robot Based on

Machine Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Bei He, Gang Liu, Ying Ji, Yongsheng Si, and Rui Gao

An Agricultural Tri-dimensional Pollution Data Management Platform

Based on DNDC Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Lihua Jiang, Wensheng Wang, Xiaorong Yang, Nengfu Xie, and
Youping Cheng

An Analysis on the Inter-annual Spatial and Temporal Variation of

the Water Table Depth and Salinity in Hetao Irrigation District, Inner
Mongolia, China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Jun Du, Peiling Yang, Yunkai Li, Shumei Ren, Xianyue Li,
Yandong Xue, Lingyan Wang, and Wei Zhao

An Ecient and Fast Algorithm for Mining Frequent Patterns on

Multiple Biosequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Wei Liu and Ling Chen

An Inspection Method of Rice Milling Degree Based on Machine Vision

and Gray-Gradient Co-occurrence Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Peng Wan and Changjiang Long
 Table of Contents Part I IX

An Intelligent Retrieval Platform for Distributional Agriculture Science

and Technology Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Xiaorong Yang, Wensheng Wang, Qingtian Zeng, and Nengfu Xie
Analysis of Factors Inuencing the O-Farm Employment Based on the
Method of PLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Ying Huang and Yizong Xu
Analysis of Income Dierence among Rural Residents in China . . . . . . . . 219
Yan Xue, Yeping Zhu, and Shijuan Li
Analysis of Secretary Proteins in the Genome of the Plant Pathogenic
Fungus Botrytis Cinerea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Yue Zhang, Jing Yang, Lin Liu, Yuan Su, Ling Xu,
Youyong Zhu, and Chengyun Li
Analysis of the Heat Transfer Performance of Vapor-Condenser during
Vacuum Cooling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Gailian Li, Tingxiang Jin, and Chunxia Hu
Analysis on Dynamic Characteristics of Landscape Patterns in Hailer
and around Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Hongbin Zhang, Guixia Yang, Qing Huang, Gang Li,
Baorui Chen, and Xiaoping Xin
Application and Demonstration of Digital Maize Planting and
Management System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Shijuan Li and Yeping Zhu
Implement of Fuzzy Control for Greenhouse Irrigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Wenttao Ren, Quanli Xiang, Yi Yang, Hongguang Cui, and Lili Dai
Application of Background Information Database in Drought
Monitoring of Guangxi in 2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Xin Yang, Weiping Lu, Chaohui Wu, Yuhong Li, and Shiquan Zhong
Application of Fuzzy Clustering Analysis in Classication of Soil in
Qinghai and Heilongjiang of China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
Ping Han, Jihua Wang, Zhihong Ma, Anxiang Lu, Miao Gao, and
Ligang Pan
Application of Molecular Imprinting Technique in Organophosphorus
Pesticides Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Liu Zhao, Hua Ping, Ling Xiang, Ping Han, Jihua Wang, and
Ligang Pan
Assessing Rice Chlorophyll Content with Vegetation Indices from
Hyperspectral Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
Xingang Xu, Xiaohe Gu, Xiaoyu Song, Cunjun Li, and
Wenjiang Huang
X Table of Contents Part I

Automated Extracting Tree Crown from Quickbird Stand Image . . . . . . . 304

Guang Deng, Zengyuan Li, Honggan Wu, and Xu Zhang

Bayesian Networks Modeling for Crop Diseases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

Chunguang Bi and Guifen Chen

Characteristics of Soil Environment Variation in OasisDesert Ecotone

in the Process of Oasis Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
Haifeng Li, Fanjiang Zeng, Dongwei Gui, and Jiaqiang Lei

Chlorimuronethyl Resistance Selectable Marker Unsuited for the

Transformation of Rice Blast Fungus (Magnaporthe Grisea) . . . . . . . . . . . 335
Chang Qing, Yang Jing, Liu Lin, Su Yuan, Li Jinbin,
Zhu Youyong, and Li Chengyun

Support Vector Machine to Monitor Greenhouse Plant with Gaussian

Loss Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Manfu Yan, Qing Zhang, and Jianhang Zhang

Classication Methods of Remote Sensing Image Based on Decision

Tree Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Lihua Jiang, Wensheng Wang, Xiaorong Yang, Nengfu Xie, and
Youping Cheng

Computer-Aided Design System Development of Fixed Water

Distribution of Pipe Irrigation System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Mingyao Zhou, Susheng Wang, Zhen Zhang, and Lidong Chen

Construction and Practice of Information Demonstration Area in

Mentougou District of Beijing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
Juan Pan, Na Zhang, Shan Yao, and Jian Xu

Data Acquisition Method for Measuring Mycelium Growth of

Microorganism with GIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
Juan Yang, Jingyin Zhao, Qian Guo, Yunsheng Wang, and
Ruijuan Wang

Decision Support System for Quantitative Calculation of Crop Climatic

Suitability in Hebei Province . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Jing Zhang, Youfei Zheng, and Xin Wang

Delineation of Suitable Areas for Maize in China and Evaluation of

Application for the Technique of Whole Plastic-Film Mulching on
Double Ridges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
Chaojie Jia, Wenlong Zhao, Yaxiong Chen, and Guojun Sun

DEM Simulation and Analysis of Seeds Supply by the Vibrating Seed

Box of Magnetic Cylinder Seeder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Xiuping Shao, Jianping Hu, Yingsa Huang, and Fa Liu
 Table of Contents Part I XI

Design and Experiment of Onboard Field 3D Topography Surveying

System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Mingming Guo, Gang Liu, and Xinlei Li

Implementation of Agro-environmental Information Service System

Based on WebGIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
Lin Peng, Linnan Yang, and Limin Zhang

Design and Implementation of Automatic Control System for Rice Seed

Tape Winding Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
Hongguang Cui, Wentao Ren, Benhua Zhang, Yi Yang,
Lili Dai, and Quanli Xiang

Design and Implementation of Crop Potential Model System Based on

GIS and Componentware Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
Hao Zhang, Li Ding, Guang Zheng, Xin Xu, Lei Xi, and Xinming Ma

Design and Realization of a VRGIS-Based Digital Agricultural Region

Management System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
Xiaojun Liu, Yuou Zhang, Weixing Cao, and Yan Zhu

Design and Simulation Analysis of Transplanters Planting

Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
Fa Liu, Jianping Hu, Yingsa Huang, Xiuping Shao, and
Wenqin Ding

Design and Simulation for Bionic Mechanical Arm in Jujube

Transplanter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
Yonghua Sun, Wei Wang, Wangyuan Zong, and Hong Zhang

Design for Real-Time Monitoring System of High Oxygen Modied

Atmosphere Box of Vegetable and Fruit for Preservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
Zhanli Liu, Congcong Yan, Xiangyou Wang, and Xiangbo Han

Design of Agent-Based Agricultural Product Quality Control System . . . 476

Yeping Zhu, Shijuan Li, Shengping Liu, and E. Yue

Design of ETL Process on Spatio-temporal Data and Study of Quality

Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
Buyu Wang, Changyou Li, Xueliang Fu, Meian Li, Dongqing Wang,
Huibin Du, and Yajuan Xing

Design of Fuzzy Drip Irrigation Control System Based on ZigBee

Wireless Sensor Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
Xinjian Xiang

Design of Greenhouse Environmental Parameters Prediction System . . . . 502

Haokun Zhang and Heru Xue
XII Table of Contents Part I

Design of Limb for Parallel Mechanism Based on Screw Theory . . . . . . . . 508

Zhigang Lai, Lixin Li, and Ping an Liu
Design of Non-full Irrigation Management Information System of Hebei
Province Based on GIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519
Junliang He, Yanxia Zheng, and Shuyuan Zhang
The Monitoring System of Water Environment Based on Overlay
Network Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526
Xueliang Fu, Changyou Li, Buyu Wang, Honghui Li,
Hailei Ma, and Dongnan Zhu
Design of Rotary Root Stubble Digging Machine Based on
Solidworks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
Xinglong Liao, Xu Ma, and Yanjun Zuo
Design of the Network Platform Scheme Based on Comprehensive
Information Sharing of Zigong Citys Characteristic Agriculture . . . . . . . . 539
Wen Lei, Hong Zhang, and Lecai Cai
Detection of Surface Defects of Fruits Based on Fractal Dimension . . . . . 547
Yongxiang Sun, Yong Liang, and Qiulan Wu
Detection Technology for Precision Metering Performance of
Magnetic-Type Seeder Based on Machine Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
Deyong Yang, Jianping Hu, and Zuqing Xie
Determination of Cr, Zn, As and Pb in Soil by X-Ray Fluorescence
Spectrometry Based on a Partial Least Square Regression Model . . . . . . . 563
Anxiang Lu, Xiangyang Qin, Jihua Wang, Jiang Sun,
Dazhou Zhu, and Ligang Pan
Determination of Thermal Conductivity of Aloe in the Cooling and
Thawing Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569
Min Zhang, Huizhong Zhao, Zhiyou Zhong, Jianhua Chen,
Zhenhua Che, Jiahua Lu, and Le Yang
Development and Application of Computer Assisted Breeding System
in Rabbit Breeding Farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
Xibo Qiao, Hongchao Wu, Suping Sun, Mingyong Li,
Zhaopeng Wang, Jingui Dong, and Xinzhong Fan
Development of a Web-based Information Service Platform for
Protected Crop Pests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 582
Chong Huang and Haiguang Wang
Development of Dairy Cattle Registration and Herd Management
System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590
Hongchao Wu, Xibo Qiao, Xin Luan, Biao Li, Zhongle Chang,
Jinghe Tan, and Xinzhong Fan
 Table of Contents Part I XIII

Development of the Information Management System for Monitoring

Alien Invasive Species . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
Hui Li, Ningning Ge, Lingwang Gao, Zuorui Shen, Guoliang Zhang,
Zhiyuan Zang, and Yi Li
Discriminate of Moldy Chestnut Based on Near Infrared Spectroscopy
and Feature Extraction by Fourier Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
Zhu Zhou, Xiaoyu Li, Peiwu Li, Yun Gao, Jie Liu, and Wei Wang
Discrimination of Ca, Cu, Fe, and Na in Gannan Navel Orange by
Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608
Yao Mingyin, Lin Jinlong, Liu Muhua, Li Qiulian, and Lei Zejian
Dynamic Modeling on Nitrogen Assignment in Tobacco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614
Peng Zhao, Yuanyuan Shi, Xinming Ma, and Shuping Xiong
Dynamic Study of Farmers Information Adoption in China . . . . . . . . . . . 623
Jingjing Zhang, Lu Liu, Jian Zhang, and Jinyou Hu
Estimation of the Number of Apples in Color Images Recorded in
Orchards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630
Oded Cohen, Raphael Linker, and Amos Naor
Impact of Hydraulic Conductivity on Solute Transport in Highly
Heterogeneous Aquifer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643
Kaili Wang and Guanhua Huang
Eects of Dierent Physical Characteristics on the Compression
Molding Quality of Dried Fish Floss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 656
Hongmei Xu, Li Zong, and Shengfa Yuan
Electronic Agriculture Resources and Agriculture Industrialization
Support Information Service Platform Structure and Implementation . . . 669
Xiaoming Zhao
Evaluation on the Agricultural Websites Eciency Based on DEA
Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674
Shangmin Deng and Weili Men
Examination Method and Implementation for Field Survey Data of
Crop Types Based on Multi-resolution Satellite Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 681
Yang Liu, Mingyi Du, and Wenquan Zhu

Experimental Study of the Parameters of High Pulsed Electrical Field

Pretreatment to Fruits and Vegetables in Vacuum Freeze-Drying . . . . . . . 691
Yali Wu and Yuming Guo
Experimental Study on the Eects of Compression Parameters on
Molding Quality of Dried Fish Floss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 698
Hongmei Xu, Li Zong, Ling Li, and Jing Zhang
XIV Table of Contents Part I

Extraction of Remote Sensing Information of LONGAN Under Support

of 3S Technology in Guangxi Province . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 711
Xin Yang, Chaohui Wu, Weiping Lu, Yuhong Li, and Shiquan Zhong

Farmland Irrigation Remote Monitoring System Based on Conguration

Software and Multiple Serial Port Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 717
Xiangbo Han and Zhanli Liu

Fast Discrimination of Mature Vinegar Varieties with Visible NIR

Spectroscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 721
Yanru Zhao, Shujuan Zhang, Huamin Zhao, Haihong Zhang, and
Zhipeng Liu

Discrimination between Mature Vinegars of Dierent Geographical

Origins by NIRS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 729
Huishan Lu, Zhengguang An, Huanyu Jiang, and Yibin Ying

Prediction of Marked Age of Mature Vinegar Based on Fourier

Transform Near Infrared Spectroscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 737
Zhengguang An, Huishan Lu, Huanyu Jiang, and Yibin Ying

Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 745

 Table of Contents Part II

Food Safety and Technological Implications of Food Traceability

Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Hailiang Zhang, Xudong Sun, and Yande Liu

Function Design of Township Enterprise Online Approval System . . . . . . 11

Peng Lu, Gang Lu, and Chao Ding

Application of GPS on Power System Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Chunmei Pei, Huiling Guo, Xiuqing Yang, Bin He, Wei Liu, and
Xuemei Li

Greenhouse Temperature Monitoring System Based on Labview . . . . . . . . 23

Zhihong Zheng, Kai Zhang, and Chengliang Liu

Image-Driven Panel Design via Feature-Preserving Mesh

Deformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Baojun Li, Xiuping Liu, Yanqi Liu, Ping Hu, Mingzeng Liu, and
Changsheng Wang

Inuences of Temperature of Vapour-Condenser and Pressure in the

Vacuum Chamber on the Cooling Rate during Vacuum Cooling . . . . . . . . 41
Tingxiang Jin, Gailian Li, and Chunxia Hu

Inspection of Lettuce Water Stress Based on Multi-sensor Information

Fusion Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Hongyan Gao, Hanping Mao, and Xiaodong Zhang

Measurement of Chili Pepper Plants Size Based on Mathematical

Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Yun Gao, Xiaoyu Li, Kun Qi, and Hong Chen

Methodology Comparison for Eective LAI Retrieving Based on Digital

Hemispherical Photograph in Rice Canopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Lianqing Zhou, Guiying Pan, and Zhou Shi

Molecular Methods of Studying Microbial Diversity in Soil

Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Liu Zhao, Zhihong Ma, Yunxia Luan, Anxiang Lu,
Jihua Wang, and Ligang Pan

Monitoring the Plant Density of Cotton with Remotely Sensed Data . . . 90

Junhua Bai, Jing Li, and Shaokun Li
XVI Table of Contents Part II

Motion Blurring Direction Identication Based on Second-Order

Dierence Spectrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Junxiong Zhang, Fen He, and Wei Li
Multi-agent Quality of Bee Products Traceability Model Based on
Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Yue E, YePing Zhu, and YongSheng Cao
NIR Spectroscopy Identication of Persimmon Varieties Based on
PCA-SVM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Shujuan Zhang, Dengfei Jie, and Haihong Zhang
One Method for Batch DHI Data Import into SQL-Server: A Batch
Data Import Technique for DateSet Based on .NET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Liang Shi and Wenxing Bao
Optimal Sizing Design for Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems in Rural
Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Yu Fu, Jianhua Yang, and Tingting Zuo
Overall Layout Design of Iron and Steel Plants Based on SLP
Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Ermin Zhou, Kelou Chen, and Yanrong Zhang
Performance Forecasting of Piston Element in Motorcycle Engine
Based on BP Neural Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Rong Dai
Performance Monitoring System for Precision Planter Based on
MSP430-CT171 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Lianming Xia, Xiangyou Wang, Duanyang Geng, and
Qingfeng Zhang
Pervasive Agricultural Environment Monitoring System Based on
Embedded Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Hu Zhao, Sangen Wang, and Dake Wu
Precipitation Resource Potential in Mountainous Areas in Hebei
Province Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Zheng Liu, Yanxia Zheng, and Zhiyong Zhao
Precision Drip Irrigation on Hot Pepper in Arid Northwest China
Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Huiying Yang, Haijun Liu, Yan Li, Guanhua Huang, and
Fengxin Wang
Study on Thermal Conductivities Prediction for Apple Fruit Juice by
Using Neural Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Min Zhang, Zhenhua Che, Jiahua Lu, Huizhong Zhao,
Jianhua Chen, Zhiyou Zhong, and Le Yang
 Table of Contents Part II XVII

Prediction of Agricultural Machinery Total Power Based on

PSO-GM(2,1, , Model) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Di-yi Chen, Yu-xiao Liu, Xiao-yi Ma, and Yan Long

Prediction of Irrigation Security of Reclaimed Water Storage in Winter

Based on ANN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Jinfeng Deng

Progress of China Agricultural Information Technology Research and

Applications Based on Registered Agricultural Software Packages . . . . . . 218
Kaimeng Sun

Quantication Research on Dierent Load Weight-Bearing Running

Biochemical Indexes of Rats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Huaping Shang

Rapid Determination of Ascorbic Acid in Fresh Vegetables and Fruits

with Electrochemically Treated Screen-Printed Carbon Electrodes . . . . . . 234
Ling Xiang, Hua Ping, Liu Zhao, Zhihong Ma, and Ligang Pan

Regional Drought Monitoring and Analyzing Using MODIS

DataA Case Study in Yunnan Province . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Guoyin Cai, Mingyi Du, and Yang Liu

Regression Analysis and Indoor Air Temperature Model of Greenhouse

in Northern Dry and Cold Regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Ting Zhao and Heru Xue

Remote Control System Based on Compressed Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Weichuan Liao

Analysis of the Poverty-Stricken Rural Areas Demand for Rapid

Dissemination of Agricultural InformationTaking Wanquan County
in Hebei Province as an Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Xiaoxia Shi and Yongchang Wu

Research and Analysis about System of Digital Agriculture Based on a

Network Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
Duan Yane

Research and Development of Preceding-Evaluation System of Rural

Drinking Water Safety Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Lian He and Jilin Cheng

Research of Evaluation on Cultivated Land Fertility in Xinjiang Desert

Oasis Based on GIS TechnologyTaking No. 22 State Farm as the
Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Ling Wang, Xin Lv, and Hailong Liu
XVIII Table of Contents Part II

Research of Pest Diagnosis System Development Tools Based on Binary

Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
Yun Qiu and Guomin Zhou

Research of Soil Moisture Content Forecast Model Based on Genetic

Algorithm BP Neural Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Caojun Huang, Lin Li, Souhua Ren, and Zhisheng Zhou

Research of the Measurement on Palmitic Acid in Edible Oils by

Near-Infrared Spectroscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Hui Li, Jingzhu Wu, and Cuiling Liu

Research on a Heuristic GA-Based Decision Support System for Rice

in Heilongjiang Province . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
Ran Cao, Yushu Yang, and Wei Guo

Research on Docking of Supply and Demand of Rural Informationization

and Internet Digital Divide in Urban and Rural Areas in China . . . . . . 329
Zhongwei Sun, Yang Wang, and Peng Lu

Research on Evaluation of Rural Highway Construction in Hebei

Province . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Guisheng Rao, Limeng Qi, Runqing Zhang, and Li Deng

Research on Farmland Information Collecting and Processing

Technology Based on DGPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Weidong Zhuang and Chun Wang

Research on Fertilizer Eciency of Continuous Cropping Greenhouse

Cucumber Based on DEA Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Xiaohui Yang, Yuxiang Huang, Shuqin Li, and Sheng Huang

Design and Implementation of Crop Recommendation Fertilization

Decision System Based on WEBGIS at Village Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Hao Zhang, Li Zhang, Yanna Ren, Juan Zhang, Xin Xu,
Xinming Ma, and Zhongmin Lu

Research on Inuenced Factors about Routing Selection Scheme in

Agricultural Machinery Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
Fan Zhang, Guifa Teng, Jie Yao, and Sufen Dong

Research on Informationization Talented Person Training Pattern of

the Countryside Area in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
Yang Wang and Zhongwei Sun

Research on Quality Index System of Digital Aerial Photography

Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Wencong Jiang, Yanling Li, Yong Liang, and Yanwei Zeng
 Table of Contents Part II XIX

Research on Quality Inspection Method of Digital Aerial Photography

Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
Xiaojun Wang, Yanling Li, Yong Liang, and Yanwei Zeng
On RFID Application in the Tracking and Tracing System of
Agricultural Product Logistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
Weihua Gan, Yuwei Zhu, and Tingting Zhang
Research on Rough Set and Decision Tree Method Application in
Evaluation of Soil Fertility Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Guifen Chen and Li Ma
Research on the Method of Geospatial Information Intelligent Search
Based on Search Intention Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Jingbo Liu, Jian Wang, and Bingbo Gao
Research on the Theory and Methods for Similarity Calculation of
Rough Formal Concept in Missing-Value Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
Wang Kai, Li Shao-Wen, Zhang You-Hua, and Liu Chao
Research on Traceability System of Food Safety Based on PDF417
Two-Dimensional Bar Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
Shipu Xu, Muhua Liu, Jingyin Zhao, Tao Yuan, and Yunsheng Wang
Research and Application of Cultivation-Simulation- Optimization
Decision Making System for Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
Hongxin Cao, Chunlei Zhang, Baojun Zhang, Suolao Zhao,
Daokuo Ge, Baoqing Wang, Chuanbao Zhu, David B. Hannaway,
Dawei Zhu, Juanuan Zhu, Jinying Sun, Yan Liu, Yongxia Liu, and
Xiufang Wei
Residue Dynamics of Phoxim in Pericarp, Sarcocarp and Kernel of
Apple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
Yunxia Luan, Hua Ping, and Ligang Pan
Risk Analysis of Aedes triseriatus in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
Jingyuan Liu, Xiaoguang Ma, Zhihong Li, Xiaoying Wu, and
Nan Sun
Risk Assessment of Reclaimed Water Utilization in Basin Based
on GIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
Yanxia Zheng, Shaoyuan Feng, Na Jiang, and Qingyi Meng
Root Architecture Modeling and Visualization in Wheat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
Liang Tang, Feng Tan, Haiyan Jiang, Xiaojun Lei,
Weixing Cao, and Yan Zhu
Sensors in Smart Phone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
Chunmei Pei, Huiling Guo, Xiuqing Yang, Yangqiu Wang,
Xiaojing Zhang, and Hairong Ye
XX Table of Contents Part II

Simulation Analyze the Dice and Shape of the Dicer Based

on ADAMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496
Yingsa Huang, Jianping Hu, Deyong Yang, Xiuping Shao, and Fa Liu
Simulation and Design of Mixing Mechanism in Fertilizer Automated
Proportioning Equipment Based on Pro/E and CFD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
Liming Chen and Liming Xu

Simulation Study of a Novel Algorithm for Digital Relaying Based on

FPGA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
Renwang He, Dandan Xie, Yuling Zhao, and Yibo Yang

Simulation Study of Single Line-to-Ground Faults on Rural Teed

Distribution Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
Wanying Qiu
Single Leaf Area Measurement Using Digital Camera Image . . . . . . . . . . . 525
Baisong Chen, Zhuo Fu, Yuchun Pan, Jihua Wang, and
Zhixuan Zeng
Sliding Monitoring System for Ground Wheel Based on ATMEGA16
for No-Tillage PlanterCT246 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
Lianming Xia, Xiangyou Wang, Duayang Geng, and Qingfeng Zhang
Soil Erosion Features by Land Use and Land Cover in Hilly Agricultural
Watersheds in Central Sichuan Province, China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
Zhongdong Yin, Changqing Zuo, and Liang Ma
Spatial and Temporal Variability of Annual Precipitation during
19582007 in Loess Plateau, China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551
Rui Guo, Fengmin Li, Wenying He, Sen Yang, and Guojun Sun
Spatial Statistical Analysis in Cow Disease Monitoring Based on GIS . . . 561
Lin Li, Yong Yang, Hongbin Wang, Jing Dong, Yujun Zhao, and
Jianbin He
Study for Organic Soybean Production Information Traceability
System Based on Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567
Xi Wang, Chun Wang, Xinzhong Wang, and Weidong Zhuang
Study of Agricultural Informatization Standards Framework . . . . . . . . . . . 573
Yunpeng Cui, Shihong Liu, and Pengju He

On Countermeasures of Promoting Agricultural Products ECommerce

in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
Weihua Gan, Tingting Zhang, and Yuwei Zhu
Study on Approaches of Land Suitability Evaluation for Crop
Production Using GIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587
Linyi Li, Jingyin Zhao, and Tao Yuan
 Table of Contents Part II XXI

Tracking of Human Arm Based on MEMS Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597

Yuxiang Zhang, Liuyi Ma, Tongda Zhang, and Fuhou Xu

Study on Integration of Measurement and Control System for Combine

Harvester . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
Jin Chen, Yuelan Zheng, Yaoming Li, and Xinhua Wei

Study on Jabber Be Applied to Video Diagnosis for Plant Diseases and

Insect Pests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615
Wei Zhang, JunFeng Zhang, Feng Yu, JiChun Zhao, and
RuPeng Luan

Study on Pretreatment Algorithm of Near Infrared Spectroscopy . . . . . . . 623

Xiaoli Wang and Guomin Zhou

Study on Rapid Identication Methods of Transgenic Rapeseed Oil

Based on Near Infrared Spectroscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 633
Shiping Zhu, Jing Liang, and Lin Yan

Study on Regional Agro-ecological Risk and Pressure Supported by

City Expansion Model and SERA Model A Case Study of Selangor,
Malaysia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 641
Xiaoxia Shi, Yaoli Zhang, and Cheng Peng

Study on Relationship between Tobacco Canopy Spectra and LAI . . . . . . 650

Hongbo Qiao, Weng Mei, Yafei Yang, Wang Yong,
Jishuai Zhang, and Yu Hua

Study on Spatial Scale Transformation Method of MODIS NDVI and

NOAA NDVI in Inner Mongolia Grassland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 658
Hongbin Zhang, Guixia Yang, Qing Huang, Gang Li,
Baorui Chen, and Xiaoping Xin

Study on Storage Characteristic of Navel Orange Based on ANN . . . . . . . 667

Junfang Xia and Runwen Hu

Study on the Dierences of Village-Level Spatial Variability of

Agricultural Soil Available K in the Typical Black Soil Regions of
Northeast China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674
Weiwei Cui and Jiping Liu

Study on the Management System of Farmland Intelligent Irrigation . . . 682

Fanghua Li, Bai Wang, Yan Huang, Yun Teng, and Tijiu Cai

Extracting Winter Wheat Planting Area Based on Cropping System

with Remote Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 691
Xueyan Sui, Xiaodong Zhang, Shaokun Li, Zhenlin Zhu,
Bo Ming, and Xiaoqing Sun
XXII Table of Contents Part II

Study on the Rainfall Interpolation Algorithm of Distributed

Hydrological Model Based on RS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700
Xiaoxia Yang, Yong Liang, and Song Jia

Study on Vegetable Field Evaluation Index System for Non-Point

Source Pollution of Dagu River Basin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 706
Jinheng Zhang, Junqiang Wang, Yongliang Lv, Jianting Liu,
Dapeng Li, Zhenxuan Yao, Xi Jiang, and Ying Liu

Study on Water Resources Optimal Allocation of Irrigation District

and Irrigation Decision Support System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 716
Liang Zhang, Daoxi Li, and Xiaoyu An

Study on Web-Based Cotton Fertilization Recommendation and

Information Management Decision Support System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 726
Yv-mei Dang and Xin Lv

Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 735

 Table of Contents Part III

Study on XML-Based Heterogeneous Agriculture Database Sharing

Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Qiulan Wu, Yongxiang Sun, Xiaoxia Yang, Yong Liang, and
Xia Geng
Studying on Construction Programs of the Platform of Primary
Products Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Gang Lu, Peng Lu, and Cuie Liu
Supply Chain Integration Based on Core Manufacturing Enterprise . . . . . 14
Wenqin Cao and Haiyan Zhu
Target Recognition for the Automatically Targeting Variable Rate
Sprayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Maogang Li, Yan Shi, Xingxing Wang, and Haibo Yuan
Target Recognition of Software Research about Machine System of
Accurately Spraying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Yan Shi, Chunmei Zhang, Maogang Li, and Haibo Yuan
The Application of CPLD and ARM in Food Safety Testing Data
Fusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Jianjun Ding, Xihua Wang, and Chao Sun
The Application of Three-Dimensional Visualization Technology in
Village Information Service Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Xiaoxia Yang, Yong Liang, and Song Jia
Research and Application of Data Security for Mobile Devices . . . . . . . . . 46
Xiandi Zhang, Feng Yang, Zhongqiang Liu, Zhenzhi Wang, and
Kaiyi Wang
The Design and Development of the Land Management System in
Dingzhuang Town Based on Spatial Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Yusheng Liang, Wenbin Sun, Haiting Diao, and Ying Li
The Design of Portable Equipment for Greenhouses Environment
Information Acquirement Based on Voice Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Xin Zhang, Xiaojun Qiao, Wengang Zheng, Cheng Wang, and
Yunhe Zhang
The Design of Smart Wireless Carbon Dioxide Measuring Instrument
Used in Greenhouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Wengang Zheng, Xin Zhang, Xiaojun Qiao, Hua Yan, and
Wenbiao Wu
XXIV Table of Contents Part III

The Detection of Quality Deterioration of Apple Juice by Near Infrared

and Fluorescence Spectroscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Dazhou Zhu, Baoping Ji, Zhaoshen Qing, Cheng Wang, and
Manuela Zude

The Determination of Total N, Total P, Cu and Zn in Chicken Manure

Using Near Infrared Reectance Spectroscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Yiwei Dong, Yongxing Chen, Dazhou Zhu, Yuzhong Li,
Chunying Xu, Wei Bai, Yanan Wang, and Qiaozhen Li

The Growth Phases of Information Construction in Chinese Rural

Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Li-jun Wang

The Judgment of Beef Marble Texture Based on the MATLAB Image

Processing Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Ruokui Chang, Yong Wei, Lizhen Ma, Yuanhong Wang,
Hua Liu, and Mingyu Song

The New Method of Fruit Tree Characteristics Acquisition Using

Electromagnetic Tracking Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Jian Wang, Ding-Feng Wu, Guo-Min Zhou, and Yun Qiu

The Novel Integrating Sphere Type Near-Infrared Moisture

Determination Instrument Based on LabVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Yunliang Song, Bin Chen, Shushan Wang, Daoli Lu, and Min Yang

The Research and Realization of the Science Feed Management

System in Islamic Livestock Norm Production and Quality Attestation
System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Rong Ren and Wenxing Bao

The Simulation of the Apple Tree Forms Eects on Its Photosynthetic

Eciency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Lin Hu, Guomin Zhou, and Yun Qiu

The Spatial and Temporal Prognosis of Oilseed Yield in Shandong

Province . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Yujian Yang, Jianhua Zhu, Shubo Wan, and Xiaoyan Zhang

The Study and Implementation of Agricultural Information Service

System Based on Addressable Broadcast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Huoguo Zheng, Haiyan Hu, Shihong Liu, and Hong Meng

The Study of Quality and Safety Traceability System of Vegetable

Produce of Hebei Province . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Fangzhou Wang and Wensheng Sun
 Table of Contents Part III XXV

The Study on Building of Virtual Reality System in Large Surface Coal

Mine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Baoying Ye, Nisha Bao, and Zhongke Bai

The Study on Navel Orange Traceability Chain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Huoguo Zheng, Xianxue Meng, and Shihong Liu

The Study on the Organization Approach of Agricultural Model

Components Library Based on Topic Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Haiyan Jiang, Bing Fu, Mei Zhang, Yan Zhu, and Weixin Cao

Theory of Double Sampling Applied to Main Crops Acreage Monitoring

at National Scale Based on 3S in ChinaCT316 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Quan Wu, Li Sun, Fei Wang, and Shaorong Jia

Three-Dimensional Visualization of Soil Electrical Conductivity

Variation by VRML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Hongyi Li

Towards Developing an Edible Fungi Factory HACCP MIS Base on

RFID Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Yunsheng Wang, Shipu Xu, ChangZhao Wan, Jihong Cheng,
Qian Guo, Juan Yang, and Jingying Zhao

Toxicity of Cu, Pb, and Zn on Seed Germination and Young Seedlings

of Wheat (Triticum Aestivum L.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Haiou Wang, Guangrong Zhong, Guoqing Shi, and Fangting Pan

Using Data Grid Technology to Build MODIS Data Management

System in Agriculture Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Yi Zeng and Guoqing Li

Virtual Prototype Modeling and Simulating Analysis of Lotus Root

Slicing Machine Based on ADAMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Jianping Hu, Jing Wang, Yinsa Huang, and Enzhu Wei

Virtual Reality and the Application in Virtual Experiment for

Agricultural Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Yu Zang, Zhongxiang Zhu, Zhenghe Song, and Enrong Mao

Virtual Visualization System for Growth of Tobacco Root . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

Lei Xi, Shuping Xiong, Yanna Ren, Qiang Wang, Juan Yang,
Longlong Zhang, and Xinming Ma

Winter Wheat Quality Inspection and Regionalization Based on NIR

Network and Remote Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Xiaodong Yang, WenJiang Huang, Cunjun Li, Xingang Xu, and
Hao Yang
XXVI Table of Contents Part III

A Web-Based Monitoring System as a Measurement Tool in

Greenhouses Using Wireless Sensor Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Yuling Shi, Zhongyi Wang, Xu Liu, Dongjie Zhao, and Lan Huang

Analysis and Design on Decision Support System of Security Risk

Management in Rural Power Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
Dongsheng Zhou and Tao Yang

Analysis on the Factors Causing the Real-Time Image Blurry and

Development of Methods for the Image Restoration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
Jianhua Zhang, Ronghua Ji, Kaiqun Hu, Xue Yuan, Hui Li, and
Lijun Qi

Application Analysis of Machine Vision Technology in the Agricultural

Inspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Yang Yang, Yang Zhang, and Tian He

Comparative Study of Methods of Risks Assessment in Rural Power

Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
Xiaoqiang Song and Tao Yang

A Circuit Module and CPLD Laser Ground Controller Based on

RS485 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
Xinlei Li, Gang Liu, Mingming Guo, Yin Liu, and Fei Yang

Design of Decision Support System for Mechanical Conservation

Tillage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
Junjing Yuan, Jian Zhang, and Hongzhen Cai

Experimental Study on the Quality of Dutch Cucumber in Storage . . . . . 347

Jingying Tan, Dan Jin, and Qing Wang

GIS-Based Evaluation of Soybean Growing Areas Suitability in

China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Wenying He, Sen Yang, Rui Guo, Yaxiong Chen, Weihong Zhou,
Chaojie Jia, and Guojun Sun

Goal-Driven Workow Generation Based on AI Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367

Yinxue Shi, Minghao Yang, and Ruizhi Sun

Mobile Phones of 3G Era in Small and Medium-Sized Agricultural

Production and Application Prospect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Yang Yang, Tian He, and Yang Zhang

Research of Dynamic Identication Technology on Cotton Foreign

Fibers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Shuangxi Liu, Wenxiu Zheng, Hengbin Li, and Jinxing Wang
 Table of Contents Part III XXVII

Research on Acquisition Methods of High-Precision DEM for

Distributed Hydrological Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
Li Deng, Yong Liang, and Chengming Zhang

Research on Image Classication Algorithm Based on Articial Immune

Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Chengming Zhang, Yong Liang, ShuJing Wan, Jinping Sun, and
Dalei Zhang

Short-Term Load Forecasting Based on RS-ART . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413

Tao Yang, Feng Zhang, Qingji Li, and Ping Yang

Study on Delineation of Irrigation Management Zones Based on

Management Zone Analyst Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Qiuxiang Jiang, Qiang Fu, and Zilong Wang

Study on Irrigation Regime of Double Cropping of Winter Wheat with

Summer Maize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
Shengfeng Wang, Jianxin Xu, Shuqin Yang, and Ping Jia

Study on Model of Risk Assessment of Standard Operation in Rural

Power Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
Qingji Li and Tao Yang

Study on Refrigeratory Compressor with Frequency Conversion and Its

Economical Eciency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
Dan Jin, Jingying Tan, and Qing Wang

Study on the Parameters Acquisition Method of Distributed

Hydrological Model Based on RS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
Jinping Sun, Yong Liang, Qin Yan, and Chengming Zhang

The Design and Implementation of Halal Beef Wholly Quality

Traceability System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
Yongsheng Yang and Wenxing Bao

The Development of Remote Labor Training System for Rural Small

Towns Based on MVC Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
Lihua Zheng, Dongmei Zhao, Nan Zhou, Xiaobing Qiu, Li Xu,
Shicong Wang, and Zhong Qiao

WEB-Based Intelligent Diagnosis System for Cotton Diseases

Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
Hui Li, Ronghua Ji, Jianhua Zhang, Xue Yuan, Kaiqun Hu, and
Lijun Qi

Wetland Information Extraction from RS Image Based on Wavelet

Packet and the Active Learning Support Vector Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
Pu Wang and Wenxing Bao
XXVIII Table of Contents Part III

A Research to Construct the Interactive Platform for Integrated

Information of Agricultural Products in China Xinjiang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
Yuan Li and Zhigang Li

Modeling Spatial Pattern of Precipitation with GIS and Multivariate

Geostatistical Methods in Chongqing Tobacco Planting Region,
China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
Xuan Wang, Jiake Lv, Chaofu Wei, and Deti Xie

Prediction of Freight Ability in Country Base on GRNN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525

Baihua Zhang

Research and Application of Modern Information Technology in the

Forest Plant Protection Machinery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
Lairong Chen, Qingchun Wang, and Ronghua Ji

Research on Information Sharing Pattern of Agricultural Products

Supply Chain Based on E-Commerce Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
Zhigang Li, Yang Gao, Yuan Li, and Jinyu Han

Study of Intelligent Integrated Modeling and Development of

Agricultural Post-Project Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
Chen Li

Study of Optimal Operation for Huaian Parallel Pumping Stations with

Adjustable-Blade Units Based on Two Stages Decomposition-Dynamic
Programming Aggregation Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554
Yi Gong, Jilin Cheng, Rentian Zhang, and Lihua Zhang

TBIS: A Web-Based Expert System for Identication of Tephritid Fruit

Flies in China Based on DNA Barcode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563
Zhimei Li, Zhihong Li, Fuxiang Wang, Wei Lin, and Jiajiao Wu

TPPADS: An Expert System Based on Multi-branch Structure for

Tianjin Planting Pest Assistant Diagnosis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572
Zhigang Wu, Yichuan Bai, Han Huang, Wenxin Li, Zhimei Li, and
Zhihong Li

Study on the Demands for Agricultural and Rural Informationization

in China and Its Strategic Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 580
Jin Li, Chunjiang Zhao, Xiangyang Qin, and Gang Liu

Study on the Near Infrared Model Development of Mixed Liquid

Samples by the Algorithm of OSC-PLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592
Dong Wang, Zhihong Ma, Shengfeng Ye, and Shungeng Min

Design and Realization of Information Service System of Agricultural

Expert Based on Wireless Mobile Communication Technology . . . . . . . . . 598
Jianshe Zhao, Wenyue Li, Yong Yang, Haili Meng, and Wen Huang
 Table of Contents Part III XXIX

Design of a New Soil-Tuber Separation Device on Potato Harvesters . . . . 604

Gaili Gao, Dongxing Zhang, and Jun Liu

Fast Discrimination of Nanfeng Mandarin Varieties Based on Near

Infrared Spectroscopy Technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613
Huamao Zhou, Chao Zhou, Honghui Rao, and Yande Liu

Purity Identication of Maize Seed Based on Color Characteristics . . . . . 620

Xiaomei Yan, Jinxing Wang, Shuangxi Liu, and Chunqing Zhang

Reconstructing Vegetation Temperature Condition Index Based on the

SavitzkyGolay Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629
Manman Li and Junming Liu

Research and Implementation of Agricultural Science and Technology

Consulting System Based on Ajax and Improved VSM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 638
Sufen Sun, Junfeng Zhang, Changshou Luo, and Qingfeng Wei

Empirical Study on the Relationship between ICT Application and

China Agriculture Economic Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648
Pengju He, Shihong Liu, Huoguo Zheng, and Yunpeng Cui

The Research of the Agricultural Technology Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 656

JinYou Hu, Jingjing Zhang, and Jian Zhang

Research on the Collaboration Service Mechanism for Pig Diseases

Diagnosis Based on Semantic Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661
Xiang Sun, Huarui Wu, Huaji Zhu, Cheng Peng, and Jingqiu Gu

Prediction of Vegetable Price Based on Neural Network and Genetic

Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 672
Changshou Luo, Qingfeng Wei, Liying Zhou, Junfeng Zhang, and
Sufen Sun

Research on the Application Integration Model for the Agricultural

Enterprise of Integrative Production and Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 682
Feng Yang, Xiandi Zhang, Zhongqiang Liu, Zhenzhi Wang, and
Kaiyi Wang

A SaaS-Based Logistics Informatization Model for Specialized Farmers

Cooperatives in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 696
Zhongqiang Liu, Kaiyi Wang, Shufeng Wang, Feng Yang, and
Xiandi Zhang

Study on Acoustic Features of Laying Hens Vocalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 704

Ligen Yu, Guanghui Teng, Zhizhong Li, and Xuming Liu

A Study on Pig Slaughter Traceability Solution Based on RFID . . . . . . . . 710

Qingyao Luo, Benhai Xiong, Zhi Geng, Liang Yang, and Jiayi Pan
XXX Table of Contents Part III

Study on Application of Location Algorithm Base Multidimensional

Spatial Information in the Situation Analysis of Natural Ecology . . . . . . . 721
Jumei Ai and Shuhua Mao

A Water-Quality Dynamic Monitoring System Based on

Web-Server-Embedded Technology for Aquaculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 725
Dongxian He, Daoliang Li, Jie Bao, Hu Juanxiu, and Shaokun Lu

A Study on Operation Strategies of Unclogging Container-Trailers

Enterprises at Shenzhen Port . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 732
Xiaoliang Gao and Nie Dan

Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 741

 Table of Contents Part IV

A Compression Method of Decision Table Based on Matrix

Computation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Laipeng Luo and Ergen Liu
A Laplacian of Gaussian-Based Approach for Spot Detection in
Two-Dimensional Gel Electrophoresis Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Feng He, Bangshu Xiong, Chengli Sun, and Xiaobin Xia
A Leaf Layer Spectral Model for Estimating Protein Content of Wheat
Grains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Chun-Hua Xiao, Shao-Kun Li, Ke-Ru Wang, Yan-Li Lu,
Jun-Hua Bai, Rui-Zhi Xie, Shi-Ju Gao, Qiong Wang, and
Fang-Yong Wang
A New Color Information Entropy Retrieval Method for Pathological
Cell Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Xiangang Jiang, Qing Liang, and Tao Shen
A New Palm-Print Image Feature Extraction Method Based on Wavelet
Transform and Principal Component Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Jia wei Li and Ming Sun
A Non-linear Model of Nondestructive Estimation of Anthocyanin
Content in Grapevine Leaves with Visible/Red-Infrared
Hyperspectral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
JiangLin Qin, Donald Rundquist, Anatoly Gitelson,
Zongkun Tan, and Mark Steele
Application of Improved BP Neural Network in Controlling the
Constant-Force Grinding Feed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Zhaoxia Chen, Bailin He, and Xianfeng Xu
A Semantic Middleware of Grain Storage Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Siquan Hu, Haiou Wang, Chundong She, and Junfeng Wang
AE Feature Analysis on Welding Crack Defects of HG70 Steel Used by
Truck Crane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Yantao Dou, Xiaoli Xu, Wei Wang, and Siqin Pang
An Equilateral Triangle Waveguide Beam Splitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Zhimin Liu, Fengqi Zhou, Hongjian Li, Bin Tang, Zhengfang Liu,
Qingping Wu, Aixi Chen, and Kelin Huang
Analysis and Implementation of Embedded SNMP Agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Hubin Deng, Guiyuan Liu, and Lei Zhang
XXXII Table of Contents Part IV

Application of Computer Technology in Advanced Material Science

and Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Yajuan Liu
Application of Interferometry in Ultrasonic System for Vibration . . . . . . . 108
Zhengping Liu, Shenghang Xu, and Juanjuan Liu
Automatic Control System for Highway Tunnel Lighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Shijuan Fan, Chao Yang, and Zhiwei Wang
Comparative Study of Distance Discriminant Analysis and Bp Neural
Network for Identication of Rapeseed Cultivars Using Visible/Near
Infrared Spectra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Qiang Zou, Hui Fang, Fei Liu, Wenwen Kong, and Yong He
Current Situation and Prospect of Grassland Management Decision
Support Systems in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Qingwei Duan, Xiaoping Xin, Guixia Yang, Baorui Chen,
Hongbin Zhang, Yuchun Yan, Xu Wang, Baohui Zhang, and Gang Li
Design Method and Implementation of Ternary Logic Optical
Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Chunzhi Li and Junyong Yan
Design of Automatic Cutting and Welding Machine for Brake
Beam-Axle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Leping Liu, Mingdong Zhong, and Qizheng Dong
Design of Multifunction Vehicle Bus Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Zhongqi Li, Fengping Yang, and Qirong Xing
Detection of Soil Total Nitrogen by Vis-SWNIR Spectroscopy . . . . . . . . . 184
Yaoze Feng, Xiaoyu Li, Wei Wang, and Changju Liu
Development and Application of Tennis Match Video Retrieval
Technology in Multimedia Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Shehua Cao
Fault Diagnosis of Roller Bearing Based on PCA and Multi-class
Support Vector Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Guifeng Jia, Shengfa Yuan, and Chengwen Tang
Health Status Identication of Connecting Rod Bearing Based on
Support Vector Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Yongbin Liu, Qingbo He, Ping Zhang, Zhongkui Zhu, and
Fanrang Kong
Investigation of the Methods for Tool Wear On-Line Monitoring during
the Cutting Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Hongjiang Chen
 Table of Contents Part IV XXXIII

Magnetic-Field-Based 3D ETREE Modelling for Multi-Frequency Eddy

Current Inspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Yu Zhang and Yong Li

Measurement of Self-emitting Magnetic Signals from a Precut Notch of

Q235 Steel during Tensile Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Lihong Dong, Binshi Xu, and Shiyun Dong

Modeling and Performance Analysis of Giant Magnetostrictive

Microgripper with Flexure Hinge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Qinghua Cao, Quanguo Lu, Junmei Xi, Jianwu Yan, and
Changbao Chu

Non-destructive Measurement of Sugar Content in Chestnuts Using

Near-Infrared Spectroscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Jie Liu, Xiaoyu Li, Peiwu Li, Wei Wang, Jun Zhang,
Wei Zhou, and Zhu Zhou

Nondestructive Testing Technology and Optimization of On-Service

Urea Reactor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Xiaoling Luo and Lei Deng

Parameters Turning of the Active-Disturbance Rejection Controller

Based on RBF Neural Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Baifen Liu and Ying Gao

Research of Intelligent Gas Detecting System for Coal Mine . . . . . . . . . . . 268

Hui Chen

Research of Subways Train Control System Based on TCN . . . . . . . . . . . 279

Qingfeng Ding, Fengping Yang, and Qixin Zhu

Shape Detection for Impeller Blades by Non-contact Coordinate

Measuring Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Shimin Luo

Simulation of Road Surface Roughness Based on the Piecewise Fractal

Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
Zhixiong Lu, Lanying Zhao, Xiaoqin Li, and Jun Yuan

Stress Analysis near the Welding Interface Edges of a QFP Structure

under Thermal Loading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Zhigang Huang, Xuecheng Ping, and Pingan Liu

Study of Intelligent Diagnosis System for Mechanism Wear Fault Based

on Fuzzy-Neural Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
Sanmao Xie
XXXIV Table of Contents Part IV

Study on Autonomous Path Planning by Mobile Robot for Road

Nondestructive Testing Based on GPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
Lunhui Xu, Fan Ye, and Yanguo Huang

Study on Imitating Grinding of Two-Dimensional Ultrasonic Vibration

Turning System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Leping Liu, Wen Zhao, and Yuan Ma

Study on Optimal Path Changing Tools in CNC Turret Typing

Machine Based on Genetic Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Min Liu, XiaoLing Ding, YinFa Yan, and Xin Ci

Study on the Problem and Countermeasure of Fruit Production Quality

and Safety in Yanshan Mountain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
Haisheng Gao, Bin Du, and Fengmei Zhu

Calculation and Analysis of Double-Axis Elliptical-Parabolic Compond

Flexure Hinge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Ping an Liu, Jianqun Cheng, and Zhigang Lai

Surface Distresses Detection of Pavement Based on Digital Image

Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
Aiguo Ouyang, Chagen Luo, and Chao Zhou

The Application Research of Neural Network in Embedded Intelligent

Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
Xiaodong Liu, Dongzhou Ning, Hubin Deng, and Jinhua Wang

The Theoretical Analysis of Test Results Errors for the Roller Type
Automobile Brake Tester . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
Jun Li, Xiaojing Zha, and Dongsheng Wu

A Type of Arithmetic Labels about Circulating Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390

Ergen Liu, Dan Wu, and Kewen Cai

Application of CPLD in Pulse Power for EDM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398

Yang Yang and Yanqing Zhao

Application of IDL and ENVI Redevelopment in Hyperspectral Image

Preprocessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Long Xue

Design of Integrated Error Compensating System for the Portable

Flexible CMMs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
Qing-Song Cao, Jie Zhu, Zhi-Fan Gao, and Guo-Liang Xiong

Detecting and Analyzing System for the Vibration Comfort of Car

Seats Based on LabVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
Ying Qiu
 Table of Contents Part IV XXXV

Determination of Pesticide Residues on the Surface of Fruits Using

Micro-Raman Spectroscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
Yande Liu and Tao Liu

Development of the Meter for Measuring Pork Quality Based on the

Electrical Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
Zhen Xing, Wengang Zheng, Changjun Shen, and Xin Zhang

Experimental Investigation of Inuence on Non-destructive Testing by

Form of Eddy Current Sensor Probe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
Fengyun Xie and Jihui Zhou

Feasibility of Coordinate Measuring System Based on Wire Driven

Robot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
Ji-Hui Zhou, Qing-Song Cao, Fa-Xiong Sun, and Lan Bi

HSFDONES: A Self-Leaning Ontology-Based Fault Diagnosis Expert

System Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
XiangBin Xu

Nondestructive Measurement of Sugar Content in Navel Orange Based

on Vis-NIR Spectroscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
Chunsheng Luo, Long Xue, Muhua Liu, Jing Li, and Xiao Wang

Numerical Simulation of Temperature Field in Selective Laser

Sintering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
Jian Zhang, Deying Li, Jianyun Li, and Longzhi Zhao

Numerical Simulations of Compression Properties of SiC/Al

Co-continuous Composites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
Mingjuan Zhao, Na Li, Longzhi Zhao, and Xiaolan Zhang

Simulation and Optimization in Production Logistics Based on

eM-Plant Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
XinJian Zhou, XiangBin Xu, and Wei Zhu

Simulation of Transient Temperature Field in the Selective Laser

Sintering Process of W/Ni Powder Mixture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
Jiwen Ren, Jianshu Liu, and Jinju Yin

Study on Plant Nutrition Indicator Using Leaf Spectral Transmittance

for Nitrogen Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
Juanxiu Hu, Dongxian He, and Po Yang

Study on the Inuence of Non-electrical Parameters on Processing

Quality of WEDM-HS and Improvement Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
Guangyao Xiong, Meizhu Zheng, Deying Li, Longzhi Zhao,
Yanlin Wang, and Minghui Li
XXXVI Table of Contents Part IV

Test Analysis and Theoretical Calculation on Braking Distance of

Automobile with ABS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
Dongsheng Wu, Jun Li, Xiaoping Shu, Xiaojing Zha, and Beili Xu

The Detection of Early-Maturing Pears Eective Acidity Based on

Hyperspectral Imaging Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528
Pengbo Miao, Long Xue, Muhua Liu, Jing Li, Xiao Wang, and
Chunsheng Luo

The Eects of Internal and External Factors on the Mechanical

Behavior of the Foam Copper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
Longzhi Zhao, Xiaolan Zhang, Na Li, Mingjuan Zhao, and
Jian Zhang

Optimum Design of Runner System for Router Cover Based on Mold

Flow Analysis Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543
Tangqing Kuang and Wenjuan Gu

Design of Tread Flange Injection Mold Based on Pro/E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555

Huilan Zhou

Study on the Online Control System to Prevent Drunk Driving Based

on Photoelectric Detection Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563
Lu Liming, Yang Yuchuan, and Lu Jinfu

The Design and Simulation of Electro-Hydraulic Velocity Control

System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
Fengtao Lin

Application of Background Information Database in Trend Change of

Agricultural Land Area of Guangxi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575
Xin Yang, Shiquan Zhong, Yuhong Li, Weiping Lu, and Chaohui Wu

Reasons of the Incremental Information in the Updating Spatial

Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583
Huaji Zhu, Huarui Wu, and Xiang Sun

Research on Non-point Source Pollution Based on Spatial Information

Technology: A Case Study in Qingdao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592
Tao Shen, Jinheng Zhang, and Junqiang Wang

The Regulation Analysis of Low-Carbon Orientation for China

Land Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
Bikai Gong and Bing Chen

A CDMA-Based Soil-Quality Monitoring System for Mineland

Reclamation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610
Dongxian He, Daoliang Li, Jie Bao, and Shaokun Lu
 Table of Contents Part IV XXXVII

Design and Implementation of a Low-Power ZigBee Wireless

Temperature Humidity Sensor Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 616
Shuipeng Gong, Changli Zhang, Lili Ma, Junlong Fang, and
Shuwen Wang

Land Evaluation Supported by MDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 623

Fengchang Xue

Design and Development of Water Quality Monitoring System Based

on Wireless Sensor Network in Aquaculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629
Mingfei Zhang, Daoliang Li, Lianzhi Wang, Daokun Ma, and
Qisheng Ding

Design of an Intelligent PH Sensor for Aquaculture Industry . . . . . . . . . . . 642

Haijiang Tai, Qisheng Ding, Daoliang Li, and Yaoguang Wei

A Simple Temperature Compensation Method for Turbidity Sensor . . . . . 650

Haijiang Tai, Daoliang Li, Yaoguang Wei, Daokun Ma, and
Qisheng Ding

A Wireless Intelligent Valve Controller for Agriculture Integrated

Irrigation System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659
Nannan Wen, Daoliang Li, Daokun Ma, and Qisheng Ding

Evaluation of the Rural Informatization Level in Central China Based

on Catastrophe Progression Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 672
Lingxian Zhang, Xue Liu, Zetian Fu, and Daoliang Li

GIS-Based Evaluation on the Eco-Demonstration Construction in

China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 680
Lingxian Zhang, Juncheng Ma, Daoliang Li, and Zetian Fu

Modeling and Analysis of Pollution-Free Agricultural Regulatory Based

on Petri-Net . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 691
Fang Wang, Qingling Duan, Lingzi Zhang, and Guo Li

An Online Image Segmentation Method for Foreign Fiber Detection in

Lint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 701
Daohong Kan, Daoliang Li, Wenzhu Yang, and Xin Zhang

An Ecient Iterative Thresholding Algorithms for Color Images of

Cotton Foreign Fibers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 710
Xin Zhang, Daoliang Li, Wenzhu Yang, Jinxing Wang, and
Shuangxi Liu

Application of Grey Prediction Model in Rural Informatization

Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 720
Jing Du, Daoliang Li, Hongwen Li, and Lifeng Shen
XXXVIII Table of Contents Part IV

Study on Evaluation Method for Chinese Agricultural

Informatization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 727
Xiaoqing Yuan, Liyong Liu, and Daoliang Li

Research on Calculation Method for Agricultural Informatization

Contribution Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 735
Liyong Liu, Qilong Pan, and Daoliang Li

An Empirical Research on the Evaluation Index Regarding the Service

Quality of Agricultural Information Websites in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 742
Liyong Liu, Xiaoqing Yuan, and Daoliang Li

Hyperspectral Sensing Techniques Applied to Bio-masses

Characterization: The Olive Husk Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 751
Giuseppe Bonifazi and Silvia Serranti

Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 765

 3-D Turbulence Numerical Simulation for the Flow
Field of Suction Cylinder-Seeder with Socket-Slots*

Yanjun Zuo1, Xu Ma1,2,**, Long Qi1, and Xinglong Liao1

1
College of Engineering, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, P.R. China
2
Key Laboratory of Key Technology on Agricultural Machine and Equipment,
Ministry of Education, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, P.R. China
42648135@qq.com, maxu1959@scau.edu.cn, qilong@scau.edu.cn,
liaoxinglong1985@163.com

Abstract. The flow field has significantly impact on seeding performance in the
suction seeding device. A three-dimensional, incompressible, viscous, RNG
turbulence model and the SIMPLE method were used by computational fluid
dynamics(CFD), and the flow fields of suction cylinder-seeder with different
sockets radiuses were simulated by Fluent. When vacuum is 4kPa and produc-
tivity is 350 trays/h, the simulant results show that pressure is uniform, velocity
is stable, energy loss mainly occurs near slots and outlet, and there is less inter-
action among socket-slots; The effect of flow field on sockets radius to the cyl-
inder isnt significant by contrasting different sockets radiuses on the average
turbulent kinetic energy, the average vacuum and the maximum difference of
velocity behind slots; The experimental results show that the best seeding per-
formance is 84.73% when the sockets radius is 5.5mm. Although the perform-
ance should be improved, but any sockets are never plugged, which shows
enough that the seeder is a very promising precision seeding device.

Keywords: Socket-slot, Suction cylinder, Flow field, Numerical simulation.

1 Introduction
Usually, the demand of high-precision seeding is 21 seeds/bowl for super hybrid rice
tray nursing seedlings, and cant be satisfied invariably by the traditional mechanical
seeding device. The suction seeding device is becoming mainstream for super hybrid
rice with its advantage of low broken-seed rate, high single-seed rate, good generality,
imprecise demand of seminal dimension and so on[1-2]. Flow field impacts seeding
performance significantly in the suction seeding device, so it has been studied by
many researchers at home and aboard. In overseas, Karayel D etc. have built mathe-
matical model of vacuum pressure on a precision seeder[3], Guarella P etc. have stud-
ied the performance of a vacuum seeder nozzle for vegetable seeds in experiment and
*
The paper is supported by the National Natural Science Fund Projects (Project number is
50775078), the National 11th Five-Year Plan to support Projects (Project number is
2006BAD28B01-3), the earmarked fund for Modern Agro-industry Technology Research
System and the fund for indraught of person with ability in colleges of Guangdong.
**
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 18, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
2 Y. Zuo et al.

theory[4]. In domestic, Yuan Yueming, Wang Zhaohui etc. have simulated and ex-
perimented the flow field for suction seeders of vertical disc and cylinder[5-6], Li
Yaoming etc. have analyzed the flow field of sucking nozzle to suction seeder[7].
Suckers of existing suction seeding devices are usually plugged during seeding be-
cause rice is seeded with sprout. Although two-layer suction cylinder-seeder is devel-
oped by Pang Changle[8] and could relieve the suckers plugging, it can not satisfied
the requirement of continuous seeding. So a seeding device will be developed with a
new theory and new structure to solve this problem. Based on the traditional suction
cylinders, a suction cylinder-seeder with socket-slots is developed which can solve
the problem of suckers plugging effectively through seed-filling, seed-sucking, seed-
clearing and forcible sucker-clearing.
In order to improve the seeding performance of suction cylinder-seeder with
socket-slots, the numerical simulations for different sockets radiuses have been cal-
culated by software Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in this paper. Sockets
radius was optimized by analyzing the distributions of velocity and pressure inside the
cylinder, and checked by experiment. This study provides theoretical and practical
basis for the design of super hybrid rice seed-metering device for nursing seedling.

2 Principle of Suction Cylinder-Seeder

The suction cylinder-seeder with socket-slots for experiment is shown in figure 1.
After flowing out of the seed hopper, rice seeds fall onto vibrant board. Then the

Fig. 1. Principe diagram of suction cylinder-seeder with socket-slots

1 Seed-protecting belt, 2 Seed-clearing rolling brush, 3 Suction vibrator,
4 Vibrant board, 5 Seed hopper, 6 Frame, 7 Conveyor belt, 8 Tray,
9 Pressure chamber, 10 Seed-popping springs, 11 Rice seeds, 12 Cylinder
 3-D Turbulence Numerical Simulation for the Flow Field of Suction Cylinder-Seeder 3

seeds worm downward along with vibrant board under vibration and enter seed-
sucking area where prickle, broken sprout and other impurities are removed through
the sieve meshes. The seed-feeding is accomplished under the gravity and vacuum.
When the sockets rotate to seed-clearing area, the redundant seeds are cleared firstly
by seed-clearing rolling brush rotating at the same direction with cylinder, and the
residual seeds in sockets rotate into seed-protecting belt continually. The vacuum will
be cut off when the sockets rotate into seeding and socket- clearing area, the springs
pop the seeds and clear the sockets forcibly. The seeds fall into the appointed bowl
under the gravity and elasticity, so realizing the precision seeding.

3 Numerical Simulation
3.1 Physical Model

Along the axis, fifteen rows of sockets(R=4.5mm, 5.0mm, 5.5mm) that correspond-
ing to the tray of 1525 bowls are made outside cylinder. Along the circumference,

Fig. 2. Structure of cylinder

Fig. 3. Computational model of cylinder

4 Y. Zuo et al.

fifteen ring grooves are also made at the corresponding place of the sockets inside
cylinder. The sockets and ring grooves are intersecting and forming a slot of 4.0mm.
The specific dimensions are shown in figure 2. Because there are larger differences in
local sizes, the model uses structured and unstructured grids to mesh, as is shown in
figure 3.

3.2 Flow Equations

Rotation of cylinder, two different flow fields which are connected by socket-slots
and the effect of air viscidity, so turbulent swirling flow is formed starting from inlet
of socket-slots nearby the insides of cylinder and socket-slots, and contains laminar
flow and swirly shear flow at the wall of cylinder, jet flow of slots, free flow in the
pipeline, flow with separation and so on. In order to ensure the accuracy of numerical
simulation, turbulence model of RNG k- is used in this paper. In the model flow
state, spatial coordinates, rotation and swirling flow state in the average flow have
been considered, turbulent viscosity has been modified. And the model supplied an
analytical formula with low Reynolds number which is more accuracy than standard
equation of k- to the flow of near wall[9]. Turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent
dissipation rate were calculated as follows:
k
( k ) + ( ku i ) = ( k e ) + Gk + G p (1)
t x j x j x j

( ) + ( ui ) = ( e ) + (C1 Gk C 2 )
t xi x j x j k (2)

Where: k is the turbulent kinetic energy in m2/s2; is the turbulent dissipation rate in
m2/s3; Gk is the generation item for turbulent kinetic energy(k) caused by average
velocity gradient; Gp is the generation item for turbulent kinetic energy(k) caused by
buoyancy; and e is the turbulent viscosity in Pas, and e=Ck2/s.
Model constants[10] are C1=1.42, C2=1.68, C=0.0845, k==1.39.

3.3 Boundary Condition

The fluid is normal temperature air under standard condition, and its density is
1.205kg/m3, viscosity is 1.8310-5Pas, and temperature is 293K, so the inlet and
standard pressures are all 101325 Pa. The pressure inlet and outlet are all subsonic
speed, and the wall uses adiabatic and no-slip boundary conditions[11].

4 Simulation Results and Analyses

Numerical simulations for suction cylinder-seeder with three sockets radiuses
(R=4.5mm, 5.0 mm, 5.5 mm) use the method of semi-implicit method for pressure-
linked equations(SIMPLE) when outlet pressure is 97325Pa and productivity is 350
trays/h, and the results are shown in figure 4 and table 1.
 3-D Turbulence Numerical Simulation for the Flow Field of Suction Cylinder-Seeder 5

R=4.5mm
R=5.0mm
R=5.5mm

Map of pressure Map of velocity

Fig. 4. Distribution map of pressure and velocity

From the map of pressure in the figure 4, it can be known that pressure distributes
uniformly in the whole cylinder and changes greatly at the slots and the outlet. The
main reason is that, air fluid cant turn suddenly like the wall as the inertial force is
dominating when section of pipeline changes suddenly, disengage phenomena of
main flow area and wall is occurring, and then swirling area forms. Distributional
adjustment of velocity in main flow area, rotation of fluid in the swirling area and
exchange of fluid particle in the two areas, all these lose energy, so energy loss occurs
near the slots and outlet. From the map of velocity in the figure 4, it can be known
that velocity is stable inside the cylinder, air fluids flow through socket-slots and have
less interaction in the axial and circumference.

Table 1. Contrast of different sockets radiuses

R(mm) ka(m2/s2) Va(kPa) vmax(m/s)

4.5 1.7838 2.10 13.98

5.0 1.7892 2.04 11.47

5.5 2.0793 1.88 9.22

Note: ka is the average turbulent kinetic energy; Va is the average vacuum behind
slots; and vmax is the maximum difference of velocity behind slots.
6 Y. Zuo et al.

The contrasts of different sockets radiuses on average turbulent kinetic energy,

average vacuum and maximum difference of velocity after slot are shown in table 1. It
can be known that: average turbulent kinetic energy increases along with the increases
of sockets radius, because the bigger sockets radius, the stronger turbulization, the
more significant effect of flow on eddy current, and the less stable flow field; average
vacuum decreases along with the increases of sockets radius, because the bigger
sockets radius, the more friction loss when air fluid through socket-slots; maximum
difference of velocity decreases along with the increases of sockets radius, because
the bigger sockets radius, the longer distance of air fluid pass socket-slots, the
smaller difference of velocity, and the more stable seed-sucking; the effect of flow
field on sockets radius isnt significant. The amount of seed-feeding is affected by
sockets radius, so the seeding performance would be checked.

5 Conclusions

5.1 Experimental Material

The experimental material is super hybrid rice of Peizataifeng. Its dimension is shown
in table 2.

Table 2. Dimensions of gemmative rice seed

Length(mm) Width(mm) Thickness(mm)

9.23 3.45 2.42

5.2 Experimental Procedures

1. Rice seeds are soaked and germinated.

2. The suction vibrator provides a stable pressure of 0.2MPa through fan setting.
3. Vacuum of 4kPa is got by vacuum pump setting.
4. The productivity of 350 trays/h is obtained by converter adjusting.
5. The seed-clearing rolling brush starts and rotates at the same direction with cylin-
der, and its speed of 50rpm.
6. The seeds are put into seed hopper and vibrator starts, the vibrant board begins
vibrating. And then the seed hopper starts and begins feeding seeds to the cylin-
der. Finally, seeding is experimented after the running is stable.

5.3 Experimental Factor

According to the result analyses which were simulated by Fluent, control variable
method is used to study the effect of seeding performance on sockets radius, and the
results of numerical simulation were checked.
 3-D Turbulence Numerical Simulation for the Flow Field of Suction Cylinder-Seeder 7

5.4 Experimental Plan and Results

The experiment has been done on the test-bed for nursing seedling at College of Engi-
neering, South China Agricultural University. The main index is qualified rate (bowls
of 1~3 seeds/all bowls 100%))to be examined. The results are shown in table 3.

Table 3. Experimental results

R(mm) Rq(%) Rr(%) Rc(%)

4.5 78.89 16.47 4.64

5.0 81.69 11.74 6.57

5.5 84.73 6.31 8.96

Note: Rq is the qualified rate, Rr is the reseeding rate, and Rc is the cavity rate.

It can be known from table 3 that, when sockets radius is smaller, the seeds get in
the sockets uneasier and are removed easier by seed-clearing rolling brush and the
cavity rate is higher; when sockets radius is bigger, the amount of seeds enter the
sockets is larger and the reseeding rate is higher; the rising extent of reseeding rate is
less than the falling extent of cavity rate because of seeding-clearing rolling brush, so
the qualified rate increases along with the increases of sockets radius. The seeding
performance of suction cylinder-seeder with socket-slots is the highest(84.73%) when
the sockets radius is 5.5mm.

6 Conclusions
Through the simulation and experiment of different sockets radiuses when the
vacuum is 4kPa and the productivity is 350trays/h, the conclusions are obtained as
follows:
1 The distribution of pressure is uniform, velocity is stable, energy loss occurs
mainly near the slots and outlet, and air fluid has less interaction among the slots in
the cylinder.
2 The effect of flow field on sockets radius is not significant to the cylinder, and the
seeding performance is checked.
3 The experimental results show that the best seeding performance of suction cylin-
der-seeder is 84.73% when the sockets radius is 5.5mm.
In fact, there are many factors affecting the seeding performance, such as vacuum,
productivity and positional angle of seed-feeding. Each factor is not the optimum as
preliminary study, so the capability is not high at present, and will be studied further.
There isnt any sockets that are plugged in the whole process of experiment, which
8 Y. Zuo et al.

shows that the suction cylinder-seeder with socket-slots is a very promising precision
seeding device.

Acknowledgements
The paper is supported by the National Natural Science Fund Projects (Project
number is 50775078), the National 11th Five-Year Plan to support Projects (Project
number is 2006BAD28B01-3), the earmarked fund for Modern Agro-industry
Technology Research System and the fund for indraught of person with ability in
colleges of Guangdong.

References
1. Zhou, H., Ma, X., Yao, Y.: Research advances and prospects in the seeding technology and
equipment for tray nursing seedlings of rice. Transactions of the CSAE 24(4), 301306
(2008) (in Chinese)
2. Wu, M., Tang, C., Li, M., et al.: The present situation and countermeasures about seeding
apparatus of paddy precision seeder. Chinese agricultural mechanization 3, 3031 (2003)
(in Chinese)
3. Karayel, D., Barut, Z.B., Ozmerzi, A.: Mathematical Modelling of Vacuum Pressure on a
Precision Seeder. Biosystems Engineering 87(4), 437444 (2004)
4. Guarella, P., Pellerano, A., Pascuzzi, S.: Experimental and Theoretical Performance of a
Vacuum Seeder Nozzle for Vegetable Seeds. Journal of Agricultural Engineering Re-
search (64), 2936 (1996)
5. Yuan, Y., Ma, X., Jin, H., et al.: Study on vacuum chamber fluid field of air suction seed-
metering device for rice bud-sowing. Transactions of the CSAM 36(6), 4244 (2005) (in
Chinese)
6. Wang, Z., Ma, X., Dong, R., et al.: Numerical simulation for air field of air-suction cylin-
der seeder. Journal of Jilin Agricultural University 31(6), 781784 (2009) (in Chinese)
7. Chen, J., Li, Y., Wang, X., et al.: Finite element analysis for the sucking nozzle air field of
air-suction seeder. Transactions of the CSAM 38(9), 5962 (2007) (in Chinese)
8. Changle, P., Zhuomao, E., Su, C., et al.: Design and experimental study on air-suction tow-
layer cylinder rice seeder. Transactions of the CSAE 5(9), 5255 (2000)
9. Wang, F.: Analysis of Computational Fluid Dynamics: Theory and Application of Soft-
ware CFD, pp. 124125. Tsinghua University Press, Beijing (2005) (in Chinese)
10. Wu, B., Yan, H., Zhang, J.: Study on 3-D turbulent numerical simulation and perform-
ance foreacast of slurry pump. China Mechanical Engineering 20(5), 585589 (2009) (in
Chinese)
11. Deng, D.: Fluid flow handbook, p. 471. China Petrochemical Press, Beijing (2004) (in
Chinese)
 An Architecture for the Agricultural Machinery
Intelligent Scheduling in Cross-Regional Work Based on
Cloud Computing and Internet of Things

Sun Zhiguo1,2, Xia Hui3, and Wang Wensheng1,2

1
Agricultural Information Institute, The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences,
Beijing, P.R. China
2
Key Laboratory of Digital Agricultural Early-warning Technology (2006-2010),
Ministry of Agriculture, P.R. China
3
National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention,
Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, P.R. China
szg@caas.net.cn

Abstract. The paper introduces the problems in chinas agricultural machinery

information. We provide an architecture for the agricultural machinery intelli-
gent scheduling in cross-regional work. We put forward constructing the private
cloud of agricultural machinery with the aid of cloud computing technology,
and forward agricultural machinery will link together through Internet of
Things technology. We provide an information platform and simplified it to
three components including information service system, communication line
and monitoring front-end equipment machine carrying. We also describes two
modes to realize the intelligent scheduling function of agricultural machinery
cross-regional working.

Keywords: Agricultural machinery, Cross-regional work, Intelligent schedul-

ing, Cloud computing, Internet of Things, GPS, Bei-dou.

1 Introduction
The agricultural mechanization is a key measure to improve efficiency of agriculture
production. The agricultural mechanization of china has grown increasingly, pre-
sented a good situation of fast and sound development since 2000. Today, the agricul-
tural machinery with high performance and big power and compound working keeps
high speed growth, the structure of agricultural machinery equipment has made a
remarkable improvement, and the level of farmland working mechanization has risen
considerably.
In recent years, the informationization construction of agricultural machinery has
developed to some extent in our country, and information network services are further
provided too. But because the informationization construction of agricultural machin-
ery started later in China, the whole level is still lower, there exists differences espe-
cially in the development and utilization of agricultural machinery information
resource, comparing with developed countries and other domestic industries. The

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 915, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
10 Z. Sun, H. Xia, and W. Wang

negative effects of unrestricted flows of agricultural machines begin to show gradu-

ally. The situation of gathering and loss of control may occur sometimes, and cause
society instability incidents. The unrestricted flows of agricultural machines are as
follows: 1. wasting energy; 2. lower working efficiency; 3. instability in service
prices; 4. increasing traffic pressure; 5. the damage of fields water conservancy facili-
ties resulted by repeat movement; 6. no farm machines and implements to hire in
some remote areas.
We will construct an advanced intelligent scheduling platform for agricultural ma-
chinery cross-regional working with advanced communication and information tech-
nologies such as Internet, mobile telephone, fixed-line telephone, 3G, GPS, Bei-Dou
satellite navigation system, cloud computing and Internet of Things and so on, to
implement the guidance and service of administrative departments to agricultural
mechanization production, promote the restricted and efficient flows of agricultural
machinery, improve the utilization and benefit of agricultural machinery, provide all-
directional services for agricultural machinery users and farm households.

2 Functions
The platform can command and dispatch farm machines and implements to execute
cross-regional working and accomplish the tasks of tillage and cultivation and harvest
according to the factors such as crop mature time, weather, farm machines distribu-
tion in different areas of our country. It can realize various functions including inquiry
of farm machines position, track review, information reception and release, state
monitoring of farm machines, failure remote diagnosis of farm machines, inquiry of
maintenance and oil supply sites, and measure of farmland area and estimation of
crop yields.

3 Architecture Design

3.1 Design of Overall Information Network Architecture

We will construct an advanced intelligent scheduling platform consisting of informa-

tion system, database, users at all levels and farm machines for agricultural machinery
cross-regional working. The information system and database will be constructed and
monitored uniformly by central government with the aid of cloud computing technol-
ogy and constructing the private cloud of agricultural machinery, namely agricultural
machinery cloud that will control all computing resource of information system and
storage resource of database. The system users consist of agricultural mechanization
administrative departments from central government to local governments, service
organizations of agricultural machinery and agricultural machine users. The agricul-
tural mechanization administrative departments at all levels and service organizations
of agricultural machinery can supervise the farm machinery and implements in their
areas and realize the intelligent scheduling of cross-regional working by using the
information system uniformly. The agricultural machine users can get related schedul-
ing information and all kinds of service information with the system. The trends,
static state and other information factors related to agricultural machinery production
 An Architecture for the Agricultural Machinery Intelligent Scheduling 11

including crop mature time in different areas of our country, farm machines distribu-
tion and state, current crop planting and disasters such as drought or waterlog will be
stored in the database of agricultural machinery cloud, and the database can get in-
formation related to agricultural machinery production by network connecting to the
databases of national departments of atmosphere, earthquake monitoring and water
conservancy in time. With Internet of Things technology, farm machines and imple-
ments in all areas can communicate with datacenter of information service platform in
wireless mode by configuration of monitoring front-end equipments machine carry-
ing, and upload all kinds of information such as running state and geographical posi-
tion automatically.

Fig. 1. The information network architecture

The information platform can be simplified to three components including infor-

mation service system, communication line and monitoring front-end equipment ma-
chine carrying.

3.2 Design of Information Service System

The customer level of information service system will consist of central system, local
classification system, agricultural machinery service organization system and agricul-
tural machine users system.
The central system has two main functional modules which are system mainte-
nance and resource distribution module and intelligent scheduling module of agricul-
tural machinery cross-regional working. The management and maintenance of whole
system are taken in charge by central government with the system maintenance and
resource distribution module. The intelligent scheduling module of agricultural ma-
chinery cross-regional working can command and control farm machines and imple-
ments to execute cross-regional working and accomplish the tasks of tillage and
cultivation and harvest, realize the functions including inquiry of farm machines posi-
tion and track review.
The local classification system can be divided into multi-level such as province
level, ground level, county level and other higher and lower system according to the
detailed condition in different areas. The systems at all levels have the similar
functions; the main function module is intelligent scheduling module of agricultural
12 Z. Sun, H. Xia, and W. Wang

machinery cross-regional working that has similar function comparing with the
scheduling module in central system.
The agricultural machinery service organization system that is grass-roots organi-
zations of agricultural machinery management mainly comprises two functional mod-
ules which are intelligent scheduling module of agricultural machinery cross-regional
working and farm machines management module. The function of intelligent schedul-
ing module of agricultural machinery cross-regional working is similar to that of
central and local systems. The farm machines management module can provide data
management for farm machines in the whole large-scale system. All farm machines
registered in system should belong to a certain grass-roots agricultural machinery
service organizations in principle, the service organizations should acknowledge and
supervise the information validity of farm machines belonging to them.
The agricultural machine users system can mainly provide some scheduling ser-
vices and additional service automatically. The agricultural machine users or farm
households can receive scheduling instructions automatically and answer back, and
get some additional service interactively such as location navigation service, farm
machines state alarm, failure remote diagnosis of farm machines and inquiry of main-
tenance and oil supply sites.

3.3 Design of Communication Lines and Monitoring Front-End Machine

Carrying

The users at all levels can connect to information platform through various Internet
connection modes directly. They also can encrypt the data transmitting end-to-end
with installation of SSL VPN considering the data confidentiality of the entire sys-
tem. The devices used to connect to Internet can support all kinds of information
terminals, and normal agricultural machine users can utilize the function such as
failure remote diagnosis of farm machines by furnishing mobile video terminals such
as cell phones.
The farm machines and implements can connect to information platform and up-
load data by the suggesting three patterns as follow considering different situations of
all parts of our country:

Fig. 2. Three patterns of connect to information platform and upload data

 An Architecture for the Agricultural Machinery Intelligent Scheduling 13

Installing GPS tracker or Bei-Dou tracker on the farm machines, and machines
transmit data to datacenter by mobile network including GPRS, TD, WCDMA. It is
the main connection pattern of the platform.
Binding RFID on the farm machines, the agricultural machinery service organi-
zations install mobile RFID reader in the areas in which signals are acceptable, and
read the running state data of farm machines terminals needing management in their
area of jurisdiction intently, and upload data by mobile network uniformly. The pat-
tern adapts to the group working of farm machines and implements, for example,
various farm machines and implements are combined together to form a comprehen-
sive service farm machine group, these farm machines and implements typically
move and are supervised uniformly.
The farm machines and implements can upload data with handheld devices or
netbooks after getting data manually. The pattern adapts to the farm machines and
implements without automatic uploading conditions. It is a good supplement to the
first pattern.
The monitoring front-end equipment farm machine carrying is a small scale inte-
gration instrument installing on the farm machine, can integrate all kinds of sensors
and data collection devices, and upload data automatically. For example, it can inte-
grate GPS or Bei-Dou positioning module to get position information and record the
movement tracks of farm machines and implements for intelligent scheduling of
cross-regional working; it can integrate video camera to record the working state of
farm machine users; it can integrate oil circuit sensor to get oil supply information,
and upload data to agricultural machinery cloud, and perform remote computing
combining with its movement state to match the oil supply time and best supply sites,
then transmit the data to farm machine users as reference; it can integrate key running
position sensor to monitor the working state and help making failure diagnosis; it can
integrate metered sensor to record farm machines working distance.

Fig. 3. The monitoring front-end equipment

The front-end equipment machine carrying can send position information and vari-
ous data of running state to agricultural machinery cloud continuously with Internet of
Things in working time of farm machine, and provide decision making references and
service information. If data transmission fails and overruns the preset time, the infor-
mation platform system will automatically alarm and send cell phone message to farm
14 Z. Sun, H. Xia, and W. Wang

machine users by the system, or the operators of agricultural machinery service or-
ganizations will contact with users by telephone or other measures to deal with the
farm machine.

3.4 Design of Intelligent Scheduling of Agricultural Machinery Cross-Regional

Working

There are two modes as follows to realize the intelligent scheduling function of agri-
cultural machinery cross-regional working:
The Manual Deployment Mode. The deployment modes of systems at all levels are
abstracted to a unified mode that is deployment between higher and lower. The flow
chart is as follow:

The higher system

A lower system B lower system

Fig. 4. The manual deployment mode

The meaning of flow chart is as follows:

The lower system of district A requests higher system to deploy farm machines
to district A.
The administrative personnel of higher system finds the lower system of district
B has spared farm machines after reviewing the system data collected from all dis-
tricts, then gives deployment instructions to the lower system of district B, and de-
ploys X farm machines to district A
The lower system of district B replies to higher system about the details of de-
ployment, and dispatches spared farm machine starting off.
The higher system sends the detailed deployment program to lower system of
district A, then the lower system of district A implements the program, the flow of
cross-regional deployment comes to an end.

Intelligent study and automatic scheduling mode. Basing on prior consideration of

manual deployment mode, the system has a scheduling mode of automatic matching.
According to the scheduling requirements proposed by administrators of scheduling
centers of system at all levels, the system automatically sends recommended program
of automatic matching based on model algorithm to system scheduling centers at all
levels considering the factors including weather and mature time, and scheduling
administrators of system at all levels make comprehensive judgment according to
 An Architecture for the Agricultural Machinery Intelligent Scheduling 15

existent experience and issue scheduling instruction. The system also has automatic
study function, can correct the scheduling model continuously according to the final
scheduling program implemented by scheduling administrators of system at all levels.
To realize the intelligent scheduling model algorithm, the factors including weather
and crop mature time should be considered; the smallest distance matrix of all de-
ployment sites and the smallest path matrix relevant should be computed using Floyd
algorithm; the tasks are assigned by sweep algorithm; the task routes are sorted by
genetic algorithm; the existing research results related to multi-depot vehicle schedul-
ing problem home and abroad need to be studied. The paper focus on architecture
research, so do not analyze the detailed algorithm in depth hereon.

Acknowledgements. The work is supported by the Academy of Science and Tech-

nology for Development fund project intelligent search-based Tibet science &
technology information resource sharing technology, the National Science and
Technology Major Project of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant
No. 2009ZX03001-019-01), and the special fund project for Basic Science Research
Business Fee, AII (No. 2010-J-07).

References
1. Li, X.-w., Zhang, S.-m., Li, Z.-l.: Agricultural mechanization information network for re-
view and think. Agricultural Equipment & Technology 154, 46 (2009) (in Chinese)
2. Wen, H.-h., Liu, L.-h.: Toward construction of the information to the problems and coun-
termeasures. China Agricultural Machinery Safety Supervision 09, 2425 (2008) (in
Chinese)
3. Zhang, Y., Liu, M.: Propel the development of agriculture mechanical information. Farm
Machinery, 124125 (March 2006) (in Chinese)
4. Ding, W., Liang, C., Xia, M.-h: A Intelligent Public Transportation Scheduling System
Based on GPS. China Computer & Communication, 3637 (July 2009) (in Chinese)
5. Zhang, Q.-z., Liu, B.-w., Li, J.-t.: Physical Distribution Monitoring System Based on
Google Earth. Logistics Technology 206, 200202 (2009) (in Chinese)
6. Lang, M.-x.: Study on the Model and Algorithm for Multi-Depot Vehicle Scheduling
Problem. Journal of Transportation Systems Engineering and Information Technology, 65
68 (October 2006) (in Chinese)
7. Zhao, L.-h.: Study on Vehicle Scheduling Model and Algorithm for City Multi-node De-
livery. Logistics Technology, 9193 (August 2007) (in Chinese)
 A Comparative Study of Modified Materials of
Acetylcholinesterase Biosensor

Xia Sun1, Xiangyou Wang1,*, Wenping Zhao1, Shuyuan Du1,

Qingqing Li1, and Xiangbo Han2
1
School of Agricultural and Food Engineering, Shandong University of Technology,
2
College of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong University of Technology,
Zibo 255049, Shandong Province, P.R. China
wxy@sdut.edu.cn

Abstract. In this study, multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), gold

nanoparticles (GNPs) and Prussian Blue (PB) were used for modifying glassy
carbon working electrode (GCE) to construct acetylcholinesterase (AChE) bio-
sensor respectively. Chitosan membrane was used for immobilizing AChE
through glutaraldehyde cross-linking attachment to recognize pesticides selec-
tively. Before the detection, the enzyme membrane was quickly fixed on the
surfaces of modified electrode with O-ring to prepare an ampero-metric acetyl-
cholinesterase biosensor for organophosphate pesticides. The fabrication proce-
dures were characterized by cyclic voltammetry and amperometric i-t curve.
The electrochemical behaviours of three modified sensors were compared, and
the results showed that AChE-PB/GCE possessed higher oxidation peak current
at a lower potential. Based on the inhibition of organophosphorus pesticides to
the enzymatic activity of AChE, using dichlorvos as model compound, the sen-
sitivity of three modified biosensors were compared, the results showed that the
detection limit of AChE-PB/ GCE was lowest.

Keywords: Biosensor; Acetylcholinesterase; Pesticide residue; Modified

electrode.

1 Introduction
Organophosphorus (OP) pesticides are widely used in agricultural production which
leads to the most important environmental pollutants. Moreover, OP compounds in-
hibit acetylcholinasterase (AChE) that hydrolyses the neurotransmitter acetylcholine
(ACh), often causing severe impairment of nerve functions of human or even death.[1-
3] For these reasons, the development of rapid and efficient monitoring methods is very
important. In the past years, many studies have focused on biosensors based on the
enzymatic inhibition by the OP pesticides. They have the additional advantage of sim-
plicity, rapidity, reliability, low cost devices and on site monitoring.[4] Generally
speaking, the concentration of pesticides is monitored by measuring the change of
oxidation current of thiocholine before and after exporsured to pesticides.[5-7]
*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 1624, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 A Comparative Study of Modified Materials of Acetylcholinesterase Biosensor 17

However, the oxidation generally requires high potential value on a suitable elec-
trode.[8] In order to enhance the test sensitivity, decrease potential values and the
electrochemical interference of other oxidable compounds, the use of some modified
materials and methods have gained enormous attention in biosensor technology in
recent years, such as multi-walled carbon nanotubes(MWNTs),[9-11] prussian blue
(PB)[7,12-13] and gold nanoparticles(GNPs).[14-16] Most of these methods rely on
enzyme immobilization directly onto the electrode surface, which cannot overcome
the biofouling of the electrode surface, and would eventually lead to the deactivation
of the biosensor or at least to worsening of the electrochemical response. Our previ-
ous investigation results have shown that using a replaceable membrane as support for
the enzyme immobilization has many advantages, for example, enzyme membrane
can be easily replaced when enzymes activity is lost.[9,17] Moreover, there are mul-
tiple options for analyte detection based on enzyme immobilization on the membrane
(one electrode-multiple membranes-multiple enzymes).[18]
This present work is a continuation of our previous investigations and focused on
the comparative study of three modified (MWCNTs, GNPs and PB) materials to
obtain higher sensitivity and stability biosensor for OP pesticides. The fabrication
procedure was characterized by cyclic voltammograms and amperometric i-t curve,
respectively. The electrochemical behaviours of three modified sensors and no modi-
fied AChE/GCE sensor were compared, and the results showed that the AChE-
PB/GCE obtained higher oxidation peak current at a lower work potential. Using
dichlorvos as model compound, the sensitivity of three modified biosensors were
compared, the results showed that the detection limit of AChE-PB/GCE was lowest.
The AChE-PB/GCE biosensor exhibited good reproducibi-lity, stability and it was
suitable for trace detection of OP pesticide residue.

2 Experimental

2.1 Apparatus

Cyclic voltammograms and amperometric i-t curve were performed with CHI660D
electrochemical workstation (Shanghai Chenhua Co., China). 10ml of electrochemical
cell was made in our laboratory. The working electrode was glassy carbon electrode
(d = 3mm) or modified glassy carbon electrode. A saturated calomel electrode (SCE)
and platinum electrode were used as referenceand auxiliary electrodes, respectively.

2.2 Reagents

Acetylcholinesterase was purchased from Nuoyawei Biology Tech.Co. (Shanghai,

China). Acetylthiocholine iodide (ATChI), glutaraldehyde (25%) and bovine serum
albumin (BSA) were provided by Sigma. Cellulose nitrate microporous membrane
was purchased from Hangzhou Rikang purification equipment co.,ltd (Hangzhou,
China). Chitosan (95% deacetylation), phosphate buffer (PBS, pH 8.0) and other
reagents were all of analytical grade. Dichlorvos was standard product. All the other
chemicals were of analytical grade. Distilled water was used throughout for the prepa-
ration of solutions.
18 X. Sun et al.

2.3 Preparation of AChE Biosensors

2.3.1 Preparation of Chitosan Membrane

A solution was prepared with 0.1 g chitosan added to 10 ml of acetate solution (1%,
mass ratio), and the mixture was centrifuged for 5min in high-speed centrifuge at
3000rpm to remove insoluble particles. Finally, the pretreated cellulose nitrate micro-
porous membrane was immersed in this sol for 12 h, and then immersed in phosphate
buffer (PBS, 0.1 mol/l, pH 8.0) for 12 h, dried and stored for use.[19]

2.3.2 The AChE Immobilization

A solution of 100l of AChE liquid (100U/ml), 30.0l of BSA (1.0%), 10l of glu-
taraldehyde (5.0%), and 360l of PBS (0.1mol/l, pH8.0) were mixed in a 1 ml of
centrifuge tube. A chitosan membrane was immersed in it for 8h at 4oC. Finally, en-
zyme membranes was washed with PBS (0.1mol/l, pH8.0), immersed in PBS
(0.1mol/l, pH8.0), and stored at 4oC before use.[17]

2.3.3 Electrode Modification

(1) The preparation of MWCNTs/GCE
20L of mixture of MWNTs, chitosan and glutaraldehyde were covered on a
pretreated GCE with final contents of 0.12% (w/v), 0.48% (w/v) and 0.47% (v/v)
respectively, and allowed for reaction at room temperature for 4 h. After being
washed thoroughly with double distilled water, the obtained modified electrode was
stored at 4oC before use. [20]
(2) The preparation of AuNPs /GCE
0.01% HAuCl4 solution was heated to boiling, and quickly added 1 ml 1% sodium
citrate. After 1min, the color of solution changed from yellowish to light rose red.
Then the AuNPs solutions were stored in dark glass bottles at 4C. After the working
electrode was immersed in 10 ml of AuNPs solutions for 24 h at 4C, the surface of
working electrode was rinsed in double-distilled water for use.[21]
(3) The preparation of PB/GCE
A solution was a mixture of 2 mM K3[Fe (CN)6], 2 mM FeCl3, 0.1 M KCl, and 10
mM HCl, and the B solution was a mixture of 0.1 M KCl and 10 mM HCl. First, a
potential of +0.4V was applied to the electrode in solution A for 60 s and then the
electrode was transferred to solution B, and scanned by cyclic voltammetry from -0.05
and 0.35V at a rate of 50mV/s for 12 times. The electrode surface was rinsed with
double-distilled water. Finally, the electrode was stored at room temperature.[22]

2.4 Electrochemical Detection of Pesticide

The biosensor was tested with amperometric i-t curve (i-t) at a potential of 600 mV
versus saturated calomel electrode (SCE). After 100L of ATChI (15mg/ml) solution
was injected into the cell, and the peak current was recorded as I0. The cell was
washed with distilled water between measurements.
For OP pesticide detection, the pretreated biosensor was first incubated in a given
concentration of dichlorvos for 10 min, then it was transferred to the electrochemical
cell of 10mL PBS (0.1mol/L, pH8.0), and 100L of ATChI (15 mg/mL) was injected
 A Comparative Study of Modified Materials of Acetylcholinesterase Biosensor 19

after the current stabilized. The peak current was recorded as I1. The inhibition of
pesticides was calculated as follows:
I % = ( I 0 I1 ) / I 0 100%
Where I% was the degree of inhibition related to the inhibitor concentration. I0 was
the initial current of the biosensor which was measured without inhibitor in PBS
(0.1mol/L, pH8.0). I1 was the current after the incubation in the PBS (0.1mol/L,
pH8.0) with different concentrations of inhibitor.

3 Result and Discussion

3.1 Electrochemical Behavior of AChE-MWCNTs/GCE, AChE-AuNPs/GCE

and AChE-PB/GCE

Fig.1 showed the cyclic voltammograms of AChE-MWCNTs/GCE, AChE-

AuNPs/GCE and AChE-PB /GCE in the presence of ATChI (15mg/ml) in PBS (pH
8.0) at a scan rate of 100mV/s. After 100l of ATChI (15mg/ml) was injected into
PBS, AChE-GNPs/GCE identified an oxidation peak current of 45A at 510mV, and
the AChE-MWCNTs/GCE obtained an oxidation peak current of 22A at 600mV,
and the AChE-PB/GCE was an oxidation peak current of 90A at 570mV respec-
tively. The oxidation peak (curve a, b and c) came from the oxidation of thiocholine,
hydrolysis product of ATChI, catalyzed by immobilized AChE. Fig.1 also showed
that this peak current of AChE-PB/GCE (curve c) was much higher compared with
AChE-MWCNTs /GCE and AChE-AuNPs/GCE. The phenomena was due to PB
possess better electrocatalytic ability on the AChE. Whereas, the potential of AChE-
AuNPs/GCE shifted negatively compared with AChE-MWCNTs/GCE (curve a) and
AChE-PB/GCE (curve c). It was likely because that AuNPs possessed inherent high
electricity conducting ability, thus can provide a conductive pathway for electron

60

40

20
current(uA)

0
a
-20

-40
b

-60

-80
c

1000 800 600 400 200 0

E(V)
Fig. 1. Cyclic voltammograms of enzyme biosensor modified. MWCNTs modified (a); GNPs
modified (b); PB modified (c) in pH 8.0 PBS containing 100L of ATChI(15mg/mL). Scan
rate: 100mV/s.
20 X. Sun et al.

transfer and promote electrocatalysis reactions at a lower potential. At the same time,
these three modified biosensor obtained oxidation peak current were comparable with
that reported electrochemical biosensor at the same potential.[23-24] For this main
reason were the use of chitosan membrane, which provided a biocompatible micro-
environment around the enzyme molecule to stabilize its biological activity and
prevented the enzyme leaking out from chitosan membrane effectively. Dual-layer
membranes had synergistic effects towards enzymatic catalysis, thus, the oxidation
peak current increased, which can improve detection sensitivity.

0
b
-20
a
current(uA)

-40 c

-60

-80

0 20 40 60 80 100 120
time(s)

Fig. 2. Amperometric i-t curve of enzyme biosensor modified. MWCNTs modified (a); GNPs
modified (b); PB modified (c) in PBS (0.1mol/L, pH8.0) after injected 100L of ATChI
(15mg/mL)

The current produced by AChE-MWCNTs/GCE, AChE-AuNPs/GCE and AChE-

PB/GCE catalyzing ATChI achieved to 22A, 35A and 80A at 600mV repectively
(Fig.1), which were according with the result tested by ampomeretric i-t (Fig.2),
which indicated that we can also detect electrochemical behavior of enzyme biosen-
sor with ampomeretric i-t.

3.2 Effect of Phosphate Buffer pH on AChE-MWCNTs/GCE,

AChE-AuNPs/GCE and AChE-PB/GCE

The effect of phosphate buffer pH value on the peak currents was shown in Fig.3. The
current response of three modified biosensors increased with an increase of pH value
up to 7.5, and then the AChE-MWCNTs /GCE current decreased at higher pH value,
whereas, the current of AChE-AuNPs/GCE and AChE-PB/GCE continue increase
until pH value arrive to 8.0. It could be concluded that the values of the peak current
of biosensors changed with the different pH in the range of 5.0 to 8.5. Obviously, the
maximum response of peak current appeared at pH 7.5 about AChE-MWCNTs/GCE,
and the others at pH 8.0. The phenomena was due to the pH value of electrolyte,
which had great influence on the activity of enzyme, which led to the change of the
anodic peak current at these biosensors.
 A Comparative Study of Modified Materials of Acetylcholinesterase Biosensor 21

100

80
GNPs

current A
60
PB
40 MWCNT s
20

0
4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5

pH

Fig. 3.The influence of pH on the peak current of enzyme biosensor modified with MWCNTs,
GNPs and PB respectively

3.3 Effect of ATChI Concentration on AChE-MWCNTs /GCE,

AChE-AuNPs /GCE and AChE-PB/GCE

Fig.4. showed the effect of different ATChI concentration on anodic peak current of
AChE-MWCNTs/GCE, AChE-AuNPs/GCE and AChE-PB/ GCE. The peak current
all increase when the ATChI concentration was less than 15mg/l, whereas the peak
current have no change with further the increasing of the concentration of ATChI. It
was likely because that the velocity of enzyme catalyzing substrate reaches to the
equilibrium when the substrate added to some concentration, so subsequent increased
the substrate concentration, the velocity of enzyme catalyzing substrate did not in-
crease. In this work, the ATChI concentration of 15mg/l was selected.

100

80
MWCNT s
current (A)

60 PB
40 GNPs
20

0
0 10 20 30 40
AT ChI(mg/L)

Fig. 4. The influence of ATChI concentration on the peak current of enzyme biosensor modi-
fied with MWCNTs, GNPs and PB respectively

3.4 Effect of Incubation Time on Inhibition

As shown in Fig.5, OP pesticides displayed increasing inhibition to AChE with incu-

bated time. When the incubated time was longer than 10 min the three curves all
trended to maintain a stable value, which indicated that the binding interaction with
active target groups in enzyme could reach saturation. This change tendency of the
22 X. Sun et al.

100
90
80
70

%
60 MWCNT s
inhibition 50 PB
40 GNPs
30
20
10
0
1 3 5 7 10 12 15 20 25
time min
Fig. 5. The influence of Pesticide inhibition time on the peak current of enzyme biosensor
modified with MWCNTs, GNPs and PB respectively

peak current value showed the alteration of enzymatic activity, which resulted in the
change of the interactions with its substrate. In this work, the three biosensors opti-
mum incubation time of 10 min was selected.

3.5 Determination of Pesticides

After AChE-MWCNTs/GCE, AChE-AuNPs/GCE and AChE-PB/GCE were incu-

bated in the standard solution of dichlorvos at a certain concentration for 10 min re-
spectively, the inhibition rate (calculated by the change of peak current) of these three
modified biosensors and the logarithm of dichlorvos concentration all had a certain
linear relationship in some range. The detection limit and linear range of AChE-
MWCNTs/GCE and AChE-AuNPs/GCE were shown in Tab.1. The results showed
that the detection limit of AChE-PB/GCE was lowest. The phenomena were indicated
that the electrode modified materials played an important role on the sensitivity of
enzyme biosensor.

Table 1. The detection limit of three modified biosensors of dichlorvos pesticides

modified biosensor linear range equation of linear equation of detection

regression linear regression limit
AChE-PB/GCE 10ng/l~10g/l I=32.3lgc-10.9 0.9968 2.5ng/l
AChE-GNPs/GCE 50ng/l~10g/l I=22.804lgc-6.3489 0.9928 30ng/l
AChE-MWCNTs/GCE 5g/l~50g/l I=48.853lgc+10.927 0.9921 1ug/l

3.6 Precision of Measurements and Stability of Biosensor

The precision intra-assay of the three biosensors was evaluated by assaying three
enzyme membranes on the same electrode for ten replicate determinations after expo-
sure to a certain concentration pesticides respectively. Similarly, the inter-assay preci-
sion was estimated by assaying three enzyme membranes on six different electrodes.
The average relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) of intra-assay and inter-assay were
 A Comparative Study of Modified Materials of Acetylcholinesterase Biosensor 23

found to be 5.1 and 4.27% of AChE-MWCNTs/GCE, 5.2 and 3.1% of AChE-

AuNPs/GCE and 4.8 and 3.5% of AChE-PB/GCE respectively, which indicated these
three modified biosensors are all acceptable re-producibility.

4 Conclusion
In this paper, three materials modified have been used for the fabrication of am-
perometric AChE biosensors. These AChE biosensors all introduce the chitosan
membrane to immobilize AChE, the results have shown that chitosan membrane pre-
vent leakage of the enzmye, improve the activity of immobilization enzyme, and can
immobilize sufficient amount of AChE. The fabrication procedures have been charac-
terized by cyclic voltammetry and amperometric i-t curve. The electrochemical be-
haviours of three modified sensor have been compared, and the results showed that
AChE-PB/GCE possess higher oxidation peak current at a lower potential. Using
dichlorvos as model compound, the sensitivity of three modified biosensors have been
compared, the detection limit of AChE-PB/GCE is lowest. This study indicates we
can improve the sensitivity of enzyme biosensor by the selection of the modified
materials of electrode and realize the trace detection of OP pesticide residue.

Acknowledgments. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (No.30972055), Scientific and Technological Project of Shandong
Province (No.2008GG10009027), and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong
Province (No. Q2008D03).

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 A Detection Method of Rice Process Quality
Based on the Color and BP Neural Network

Peng Wan1,2,, Changjiang Long1, and Xiaomao Huang1

1
College of Engineering, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, P.R. China
2
College of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, P.R. China
wanpeng09@mail.hzau.edu.cn, longchj@mail.hzau.edu.cn,
huangxiaomao@mail.hzau.edu.cn

Abstract. This paper proposed a detection method of rice process quality using
the color and BP neural network. A rice process quality detection device based
on computer vision technology was designed to get rice image, a circle of the
radius R in the abdomen of the rice was determined as a color feature extraction
area, and which was divided into five concentric sub-domains by the average
area, the average color of each sub-region H was extraction as the color feature
values described in the surface process quality of rice, and then the 5 color fea-
ture values as input values were imported to the BP neural network to detection
the surface process quality of rice. The results show that the average accuracy
of this method is 92.50% when it was used to detect 4 types of rice of different
process quality.

Keywords: Process quality, Rice color, BP neural network, Rice.

1 Introduction
Rice is one of the most important crops in the world, the staple food of about half of
the world's population is rice. The harvested paddy needs be processed into rice for
human consumption by the processes of huller, mill, polishing and so on. The evalua-
tion standards of rice process quality including grain shape, appearance and color,
chalky, fragmentation rate, et al. The process quality of rice is one of the most impor-
tant factors to determine the appearance quality and the selling price of rice. In the
process of rice, the process quality of rice often judged by skilled workers, but due to
people's subjective factors, it is difficult to describe accurately the results of the proc-
ess quality of rice.
With the development of science and technology, image analysis technology is
widely used to detect and evaluate the rice quality[1][2][3][4]. The color of rice is one
of the main factors of evaluating the quality[5]. While detecting the rice quality by the
color features, people adopt more RGB color space and HIS color space; in addition,
L* a* b* color space is also commonly used to extract the color feature value[6][7].
Since Rumelhart and others[8] proposed the back propagation algorithm, neural
networks are widely used in many fields of agriculture. Majumdar S., D.S. Jayas and

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 2534, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
26 P. Wan, C. Long, and X. Huang

others[9] identified the type of grain by neural network system based according to the
characteristics of grain morphology; Kazuhiro Nakano[10] used the neural networks
to identify the quality of Apple's appearance, and the experiments showd that the BP
neural network can classify the apple into three classes by the color features of the
apple.
The purpose of this paper is to propose a method of extracting rice color feature
values, and detect the process quality of rice according to color feature values and
through artificial neural network.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Rice Samples

The rice samples were Wan Chang Rice, produced in Changchun, Jilin Province. The
samples of rice grain were processed by huller, milling, polishing and other processes,
and then respectively obtained the rice samples with 500g of four different forms:
brown rice (BR), the first process rice (FR), the second process of rice (SR), polished
rice (PR), and then packaged in sealed bags and kept in the shade.

2.2 Computer Vision System

In order to obtain images of rice grains, the paper designs of the rice quality detection
vision system for collection the images of rice samples.

2.3 Rice Image Processing

To extract the color features of rice, rice needs to be extracted from the background
image firstly. The process flow chart of a rice image was in Figure 1. The detection
flow chart of rice process quality by image analysis was shown in Figure 2.

Rice image acquisition

Graying image

Threshold segmentation
Save
the
Noise Cancellation
rice
images
Image contour extraction

Seed filling

Segment rice image from the background

Fig. 1. The processing flow chart of rice image

A Detection Method of Rice Process Quality Based on the Color and BP Neural Network 27

Rice image acquisition

Rice image pre-processing

Extraction color values of rice image

Rice image pre-processing

Color space conversion

Calculating color feature value of rice sample

Using BPNN to detect the color of rice samples

Fig. 2. The detection flow chart of rice process quality by image analysis

2.4 Color Extraction

For extracting the color values of rice image, we must first identify the color region in
the abdomen of the rice. In order to guarantee every rice color extraction region con-
tains the same number of pixels, this paper detected the equal area in the abdomen of
the rice.
This paper firstly calculates the cancroid of rice image by image processing,
then an extraction region of the color values of rice image (CA, Color Area) is
identified, which has the centroid of rice image and a circle of radius R. The extrac-
tion region of the color values of rice image (CA) must be in the outline of the rice
image.
The pixel coordinates of the rice image are expressed as {(xi, yi) | 0 i M, M is
the pixel image points}, and the centroid coordinate of the rice image is (X, Y), then:
1 M
X = M xi
i =0
M
(1)
Y = 1
yi
M i =0

The color extraction regional diagram of rice image is in Figure 3.

Fig. 3. The color extraction region diagram of rice image

28 P. Wan, C. Long, and X. Huang

The extraction region of the color values of rice image (CA) was divided into 5
equal sub-regions (Sa, Sub area) by the concentric circles which have a centroid coor-
dinate(X, Y) and ranging radius. The sub-regions have the number for the Sai (i =
1,2, ... ... 5) from the inside to the outside of the circle. Set the concentric circles in the
CA have the radius of ri(i = 1,2, ... ... 5), the sketch map of 5 sub-regions in CA is
shown in Figue 4.

Fig. 4. The sketch map of 5 sub-regions in CA

The relationship between the radiuses ri of the concentric circles and the radius R of
the rice color extraction region (CA) is:

i
ri = R (2)
5
In this paper, the average value of the pixel color values in sub-regional Sai of the CA
is the color value of sub-regional Sai, and then the color of every rice can be described
by 5 color values extracted from the CA.

2.5 Color Conversion

The rice images obtained by the CCD are based on RGB color space. HSI color
model is based on the human visual, which describe the color by using the Hue(H),
Saturation(S) and Intensity(I) to sort. As HSI color mode is related with the hardware
features, and is little sensitivity to the light source. This paper describes the rice color
by using the HSI color system.
Firstly, the RGB color values of rice pixel in CA are extracted, and then the RGB
color values are converted to HSI color values.
According to the characteristics of HSI color system, this paper uses the hue values
H as the color characteristic values detecting the rice process quality. As the rice color
extraction area (CA) in this paper is divided into 5 equal sub-regions, the color char-
acteristic values of each sub-region is set to Hi(i = 1,2, ... ... 5), then each rice color
feature value could be described as follow:

H * = ( H1 H 2 H 3 H 4 H 5 ) (3)
A Detection Method of Rice Process Quality Based on the Color and BP Neural Network 29

2.6 The Identification Method of Rice Process Quality

In this paper, BP neural network model is used to detect the process quality of rice.
The rice samples of four forms are respectively selected to be used to image analysis,
and to obtain the color feature value for making up of the sample set of the neural
network training set. Suppose the detection values of brown rice (BR), first process

rice (FR), second process rice (SR), polished rice (PR) are 0 1 2 3, and then the
goals set of the neural network training set is (0, 1, 2, 3). Other 40 full rice are respec-
tively selected from the rice samples of four forms to obtain the color feature value
for making up of the detection set of the neural network.
The BP neural network in this paper has three layers, the number of input layer
neurons is 5, that is the number of the color feature values of rice samples; the number
of output layer neuron is 4, and the output signal is (0, 1, 2, 3), and which respectively
denotes the rice sample of BR, FR, SR, PR; the number of hidden layer neurons is
confirmed according to the accuracy of the test results by using MATLAB software
and test set. Neural network identification function is the logistic function:

f (x ) =
1
(4)
1 + exp( x)

3 Results and Discussion

3.1 Obtain the Images of Rice Samples

First of all, 120 rice are respectively selected from the 4 rice samples which have
different process grade, then the rice images are obtained by the rice quality detection
vision system. The rice images of four forms samples are shown in Figure 5.

(1) (2)

(3) (4)

Fig. 5. Rice sample images of different forms. (1)brown rice samples (BR); (2)the first process
rice samples (FR); (3)the second process rice sample (SR); (4)polished rice samples (PR).
30 P. Wan, C. Long, and X. Huang

From Figure 6, brown rice(1) has the hard cuticle on the external layer, so brown
rice shows a different color from the rice, and the outer layer of the brown is smooth;
After milling, brown rice is processed into the initial processing rice samples(2), and
as cutting through the rice milling machine, the outer layer of brown rice most of the
stratum corneum epidermidis is cut, thus the entire outer layer of brown rice puts up
mixture colors. After the second milling, brown rice is processed into secondary proc-
essing rice samples(3), then the outer layer of the stratum corneum epidermidis of
whole rice is almost cut and shows the color of the rice, and at the same time, the
outer layer of the rice will produce more fine particles, the surface of the rice is not
smooth; After the second milling process, rice is polished into rice sample(4) by pol-
ishing processing, the fine particle layer of rice surface is removed, and the rice shows
glossy color.

3.2 Rice Image Processing

The goal image of rice can be obtained from the rice image through the rice image
process, and the object images of rice are shown in Figure 6.

(1) (2)

(3) (4)

Fig. 6. The object images of rice samples (1)object image of BR; (2) object image of FR;
(3) object image of SR; (4) object image of PR

3.3 Extract the Color Feature Value of Rice

After the rice goal image was separated from the background, the color extraction
area(CA) of the rice is firstly identified, and then the color feature values are
extracted. The schematic diagram of the color extraction area (CA) of rice is shown in
Figure 7. The radius R of the largest circle (CA) is 60, the CA is divided into five
equal parts by the red circles, and code-named of the rice color feature extraction sub-
regions from the inner circle to the cylindrical are Sa1, Sa2, Sa3, Sa4, Sa5.
A Detection Method of Rice Process Quality Based on the Color and BP Neural Network 31

Fig. 7. Schematic diagram of the color feature extraction region

The color feature values of each 120 samples in four form rice are extracted, and
the relationship between the image pixels contained in the color feature extraction
region of rice image and the image pixels contained in the rice image is shown in
Table 1.

Table 1. The relationship of the image pixels contained in the equal portion circles of the rice
image

Color extraction region Sa1 Sa2 Sa3 Sa4 Sa5 CA

pixel points 2286 2272 2270 2264 2264 11356
percentage of total CA 20.13 20.01 19.99 19.94 19.94 100%
percentage of total image (%) 5.19 5.16 5.16 5.14 5.14 25.79
prompt: the rice sample images have an average 44016 pixels.

From the table, the color extraction area (CA) contains 11 356 pixels; the pixels
contained in the sub regions were 2286, 2272, 2270, 2264, 2264 and the error be-
tween the sub-region is less than 22 pixel; the percentages of total CA were 20.13%,
20.01%, 19.99%, 19.94%, 19.94%, the error is less than 0.19%; rice image contains
an average of 44 016 pixels, the pixels points in CA is 25.79% of total pixel points of
rice image; the percentages of the pixel points in sub-regions were 5.19%, 5.16%,
5.16%, 5.14%, 5.14% of the average total pixel points of rice images, the error is less
than 0.05%. Therefore, the method of the division of the rice color extraction region
into 5 equal sub-regions can insure the rice pixel points in every color feature extrac-
tion sub-region are equal.

3.4 Variation Rules of Color Feature Values

The color feature values were extracted from 120 rice samples for four forms of rice
respectively, and then transformed the color feature value from the RGB color space
into the HSI color space, and the average values of the color characteristics H of four
forms of rice samples were shown in Table 2.
32 P. Wan, C. Long, and X. Huang

Table 2. The color characteristics H for four forms of rice samples

The color feature value of the color featureextraction region

rice sample
Sa1 Sa2 Sa3 Sa4 Sa5
BR 1.3624 1.8812 1.8509 1.9821 1.4798
FR 3.1121 2.5987 2.5019 2.2124 2.5013
SR 3.5502 2.9942 3.1421 2.9278 2.6696
PR 3.9702 3.6774 3.0815 3.7286 3.1869

From the Table 2, there are some variation rules between the color feature values H
of 4 rice samples. The color feature values Hi(i=1 2 5) of the same rice sam-
ples of different process methods dont have significant variation rules, which are the
same with the different structure and distribution of the composition in rice and the
milling and polishing process in the different regions of the rice surface. But among
the different forms of rice samples, the color feature values Hi(i=1,2, ... ... 5) increased
significantly on the whole. when the rice sample is brown rice, H values are in the
range[1.3624, 1.9821]; when brown rice are milled though first process, H values are
in the range[2.2124, 3.1121]; after the second milling process, H values are in the
range[2.6696, 3.5502], after the rice polished, H values are in the range[3.0815,
3.9702]. Obviously, this is the same with the removal process of the cuticle layer and
the aleurone layer on the surface of the rice by milled and polished.
The distribution histogram of the color feature values Hi (i = 1,2, ... ... 5) of 4 rice
samples is shown in Figure 8.

4.5
4.0
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
Sa1 Sa2 Sa3 Sa4 Sa5

BR sample FR sample SR sample PR sample

Fig. 8. The relationship between the color feature values H of 4 rice samples

From the figure 8, as for the different forms of rice samples in the same color fea-
ture extraction sub-region, the color feature values H change with the milling process
and present a growing trend.
Consolidated Table 2 and Figure 8, rice samples show the appearance of different
colors with the rice milling process; and the color feature values of rice samples show
some variation rules.
A Detection Method of Rice Process Quality Based on the Color and BP Neural Network 33

3.5 Identification of Rice Process Quality

The train set is established adopting the color feature values H and detection values of
100 rice samples of 4 forms to train the BP neural network, and then the BP neural
network is verified through the color feature values H and detection values of 50x4
rice samples of 4 forms, and the detection result of the number of different hidden
layer neurons is shown in Table 3.

Table 3. The color detection results of the rice sample using BP neural network

The number of hidden layer neurons and the detection results

rice samples
Sa1 Sa2 Sa3 Sa4 Sa5
the number of rice 45 44 47 46 47
BR
accuracy rates(%) 90.00 88.00 94.00 92.00 94.00
the number of rice 45 48 48 46 43
FR
accuracy rates(%) 90.00 96.00 96.00 92.00 86.00
the number of rice 40 41 44 44 41
SR
accuracy rates(%) 80.00 82.00 88.00 88.00 82.00
the number of rice 43 45 46 45 46
PR
accuracy rates(%) 86.00 90.00 92.00 90.00 92.00

From the table, when the number of hidden layer neuron is 15, the rice samples
overall accurate rate identification is highest, the accurate rate of brown rice is
94.00%, and the accurate rate of first process rice is 96.00%, the accurate rate of sec-
ond process rice is 88.00%, and the accurate rate of the polished rice is 92.00%, the
overall identification accuracy rates is 92.50%.
From above mentioned, detect the rice process quality can achieve a satisfactory
result by constructing the 3 layers BP neural network with 5 neurons in the input
layer, 15 neurons in the hidden layer, 4 neurons in the output layer, and discriminate
function of the logistic-type function, and using the rice color feature values H ex-
tracted from the surface of the rice samples.

4 Conclusions
In this paper, the method of detecting rice process quality was verified by experiments
based on the color and BP neural network.
First of all, the rice images was obtained, then definite color feature extraction re-
gion, and then the color feature extraction region is divided into five color feature
extraction sub-regions of the same area with concentric circles of different radius. The
color values H of the color feature extraction sub-regions are regarded as the color
feature value of the rice, and finally a BP neural network of three layers is adopted to
detect the process quality of the rice. The experiments results show that accuracy rate
of this method of extracting the hue values of the rice image to detect the process
quality of the rice is 92.5%.
34 P. Wan, C. Long, and X. Huang

References
1. Hou, C., Seiichi, O., Yasuhisa, S., et al.: Application of 3D-Microslicing image processing
system in rice quality evaluation. Transactions of The Chinese Society of Agricultural En-
gineering 17(3), 9295 (2001)
2. Ling, Y., Wang, Y., Sun, M., et al.: A machine vision based instrument for rice appearance
quality. Transactions of The Chinese Society of Agricultural Machinery 36(9), 8992
(2005)
3. Wan, Y.N., Lin, C.M.: Rice quality classification using an automatic grain quality inspec-
tion system. Transaction of ASAE 45(2), 379387 (2002)
4. Abdullah, M.Z., Guan, L.C., Lim, K.C.: The applications of computer vision system and
tomographic radar imaging for assessing physical properties of food. Journal of Food En-
gineering (61), 125135 (2004)
5. Shang, Y., Hou, C., Chang, G.: Automatic detection of yellow-colored rice using image
recognition. Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering 20(4), 146
148 (2004)
6. Cai, J.: An analysis of color models and criteria for their application to quality test of farm
products. Journal of JiangSu University of Science and Technology 18(5), 2225 (1997)
7. Vizhanyo, T., Felfoldi, J.: Enhancing color differences in images of diseased mushrooms.
Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 26(2), 187198 (2000)
8. Rumelhart, D.E., Hinton, G.E., Williams, R.J.: Learning representations by backpropaga-
tion errors. Nature (323), 533536 (1986)
9. Majumdar, S., Jayas, D.S.: Classifieation of cereal grains using machine vision: Morphol-
ogy models. Trans. of the ASAE 43(6), 16691675 (2000)
10. Nakano, K.: Application of neural networks to the color grading of apples. Computers and
Electronics in Agriculture 18, 105116 (1997)
 A Digital Management System of Cow Diseases on
Dairy Farm

Lin Li1, Hongbin Wang2, Yong Yang3, Jianbin He1, Jing Dong1,*, and Honggang Fan2
1
School of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine, Shenyang Agricultural University,
110866 Shenyang, P.R. China
lilin619619@yahoo.com.cn, dongjing9834@yahoo.com.cn
2
School of anima Medicine l, Northeast Agricultural University,
150030 Harbin, P.R. China
3
School of Information and Electrical Engineering, Shenyang Agricultural University,
110866 Shenyang, P.R. China

Abstract. A digital management system of cow diseases is presented in this pa-

per, which based on standardization disease management framework. It can
manage dairy cow disease from each stage including cow file creation, routine
monitoring, disease prevention and control. Integrate electronic medical records
was set up, which based on medical records include cow basic information and
routine monitoring results and disease prevention information and can imple-
ment statistical analytic function of disease rate and guide cow immunization.
The Unique numbers and integrated medical records information of every cow
will lay the foundation for food of animal origin traceability. This system in-
cludes four subsystems, cow basic information management subsystem, cow
individual health monitoring and evaluation subsystem, cow electronic medical
records subsystem and cow disease prevention and control subsystem. With the
help of system analysis and software design techniques, it is can manage cow
disease on dairy farm effectually.

Keywords: Digital management, cow diseases, dairy farm.

1 Introduction
In china, dairy production specifically in general is of great importance. There has been
a good trend for the development of cow husbandry in recent years. However, milk and
meat yield per cow tend to remain low, although total production has increased, mainly
due to increased cow numbers. The reasons are manifold but the main is various kinds
of diseases that are ineffective management due to short of disease system of admini-
stration. In some economically developed countries, information technology (IT) con-
tinues to develop rapidly and is widely and successfully employed in the dairy cattle
sector. Large central computers with millions of cow files, operated by cow diseases
control program, have been operational for decades to provide the farmers with infor-
mation (Xiong B H, et al., 2005; Nuthall, P, et al., 2004; Warren, M, et al.2000). Data

*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 3540, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
36 L. Li et al.

bases are also increasingly used in a decentralized way on low cost personal com-
puters, by farmers and farm advisors, in the so-called management information sys-
tems. Veterinary practitioners use such systems to support a new methodology for
safeguarding cow health under the prevailing intensive production conditions (Vaarst,
M, et al., 2006; Hamilton, C, et al., 2006; Nyman, A, et al.2007). In this paper, we built
a digital management system of cow diseases that combining computer technology,
network technology and information management, it will prevent and control disease
effectually and promote the economy of dairy farm significantly.

2 Design of the Digital Management System of Cow Diseases

The digital management system of cow diseases is a network system that combines
B/S structure and ASP techniques. B/S structure has low requirement for users hard-
ware with high degree of information resource of expansibility. The users working
interface is realized by the universal browsers and their needs can be satisfied clicking

Demand analysis User needs

stage
Planning

Feasibility study

Design Functional Design

stage
Development

Architecture design

Interface Design

Data Structure

Realize Manage cow basic

information
Manage general health
Application and maintain

indicators of individual cows

Cow digital medical records

Prevention and decision

support

Application

Maintain

Fig. 1. The route of the digital management system of cow diseases

 A Digital Management System of Cow Diseases on Dairy Farm 37

The Database of the System

Tracking manage
database

Basic information General health Electronic medical Prevention and

management indicators records control

Fig. 2. The Database of Cow Disease Digitization Management Platform

8VHULQIRUPDWLRQ
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38 L. Li et al.

the mouse. The main working logic realized in the server with little of it done in
browser. The load in the client is simplified, decreasing the cost and working load of
system maintenance in this way. It possesses five structures which are data storage
layer, data service layer, safe layer, business layer and user service layer. Every layer
was design by Object Oriented, duplication of groupware make data layer, safe layer
and business layer flexibility. The route of the system is shown in fig.1.
The system working platform adopts window 2003 server and database utilizes
SQL Server2000. The designing method uses New Orleans designing mode, which
classifies designs of database into four stages: analysis of needs, conceptual design,
logical design and physical design. The Database of Cow Disease Digitization Man-
agement Platform is shown in fig.2.
It is a cow tracking Management Database, which includes cow basic information
management database, cow general health indicators database, cow electronic medical
records management database, cow disease prevention and control database. The
digital management system construction framework is a whole of many elements,
which integrates information collection, communication, possessing and so on, the
purpose is to provide technology and organization of cow information and security.
Its main function is to collect information of cow diseases, processing, storage and
analysis by feedback. The frame of system is shown in fig.3.

3 Implement and Function of the System

This system includes four subsystems, which are cow basic information management
subsystem, cow individual health monitoring and evaluation subsystem, cow elec-
tronic medical records subsystem and cow disease prevention and control subsystem.
These functions were come true that including dairy farm management, cow in-
formation management, routine monitoring, medical records management, disease
prevention, drug management, user information management and statistical analysis.
The function of system is shown in fig.4.
Standardization and applicable disease management framework has been built. It
can manage dairy farm from each aspects including cow files creation, routine moni-
toring, disease prevention. Since the cow come in dairy farm, this system creates cow
record and monitor cow health and evaluate abnormal index in whole breed manage-
ment process dynamically.
Integrate electronic medical records that can guide routine monitoring and Support
decision making by statistical analysis was set up. It based on medical records include
cow basic information and routine monitoring results and disease prevention informa-
tion. Digitalization management of electronic medical records implements statistical
analytic function of disease rate and can guide cow immunization and helminthicide.
It is the core of cow disease control and supports user to obtain complete and precise
information of disease and supply clinical decision service. The Unique numbers and
integrated medical records information of every cow will lay the foundation for food
of animal origin traceability. Cow routine monitoring content is divided to routine
inspection, physiology monitoring, performance monitoring, ketone monitoring,
 A Digital Management System of Cow Diseases on Dairy Farm 39

)DUPLQIRUPDWLRQ

)DUPPDQDJHPHQW )DUPUHJLVWHU

0RGLI\
&RZ,QIRUPDWLRQ
8VHULQIRUPDWLRQ ,QSXWDQGTXHU\
The digital management system of cow diseases

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0RGLI\DQGGHOHWH
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,QTXLU\DQG0RGLI\

Fig. 4. Function of the digital management system of cow diseases

parasite monitoring by analyzing causative agent and protective step of cow diseases,
it settles foundation for cow health management.

4 Conclusion
The digital management system of cow diseases that was created implements routine
monitoring standardization, applicable and integrity electron case file, disease preven-
tion systematization. It can manage dairy cow disease from each stage and ensures
cow health and raises output and quality of milk, settle the foundation of foods of
animal origin traceability. With the help of system analysis and software design tech-
niques, it is can manage cow disease on dairy farm effectually. These will bring evi-
dent economic returns.

Acknowledgement
Funding for this research was in part provided by china postdoctoral science founda-
tion (NO.20090461189), the postdoctoral fund of Shenyang Agricultural University,
40 L. Li et al.

Research fund for young teachers of Shenyang Agricultural University, Dr. Start Fund
of Liaoning Province, P. R. China. The authors are grateful to the Shenyang Agricul-
tural University for providing conditions with finishing this research.

References
1. Xiong, B.H., Qian, P., Luo, Q.Y., Lv, J.Q.: Design and realization of solution to precision
feeding of dairy cattle based on single body status. J. Transaction of the Chinese Society of
Agricultural Engineering 21, 118123 (2005)
2. Nuthall, P.: Case studies of the interactions between farm profitability and the use of a
farm computer. J. Comput. Electron. Agric. 42, 1930 (2004)
3. Warren, M., Soffe, R., Stone, M.: Farmers, computers and the internet: a study of adoption
in contrasting regions of England. J. Farm Manage. 11, 665684 (2000)
4. Vaarst, M., Bennedsgaard, T.W., Klaas, I., Nissen, T.B., Thamsborg, M., Ostergaaerd, S.:
Development and daily management of an explicit strategy of nonuse of antimicrobial
drugs in twelve Danish organic dairy herds. J. Dairy Sci. 89, 18421853 (2006)
5. Hamilton, C., Emanuelson, U., Forslund, K., Hansson, I., Ekman, T.: Mastitis and related
management factors in certified organic dairy herds in Sweden. J. Acta Vet. Scand. 48, 25
30 (2006)
6. Nyman, A., Ekman, T., Emanuelson, U., Gustafsson, A.H., Holtenius, K., Persson Waller,
K., Hallen Sandgren, C.: Risk factors associated with the incidence of veterinary-treated
clinical mastitis in Swedish dairy herds with a high milk yield and a low prevalence of
subclinical mastitis. J. Prev. Vet. Med. 78, 142160 (2007)
7. Nodtvedt, A., Bergvall, K., Emanuelson, U., Egenvall, A.: Canine atopic dermatitis: vali-
dation of recorded diagnosis against practice records in 335 insured Swedish dogs. J. Acta
Vet. Scand. 48, 17 (2006)
 A General Agriculture Mobile Service Platform

Hu Haiyan1,2,* and Su Xiaolu1,2

1
Key Laboratory of Digital Agricultural Early-warning Technology,
Ministry of Agriculture, The Peoples Republic of China 100081
2
Agricultural Information Institute of Chinese Academy of Agriculture Science,
Beijing 100081, P.R. China
Tel.: +86-10-82106263; Fax: +86-10-82106263
huhaiyan@mail.caas.net.cn

Abstract. Most of todays information services on the web are designed for PC
users. There are few services fit to be accessed by mobile devices. In the coun-
tryside of China, most of the mobile phone users can not access the Internet. For
this reason, We developed General Agriculture Mobile Service Platform. The
Platform is designed to make these information services fit to be accessed by
mobile users, and to make those mobile phone users can use these services
without Internet connection. To achieve that, a descriptive language is designed
to describe the services inputs and outputs, used to passing requests and re-
sponses between the platform and the mobile client software. With those de-
scriptions, client software can generate user interface on the client mobile device.
Using that interface, user can manipulate service. The communication between
client side and the platform can be carried by SMS, MMS as well as TCP, so that
the devices which dont have Internet connection can access those services.

Keywords: Mobile service, Mobile platform, SMS protocol, MMS protocol,

Mobile protocol.

1 Introduction

Do not have internet connection, one can only be reached by mobile specific commu-
nication protocol. Most of the users of cheap mobile devices, as their devices has so
limited operability and is not fit for using internet application, will simply chose to have
none internet connection. Their mobile device supports only phone call and SMS. To
make our service being reachable to these users, a SMS/MMS based communication
protocol is developed to handle communication via SMS and MMS, and an inde-
pendent mobile communication protocol layer is added to the platform. With SMS
based communication, the platform can be reached by 100% of mobile users.
The processing capacity, presentability, and operability of mobile devices are lim-
ited, complicate data presentation and complicate operation can not be done on mobile
device. Standard web based user interface is not fit for mobile users. Between mobile

*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 4147, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
42 H. Hu and X. Su

devices, capacity of display and operate vary so greatly that can not design a standard
client user interface to fit all types of devices.
On mobile devices, software installation and running is limited, complicate software
functions is not applicable. Client software must adaptable to all these limitation.

2 Platform Design

2.1 Client/Server Architecture

Mobile terminal may not support Internet connection. Client/server is the only appli-
cable architecture to leave room for the special designed mobile communication
protocol.

2.2 Mobile Protocol Layer

Seal mobile communication protocol to an independent layer, simplified both the client
and the server software design, and made maintenance and upgrading easy.

2.3 Web Service Composition

Server composes available web services into functions which fit for mobile user. The
client software can only have a set of very limited functions, so that it can not call
complicate services by itself, services must be packaged by server firstly, to make them
fit for calling by client software.

2.4 User Interface Auto Generation

Based on the capacity of the current mobile device, client software generates user
interfaces for each service according to its service description. Each function offered
has a formal description, which includes descriptions to all parameters that function
needs. All functions consists the service list, which is the data source of service choice
list on the client side. With those descriptions, client software can generate user inter-
face to launch calling to those functions, and to handle the returned data.

2.5 Command Pattern

Client side software launch calling to server side functions by translation user inputs
into commands and sending them to server. The server translates each command to the
actual calling to launch the corresponding function, and then package the returned data
as response to that command. Then client side handles the returned response to generate
user interface to display it.

2.6 Information Leaning Based on Personal Knowledge and Demand

Server traces each users access records, calculates his possible knowledge structure
and interest point. With that information, server can lean the information returned by
 A General Agriculture Mobile Service Platform 43

remove those out of the scope of users knowledge and those out of users interest. This
function can be switched off manually.

3 Implementations

3.1 SMS and MMS Based Communication Protocol

A single SMS message can carry only 140 byte information, equal to 140 ASCII
characters or 70 double byte symbols. This sets the up limit of a single data package.
Such a package size is too small to carry information (compared to other communica-
tion protocols, such as Ethernets 1544 byte package). To transmit data over such a tiny
package, the first thing must do is to make the package structure as simple as possible to
leave room for data; the second thing must do is to make data can be carried by multiple
packages, that means data must be dissembled at transmit end and assembled at receive

Fig. 1. A typical session sequence

44 H. Hu and X. Su

end, some kind of sequence control must be introduced to assure recover data in
original sequence [1.2].
There are 3 tasks of the protocol:

z establish session and offers the current endpoint context to server

z submit service request and receive returned data
z end session
Figure 1 shows a typical session, includes session starting and ending, and some service
requests/responses. Corresponding to these 3 tasks, 2 types of packages are needed, one
is used to establish and end sessions, the other is used to carry service requests and
responses. Every package is a SMS message, to keep the session traceable and ac-
cording the sequence of sending and receiving, each package has a serial number.
Because the system also allow user edit and send SMS message manually, and those
manually edited message should not be expected to have correct serial number like the
automatic generated ones, so if a package do not have serial number, it will be handled
as is, without premising in correct sequence. The packages with no serial number can
not be used to establish or end session, update contexts, choose service to entry, or to do
all other platform specific job, but can be used to carry service requests, whether it is
acceptable is leaved to the service it requests.
Serial number should always stay at the beginning 4 character, starts with #, fol-
lowed by 3 digits, that means the largest serial number is 999. Statistically, most of user
sessions wont use so many packages to make serial number overflow. If overflow
really occurs, it still doesnt matter, serial number simply start from 0 again, we simply
regards serial 000 is larger than 999, there will be almost zero chance to disturb
communication sequence. If a package is sent more than once (often caused by mobile
network provider), the duplicated ones will have the same sequence number, if received
more than 1 packages which have the same serial number, the package latest received
will be kept and the earlier ones will be simply discarded. Unlike most communication
protocols, there is no ACK package, the reliability of communication is assured by
SMS itself. If ACK is really needed, ACK words can be put directly after the serial
number, each ACK word starts with the prefix R, followed by 3 digits represents the
replied packages serial number, nothing should be put between each pair of
neighboring ACK words and between serial number and ACK words. A package with
ACK words may look like this (Figure 2):

1__________________11__________________21___________________31_______________40
#nnnRnnnRn nnRnnnXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX

Fig. 2. The response package structure

Here n represent digit, as well as X represents data.

The packages length is not fixed. And no method is designed to check its length,
assurance of the integrity of package is leave to SMS.
 A General Agriculture Mobile Service Platform 45

3.2 Voice Service

The mobile communication protocol is not fit for transmit long text, and the mobile
device itself is often not fit for read much text. If large text needed to be delivered to
user, voice is a reasonable choice. Along with SMS, voice is the only other commu-
nication method which all mobile device must supports. Regarding that voice can not
be formalized, complicate interaction can not be carried by voice service, the only job
fit for voice is deliver text.
The voice service offered by platform is quite simple. Every user by default will
own a voice box, at most 9 voice messages can stored in it, each of them has a title and
content. If the box is already full, coming of new message will overwrites the oldest one
without warning or confirmation. Client software offers a user interface to manage
users voice box, user can see message title list and delete message through this inter-
face, but can not get message contents. To get contents, user must call the number of
voice service, and then voice service will read out each message title, starts with a serial
number, user push the digit button of the serial number will make voice service read the
message with that number to user.

3.3 Client Software Developed with J2ME

Simply say, client softwares job is to translate users operations into calling to ser-
vices, server finish those calling and return data to client, then client generate an user
interface to display the returned data as while as to prepare users further operation
which using some of those data as input. The first, client must be able to communicate
with server, so it must have mobile communication protocol layer, client software can
detect mobile devices capability of communication automatically, and decide the most
suitable communication method, user can also manually set communication method.
Client software must very flexible, and can adapt to all kinds of limits of all different
mobile devices. All user interfaces can adjust automatically to fit for the devices ca-
pacity. Most of the user interfaces are generated automatically, so that services can be
added dynamically, without updating the client software. There are some basic opera-
tion interfaces which are not automatically generated, they are client software con-
figuration screen, user profile management screen, voice box management screen,
service selection screen. After entering a service, all user interfaces are generated based
on the service description and function list of the service. To minimize communication,
service description is not strictly formalized, the grammar is very simply, many de-
faults are automatically applied while no declaration presents. For example, the only
allowed data type is number and string, if a piece of data comply with any digital
format, it will be regard as digits, otherwise it will be look as string, so that the extra
data for data type is not needed[3].

3.4 The 3 Layered Server End Software

Server end is consisted by 3 layers, mobile protocol layer, basic platform service layer,
and service composition layer.
46 H. Hu and X. Su

At server side there is a counterpart mobile protocol layer handling communications

via mobile protocol, but the implementation of this layer is not the same as client side.
Unlike the client, server is not naturally support mobile communications; it must
connect to some mobile capable devices to extend its mobile capacity. And then, the
protocol layer divided into 2 parts, running on the server and its mobile extension
devises respectively.
Basic platform service provides basic functions such as user profile management,
user activity tracing, personalized sorting and filtering, voice box management, and
service management.
The core function of the platform is to manage services, these services are described
in OWL-S documents, and ready to be called by the client side. Each service has a name
and a description. User can regard each service as an entry point to access a certain kind
of resources, by calling that service, user can access the resources the service provides.
A simplest service can only provide a resource list and detail data of each resource. In
more complicate occasion, category and search are provided to assist user to locate
resource mo efficiently. If resources can be created, changed or removed by user, the
service should also include CRUD functions. Beside these, a service should not include
any unnecessary function. This limit of simplicity on service simplified user interface
generation. If a service originally provides more than this, it should be simplified first,
before added to platform [4].
The platform provides a general propose filtering and sorting function based on
users personal knowledge structure and current interest point. An OWL document
is maintained for each user to records the knowledge the user may have. Users
knowledge is inferred from users activities, so do to users current interest point.
Personalization is implemented by another independent software package, and further
discussion on personalization is beyond the scope of this paper. What make sense to the
platform is that personalization helps significantly reducing the communicated infor-
mation, and interactive rounds.

3.5 Web Service Composition with OWL-S

The server does not care about where the OWL-S description comes from, and whether
or not it is correct or effective, those jobs are handled by other systems. The server just
use these OWL-S descriptions, call web services according to them, if something
failed, a standard error message will be shown.
Services is added into platform through service management user interface, this is a
web based UI and can not be accessed by common users. Each service has a group of
processes, OWL-S describes how to launch these processes. At client side, while en-
tering a service, there is a main menu shown to user, lists all the processes the service
had. By select the menu item, client side sends command which at server side launches
the corresponding process. At every step of the process triggered, if some parameter is
not available from environment and previous outputs, that means user input is needed,
at that time, a user interface to input those data is generated. Thanks to the limit of
simplicity, all these processes are simple, only sequence flow can appear. So that the
 A General Agriculture Mobile Service Platform 47

platform need to support only sequence control flow, and can regardless loops or
branches the OWL-S processes may have [5,6].

4 Conclusions

By introducing mobile communication protocol, make the platform can cover 100% of
mobile users. By introducing web service composition, make it easier to enrich service
contents available to mobile users. All these will attract more mobile users and make
the mobile technology valuable to agriculture production.

Acknowledgement
The research was supported by the national 863 project, Mobile intelligence service for
agricultural scientific & technical information (project code 2007AA10Z236) and
special fund of basic commonweal research institute project of information institute of
CAAS.

References

[1] Ortiz, E.: The MIDP 2.0 Push Registry (January 2010),
http://blog.csdn.net/memhoo/archive/2008/03/02/2139611.aspx
[2] JSR 120 Expert Group: Wireless Messaging API (WMA), JSR 120, JSR 205. SUN
corporation
[3] Mahmoud, Q.: Getting Started With the MIDP 2.0 Game API. [EB/OL] (September 2005),
http://developers.sun.com/mobility/midp/articles/gameapi
[4] Richardson, L., Ruby, S.: RESTful Web Services. OReilly Media Inc., Sebastopol (2006)
[5] Saadati, S., Denker, G.: An OWL-S Editor Tutorial. [EB/OL] (May 2010),
http://owlseditor.semwebcentral.org/documents/tutorial.pdf
[6] W3C Member Submission: OWL-S: Semantic Markup for Web Services [EB/OL]
(September 2004),
http://www.w3.org/Submission/2004/SUBM-OWL-S-20041122/
 A Halal and Quality Attributes Driven Animal Products
Formal Producing System Based on HQESPNM

Qiang Han and Wenxing Bao

School of Computer Science and Engineering, BeiFang University of Nationalities, Yinchuan

Ningxia, P.R. China 750021
nxhanq@gmail.com

Abstract. Usually, halal animal products formal producing system consists of

several components that cover major stages including Pre-processing, Process-
ing and Post-processing. In this paper, we present five information systems to
implement fundamental functions of formal management, scientific foods man-
agement, animal epidemic disease diagnose and prevention, processing
standardization and market management, which respectively map to those com-
ponents mentioned above. As halal animal products formal producing system,
there are Halal & Quality attributes existing in all of the five information sys-
tems. Thereby, concentrated and systematic controlling of Halal & Quality
attributes could improve whole quality of the producing system and ensure
products is halal. Addressed to the problem of controlling scheme, first, this pa-
per given a Halal & Quality Elements Extended SPN Model (HQESPNM) in
detail. Second, it propose Platform-Independence architecture of the formal
producing system based on HQESPNM through infrastructure of database inte-
grate middleware. Finally, this paper given an Electronic-Agriculture Services
case through Platform-Specified Software based on SOA to certificate that the
model proposed by this paper is feasible for halal animal products system.

Keywords: Halal, Quality, Traceability, Petri Nets, HQESPNM.

1 Introduction
At the beginning of 80s of last century, based on the Petri Net [1], Molly presented
Stochastic Petri Net through associating a stochastic delay time to every transition
from ready-to-fire to firing [2]. With the development of science, computation science
based on high-performance computing becomes more and more important[5].As the
Stochastic Petri Net presented, it was used in many applications of modeling, analysis
and efficiency test, such as communication protocols, workflow design etc.
However, Stochastic Petri Net is not suitable to each application aspect completely.
For example, to the formal producing and quality certification of Halal Animal, ex-
cept general elements of normal management are suitable to Stochastic Petri Net for
information system modeling and computation, the type of its Halal and Quality ele-
ments affection to all of steps in whole management process is through controlling the

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 4855, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 A Halal and Quality Attributes Driven Animal Products Formal Producing System 49

process and not by any time-element or stochastic-element. Once the Halal and Qual-
ity elements are destroyed in the management process, the products have not any
meaning for Moslem people and other people.
Including all the animal product producing process of Pre-processing, Processing
and Post-processing, in breeding, propagate, feed, fattening, slaughtering, transporta-
tion and market circulating, how to guarantee the products are processed under an
consistency environment according to Halal and Quality standard, is the key of infor-
mation system which service for this aspect.
To solve the problem above, this paper proposed an approach through combination
technique [13] of Place expanding Petri nets [6] and Stochastic Petri Net [2], and by
the approach, this paper given a Halal & Quality Elements Extended SPN Model
(HQESPNM) in detail. The primary thought of the approach is separate the problem
of the aspect into two part, the part about general performance computation can be
solved by Stochastic Petri Net, and the other part about Halal & Quality elements can
be solved by Place expanding Petri nets. So that, by this means, through the function
of the two Petri net theories, the problem of the aspect can be solved successfully.
In the detailed scheme of the halal animal products formal producing system model
based on HQESPNM, this paper mainly given design of the model which separate
Halal & Quality attributes into independent subsystem, and the implementation of its
algorithm.
The organization of the remainder of this paper is as follows. Section 2 given the
basic concepts and notations, and system model is given in section 3. Section 4 dis-
cussed how to use the system to solve the problem through an example. Finally, sec-
tion 5 summarized the main results and points out the future work. The word iff
means if and only if in this paper.

2 Basic Concepts and Notations

The concepts and notations of Petri nets are derived from some documents [7-12].

2.1 Stochastic Petri Net

Definition 1. A Petri net is a four-tuple = (P, T , F ; M ) such that:

0
(1) P is a finite set of places, and T is a finite set of transitions, and
PI T = , P U T =/ ;
(2) F (P T ) U (T P ) is a set of arcs;
(3) M 0 : P {0,1,2,...} is the initial marking. Generally, x P U T , the pre-
set of x is x = {y | y P U T and (y, x ) F } , and the post-set of x is
.

x ={y | yPUT and (x,y)F} and . x U x . is the spanning-set of x. If

.

P = P, T = T and F ((P T ) U (T P )) U F , 1 = (P1 , T1 , F1 ) is called the

1 1 1 1 1 1 1
spanning subnet of P1.
50 Q. Han and W. Bao

Definition 2. Let M(p) be the number of tokens in place p. For t T ,

(1) t is enable under the marking M, denoted by M [t >, iffp t : M ( p ) 1; ;
.

(2) If t is enable under the marking M, then t can be fired. The marking
M ' is obtained from M by firing t, denoted by M [t > M :
'

M ( p ) 1 , ( p , t ) F ( t , p ) F
'
M ( p ) = M ( p ) + 1 , ( p , t ) F ( t , p ) F
M ( p ), otherwise
Thus, M is reachable from M. The set of reachable markings from M is denoted as
R(M).
The properties derived from execution of the Petri net are called dynamic proper-
ties or behavioral properties.
A Petri net = ( P, T , F ; M 0 ) is called safe
iff M R( M 0 ), p P, M ( p) 1 is satisfied.

Definition 3. For a Petri net = ( P, T , F ; M 0 ),

M R ( M 0 ), if M R ( M ) for M R ( M ), then M is called a home state.
' '
is a
reversible net system if M 0 is a home state.

Definition 4. = ( P, T , F ; M 0 ) is a Petri net. is said to be:

(1) weakly live iff M R ( M 0 ), t T such that M[t > .
(2) live iff M R ( M 0 ), t T , T such that M [ > M [t > .
* '

Definition 5. = ( P, T , F ; M 0 , K , W ) is a Place/Transition Net, where:

(1) ( P, T , F ; M 0 ) is a Petri net.
(2) K : S N + U {} is Place Capacity function.
(3) W : F N + is Arc Priority function.
(4) p P : M 0 ( p ) K ( p ) .

Definition 6. = ( P, T , F ; M 0 , K ,W , ) is a continuous-timed Stochastic Petri Nets,

where:
(1) ( P, T , F ; M 0 , K ,W ) is a Place/Transition Net.
(2) = (1 , 2 , 3 ,L, m ) is set of transition average fired rate. i is transition aver-
age fired rate of t i T , which represent the fired times of ti in an unit time.

2.2 Place Expanding Petri Net (PePN)

Based on the introduction of Petri Nets and Stochastic Petri Nets above, we can calcu-
late performance data through modeling system. However, in the actual application of
 A Halal and Quality Attributes Driven Animal Products Formal Producing System 51

it, because of the dynamic change properties of modeling objects, the capacity of
description for them is limited. So some researchers presented Place expanding Petri
Net Models, example Place expanding Petri Net[6].Its definition is:

Definition 7. = ( P, T , F ; M 0 ) is a Place expanding Petri Net(PePN) , where:

(1) S={s|s is Place expanding Petri Net or s S , S is place sets of
' '
.
(2) ( x, y) F : x S y T z S, ( y, z) F .
(3) ( x, y) F : x T y S z T , (z, x) F .

2.3 Halal and Quality Elements Extended SPN Model (HQESPNM)

Based on the Stochastic Petri Nets and Place expanding Petri Net, this paper pre-
sented a Halal&Quality Elements Extended SPN Model (HQESPNM).

Definition 8. = ( Nh, Nq, Np, F ) is a HQESPNM, where:

(1) Nh = ( PNh , TNh , FNh ; M 0 ) is a Petri Nets.
Nh

(2) Nq = ( PNq , TNq , FNq ; M 0Nq ) is a Petri Nets.

(3) Np = ( PNp , TNp , FNp ; M 0Np , K Np ,WNp , Np ) is a Stochastic Petri Nets.
(4) F = {< p, t > < t , p >| p ( PNh PNq ), t TNp } < p, t > means a Halal or
Quality data flow/transition from Nh or Nq to Np ; on the contrary, < t, p > means
a Halal or Quality data flow/transition from Np to Nh or Nq .
For the application in the Introduction of this paper, Nh represent abstract of Ha-
lal-element relation, Nq represent abstract of Quality-element relation, Np repre-
sent abstract of Animal Products Producing, F represent abstract of controlling from
Nh and Nq to Np and reflection from Np to Nh and Nq .
Based on the HQESPNM, we can find that the correctly systematically
running of Np has to be controlled under Nh and Nq through F . Then this
paper given the system architecture and algorithm to implement HQESPNM as
follow.

3 System Model
In this section, we gave a Meta-model of Compute-Independence (CIM) for
HQESPNM firstly. For the system design, according to the CIM, a Model of
Platform-Independence (PIM) for HQESPNM was given through approach of
OOA&OOD [3][4]. In the PIM, we illustrated the relation between Nh and Np as
well as the relation between Nq and Np .
52 Q. Han and W. Bao

3.1 System Architecture

The basic components of halal products formal producing system includes:

(1) Formal Management Information System (FMIS).
(2) Processing Standardization Information System (PSIS).
(3) Market Management Information System (MMIS).
(4) Scientific Food Management Information System.
(5) Animal Epidemic Diagnose Information System.
(6) Quality Traceability Information System (QTIS).
(7) Halal Traceability Information System (HTIS)
(8) Public Data Traceability Information System.
(9) Traceability Data Bus based on Data Integrity Middleware.
Among the components above:
(1),(2) and (3) consists of the Np in HQESPNM, which is the major body of halal
products formal producing system, representing Pre-processing, Processing and Post-
processing stage respectively.
(4) and (5) assist the normal running of Np . (4) is a non-independent component of
the Formal Management Information System, on the contrary, (5) is an independent
component based on artificial intelligence, which can be loaded or unloaded freely.
(6) and (7) consists of the Nq and Nh respectively in HQESPNM, which are the
kernel of halal products formal producing system.
(8) is a trusted third-party component, which provide common qualification data to
the Nq via exchange interface of (9).
(9) is Traceability Data Bus based on Data Integrity Middleware, connecting the
components mentioned above as a whole system, assurance the Np could be oper-
ated under the controlling of Nq .
CIM of system architecture can be described as Fig.1.
3URFHVVLQJ
6WDQGDUGL]DWLRQ
ng ,QIRUPDWLRQ
ssi 6\VWHP
ce
Pr

o
Pr
oc
es

g
sin

sin
es
g

ro
c Traceability Data Bus
Po

e-p
st-

Pr
pr
oc
es
ins
g

)RUPDO
0DQDJHPHQW Quality Halal
0DUNHW
,QIRUPDWLRQ Traceability Traceability 0DQDJHPHQW
6\VWHP System System ,QIRUPDWLRQ
6\VWHP

6FLHQWLILF Data Integrity Middleware $QLPDO

)RRG (SLGHPLF
0DQDJHPHQW 'LVHDVH
,QIRUPDWLRQ ,QIRUPDWLRQ
6\VWHP 3XEOLF'DWD 6\VWHP
7UDFHDELOLW\
6\VWHP

Fig. 1. CIM of System Architecture

 A Halal and Quality Attributes Driven Animal Products Formal Producing System 53

3.2 Design of F in HQESPNM

According to the CIM of System Architecture above, next, through the theory of Sto-
chastic Petri Nets and UML, we can map components and complex connectors into
package, function specifications into interfaces, entry points into abstract class, and
inner specification of component into comments respectively. Then, according to
F in the definition 8, we can give the kernel PIM of System Architecture concen-
trated in relation between Nh , Nq and Np as Fig.2, which reflects the F in
HQESPNM.

47,6 +7,6

)0,6 36,6 00,6

P Nh T Np P Nq T Np PNp T Np
T Np P Nh T Np P Nq
Fig. 2. F in HQESPNM

4 Overview of HQESPNM by Example

Based on the research above, we developed a set of software prototype named as
Hqespnm1.0 to certificate the correctness of the HQESPNM. In this section, we pre-
sented an example to introduce the set of software prototype as Fig.3.
Hqespnm1.0 consists of Halal Traceability Information System (HTIS) and Quality
Traceability Information System (QTIS), which show as upper part and Lower half of
Fig.3 respectively.

Fig. 3. Hqespnm1.0 based on HQESPNM

54 Q. Han and W. Bao

Fig. 3. (continued)

5 Conclusion and Future Working

Address to Halal & Quality attributes assurance problem of formal producing sys-
tem, the basic concept and notation of HQESPNM is given firstly, and the software
model including architecture and design is presented secondly. Based on the model,
this paper introduced an application example in electronic agriculture domain cover-
ing whole producing process including Pre-producing, Producing, Post-producing
finally.
Results indicated that the HQESPNM separate the normal producing elements and
Halal & Quality controlling elements into Petri Nets and Stochastic Petri Nets through
Place expanding Petri Net [6] successfully.
In future, the formal work of HQESPNM should be implemented to certificate its
correctness.

Acknowledgement
This paper is supported by National Key Technology R&D Program of China under
Grant No.2007BAD33B03, Natural Science Foundation of NingXia Province under
Grant No.NZ0955 and the Colleges Oriented Scientific Research Fund of NingXia
Provincial Education Department of China under Grant No.2008JY009. Additionally,
we should thank for the software prototype development work distributed by our
colleagues and master candidate students: Ding HongSheng, Yang YongSheng, Shi
Liang and Liu Yang.

References
1. Petri, C.A.: Kommunkation mit automaten. Schriften des IIM, vol. 3. Institut fur Lnstrum
Entelle Mathematik, Bonn (1962)
2. Molly, M.K.: Discrete time stochastic Petri nets. IEEE Trans. Software Eng. SE-11(4),
417423 (1985)
3. Shao, W.-z., Yang, F.-q.: Object-Oriented System Anysis. Publishing House of Tsinghua
University (2006)
 A Halal and Quality Attributes Driven Animal Products Formal Producing System 55

4. Shao, W.-z., Yang, F.-q.: Object-Oriented System Design. Publishing House of Tsinghua
University (2007)
5. Cui, H.-q., Wu, Z.-h.: MPI Programs Petri Net Model and Its Dynamic Properties. Journal
of System Simulation 18(9), 24552460 (2006)
6. Qi, F.-m., Yu, B., Shi, L.-j., Mou, L.-k.: A Modeling Method of Software Project Man-
agement Based on Petri Nets. Journal of System Simulation 19(suppl. 1), 7578 (2007)
7. Peterson, J.L.: The Theory of Petri Net and System Simulation. Wu Zhehui (Trans). Pub-
lishing House of China University of Mining Technology, Xuzhou (1989)
8. Murata, T.: Petri Nets: Properties,Analysis and Applications. Proceedings of the
IEEE(S0018-9219) 77(4), 541580 (1989)
9. Yuan, C.: The Principles of Petrinet. Publishing House of Electronics Industry, Beijing
(2005)
10. Lin, C.: Stochastic Petri Nets and System Performance Evaluation. Publishing House of
Tingshua University, Beijing (2005)
11. Zhan, H., Gu, J.,: Study of the Normal Generalized Stochastic Petri nets and its Applica-
tion in Testing System. In: IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Confer-
ence Proceedings, pp. 11231128 (2006)
12. Renato Vazquez, C., Recalde, L., Silva, M.: Stochastic Continuous-State Approximation of
Markovian Petri Net Systems. In: Proceedings of the 47th IEEE Conference on Decision
and Control, pp. 901906 (2008)
13. Han, Q., Ding, J., Bao, W.: IEEE Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on
Computer and Computing Technology Applications in Agriculture (2009)
 A Metadata Based Agricultural Universal Scientific and
Technical Information Fusion and Service Framework

Cui Yunpeng1, Liu Shihong1, Sun SuFen2, Zhang Junfeng2, and Zheng Huaiguo2
1
Key Laboratory of Digital Agricultural Early-warning Technology, Ministry of Agriculture,
Beijing, The Peoples Republic of China 100081
2
Agriculture Sci-Tec information institute of Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry
Science, Beijing, The Peoples Republic of China 100097

Abstract. The paper introduced a metadata based Agricultural scientific and

technical Information fusion and Services framework. Through Agricultural
scientific and technical Information dataset core metadata and Services core
metadata, the distributed and platform-independent Information fusion can be
implemented, based on the information fused resources in base layer of the
framework, many applications can be developed, such as mobile communication
based mobile Information service, voice text converter based voice information
service, smart Q & A application etc., and the solution is an available and effec-
tive solution for the fusion and services of agricultural scientific and technical
information resources, because the solution can integrate the data with different
format from different data sources, so the solution can be used to construct the
data layer of agricultural scientific and technical universal information services.

Keywords: Information fusion, Metadata, Agricultural scientific and technical

Information service.

1 Introduction

The construction of Agricultural informatization in China has made rapid progress in

recent years. There are now over 2,000 E-commerce web sites, more than 6,000
Agricultural web sites in China, and a large amount of application and digital products
have emerged[1], the agriculture productivity in China has been enhanced
significantly. But on the other hand, some problems also emerged during the period.
because there are too many information resources located in different data sources, and
a lot of these information are duplicated, its very difficult for users to find the right
knowledge and information they really want, and users cant extract useful knowledge
from just one or several information. The crux of all these problems is information
fusion, based on information fusion, the information resources with different formats
from different data sources can be integrated in one logical whole, the retrieval to this
logical whole is just like retrieval from one dataset, the duplicated information entities
can be removed automatically, based on the fusion of the information resources, many

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 56 61, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
A Metadata Based Agricultural Universal Scientific and Technical Information Fusion 57

applications can be developed, such as mobile service, intelligent Q&A system, the
cross- database retrieval application etc.
The most effective scheme for information fusion nowadays is metadata, it is the
core of information fusion, and now there are already some successful case which use
metadata based framework in information fusion, such as the scientific database
service platform of CAS, the agricultural scientific data sharing platform of CAAS,
etc., this paper will discuss a metadata based agricultural scientific and technical
information fusion and service framework as well as the standards worked out for the
framework.

2 Metadata and Metadata Standards

The definition of metadata is: metadata is the data about data[2]. In fact, metadata
is a set of data that can describe and identify a specific information entity, and help
users find and achieve related information resources object. There are two kinds of
metadata standards, core metadata standard and expanded metadata standard, normally,
expanded metadata standard was expanded from core metadata standard and used in
some specific area.
The usage of metadata standards include:
1. Information management. Metadata can describe information entity, that means all
the information entities can be labeled with metadata, through metadata, the
management of information entities can be promoted.
2. Information discovery. With metadata, the retrieval of information entities is in fact
the retrieval of metadata registration information, so the metadata registration
information can be regarded as the sources of information discovery[3].
3. Information acquisition. Normally, the position and the type Information is included
in metadata, so users can acquire information entities very easy, thus users can
utilize information more effectively.
4. The integration and sharing of information resources. All the information entities is
registered with universal or compliant metadata standards, so the integration and
sharing of information resources turns into reality[4].

3 Metadata and Information Fusion

Figure 1 shows the principle of information fusion framework with metadata. There are
3 layers in the framework. at the bottom of the framework is data sources layer, where
contains different type, different format information resources from different sources
distribute anywhere, such as databases, multimedia resources, literatures, scientific
data, Internet resources etc.. The middle layer is services metadata fusion layer, in this
layer, all the data sources at the bottom layer are identified by services metadata, this
layer include a services metadata value database, where all the data sources information
saved, users can locate a data sources through these services metadata values and
58 Y. Cui et al.

connect to a data source to get the information they need. The top layer of the
framework is dataset metadata fusion layer, all the datasets locate in the data sources at
the bottom layer will be identified by dataset layer, so there is a large dataset metadata
value databases in this layer, users can retrieve the information entities in the datasets
through retrieving the dataset metadata values.

Fig. 1. The framework of information fusion with metadata

If a user want to retrieve an information entity, he/she enter keywords into an

application that provides the services above, the system will first retrieve the
information in the dataset metadata values database, find which dataset include the
information entities match the keywords the user entered, and then locate the data
sources where the service metadata described, find the connection information of the
data source, then connect to the data source, send query information, get the results, and
feedback results to the user.

4 The Agriculture Information Resources Dataset Core Metadata

The agriculture information resources dataset core metadata is a metadata standard

which regards agriculture information resources as descriptive objects, it is expanded
from the scientific database core metadata standard of Chinese academy of science. It
defines a set of data modules and elements. The main body of the standard includes 6
required modules: dataset description information, data quality information, dataset
distribution information, metadata reference information, services reference
A Metadata Based Agricultural Universal Scientific and Technical Information Fusion 59

information, and structure description information, and 2 assistant modules: range

information and contact information. The assistant modules can only be quote by the
elements of the required modules, and cannot be used separately, See Figure 2.

C Datasetdescriptioninfo R

C Dataqualityinfo O

C Datasetdistributioninfo O C A
Rangeinfo
C Datasetmetadata  R
C Metadatareferenceinfo R C Contactinfo A

C Servicesreferenceinfo O

C Structuredescriptioninfo O

Fig. 2. The structure of the agriculture information resources dataset core metadata (
 composite
module,  required module,  optional module,  assistant module, the same hereinafter)

All the elements in the standard has 9 attributes, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. The attributes of the elements of agriculture information resources dataset core metadata

Name of attribute Description

Chinese name Chinese name of the element
English name English name of the element
Identification The unique identification of the element, string.
Definition The specifications description of the meaning of the element.
Type The type of the element, the available types include: composite(the element contains
sub elements),integer, float, text, date, time, datetime etc.
Range The allowed range of the value of the element

Optional The element is required or optional
Maximun appearance The maximum appearance of the element, such as 1 (only once) N (unlimited times) etc.
Note Supplementary specifications of the element

5 Agriculture Information Resources Services Metadata

The agriculture information resources services metadata defines specific services

metadata specification. For a specific service, the metadata specification is relative
fixed, so we can find a model to define any services. Figure 3 shows the universal
model of agriculture information resources services metadata.
The universal model includes 5 elements: service type, service name, service URI,
service description and parameters, the parameters can be one or more, each parameter
has parameter name and parameter value.
60 Y. Cui et al.

Servicetype O

Servicename R

ServiceURI R

C Services R
Servicedescription  O

Parametername R
C Parameters R
1
Parametervalue R

Fig. 3. The universal agriculture information resources services metadata model

For example, the dataset connection service metadata is like the following (see
Figure 4 ).

NameofDatasetconnectionservice R

DescriptionofDatasetconnectionservice O

Databasesystem R

Versionofdatabasesystem R

C Datasetconnectionservice R IPaddressofdatabasehost R

Accessportofdatabase R

Nameofdatabase R

Usernametoaccessdatabase R

Passwordtoaccessdatabase R

Fig. 4. The example of dataset connection service metadata

A Metadata Based Agricultural Universal Scientific and Technical Information Fusion 61

From the example, we can see that all the information needed to connect to a
database are contained in the metadata values. That is, an application can connect to the
database automatically with these information, once an agriculture database is indexed
with agriculture information resources dataset connection service metadata, the
application can connect to the database and get results from database, the whole process
will be finished automatically.

6 Conclusion

Information fusion is very important for agriculture scientific and technical information
services, but its very difficult to find an effective mechanism to implement real
agriculture information fusion. Metadata provides available means to integrate
different type, different format information resources from different sources, and all the
information sources can be integrated into one logical entirety. Based on the integrated
information resources, different application can be developed, such as mobile
communication based mobile Information service, voice text converter based voice
information service, smart Q & A application etc., so the universal information services
can be implemented, thus, the quality of agriculture information services will be
promoted greatly.

Acknowledgement

The research was supported by the special project from ministry of agriculture of the
peoples republic of China, named study of agriculture informatization standards system
and special fund of basic commonweal research institute project of information institute
of CAAS, and National 11th five-year technology based plan topic named study of
Agricultural product quantity Safety Data obtained standards (2009BADA9B02).

References

[1] Zheng, H., Tan, C.: The Integration and sharing of Agricultural Information Resources in
network environment. Journal of Anhui Agriculture Science 36(13), 56655668 (2008)
[2] Xiao, L., Chen, L.: Chinese Metadata Standard Framework and Its Applications. Journal of
Academic Libraries 19(5), 2935 (2001)
[3] Jenning, M., Marco, D.: Universal Meta Data Models. Wiley Publishing, Inc., Chichester
(2004)
[4] Qian, P., Su, X., Cui, Y.: Study on agricultural scientific and technical information core
metadata. Agriculture Network Information (2), 1821 (2006)
 A Method to Calibrate the Electromagnetic Tracking
Instrument When Measuring Branches of Fruit Trees

Ding-Feng Wu, Jian Wang, Guo-Min Zhou, and Li-Bo Liu

Agricultural information institute of CAAS, Beijing 100081, China

wonderful_webstudio@hotmail.com

Abstract. To reduce the effect from instrument error when getting characteristic
parameters of branches of fruit trees by the electromagnetic tracking instrument,
a calibration method was sounded based on a discussion of the instrument error
of electromagnetic tracking instrument. Finally, the method was tested in an
experiment. By comparing the data of the experiment and the standard data
which was got by slide caliper, we proved that the method is effective in in-
creasing the accuracy of measurement.

Keywords: Fastrak; Instrument error; Calibration.

1 Introduction
China is the biggest producer of fruits in the world. In many parts of this country, the
fruit industry has become the pillar industry. based on the measurement of fruit tree
structure, the research of the connection between the structure and the output, the utility
rate of luminous energy and the anti-disease ability of a fruit tree is an important im-
petus of developing of punning skill and breeding technique of fruit trees [4].
Electromagnetic tracking instrument is a kind of digital measuring tools based on
electromagnetism [3]. It is an effective tool of getting structure data of fruit trees be-
cause it is not only an easy-to-use, extremely accurate and broad action sphere device
but also a powerful survey tool which can track the space track and calculate the in-
clination angle of stylus [2].
The electromagnetic tracking instrument is vulnerable to external magnetic effects.
It will fall in complicated electromagnetic environment [1]. Besides, after a long time
working, the status of equipment will be different from the initial status and the accu-
racy of the device will reduce. When measuring branches of fruit trees, a high degree of
accuracy is required, so the electromagnetic tracking instrument must be calibrated
before working [4]. In this paper, a calibration method is put forward.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Device

Fastrak is an advanced electromagnetic tracking instrument [1]. It was used as the

measuring device in the experiment.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 6267, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 A Method to Calibrate the Electromagnetic Tracking Instrument 63

Assume the error of the measuring instrument to be calibrated is and the error of
the standard measuring device is . Then in the course of the instrument calibration,
we must ensure that is at a lower order of magnitude than , otherwise the calibration
may increase the error because the error of standard device affects the result. As we
known, the Fastrak electromagnetic tracking device can working with accuracy of
0.8mm [1], which means the normal rulers can not provide a standard Reference Data,
so we use a slide caliper with the precision of 0.05mm as the standard measuring device
in the experiment.

2.2 Analysis of Error

Because of the effects of devices and experiment environment, the measurement result
of physical amount is definitely different with the real value, the difference is called
measurement error, the part which caused by the imperfect instrument structure and the
external environment is named instrument error.
When Fastrak is working, following causes may bring instrument error:
1. External magnetic effects
2. Deviation of origin of coordinate
3. Instrument mechanical wear and decline of circuit state

2.3 Error under the Magnetic Effects

In the electromagnetic environment, eight space points were measured by Fastrak

electromagnetic tracking instrument, every point was measured ten times. The result
was compared with the standard data got by slide caliper. Error of one points ten times
measurement is shown in Figure 1.

100

50

0 Exp No
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
-50

-100

Fig. 1. Randomness of electromagnetic tracking instruments error in electromagnetic

environment

As shown in Figure 1, in electromagnetic environment, Fastraks error is random

and irregular. So the error brought by external magnetic effects is hard to reduce by
calibration, the calibration should be conducted without the effect of external
magnetic.
64 D.-F. Wu et al.

2.4 Calibration Method

Assume the initial space coordinates of origin are (x, y, z), after the deviation, the
coordinates are changed to (x, y, z), the amounts of deviation are x, y and z, so
x= x - x, y= y - y, z= z z. When a space point is measured by the measuring
device, assume the coordinates of the point got by measuring device are (X, Y, Z), then
the real coordinates are (X-x, Y-y, Z-z). As we known, x, y and z are
constants, so we just need to use the above method to n space points to get their xi,

yi, zi (i [1,n]), x, y and z can be calculated by following formulas:
n

x
i 1
i
(1)
x=
n
n

y
i 1
i
(2)
y=
n
n

z
i 1
i
(3)
z=
n
The other part of instrument error can be parted into two parts: one has the relationship
with the distance between the space point and the transmitter of Fastrak, the other one is
a constant. Assume they are1 and 2. 2 is a constant, so it can be reduced by the same
method as the method reducing the error brought by origin deviation. Assume the
distance between the space point and the transmitter of Fastrak is L, then 1=f (L). In
theory, when L is 0, f(L) is going to be 0, but in actual use of Fastrak, as shown in

40

30

20 errormm

10

0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 6 9 2 5 8 1 4 7 0 3 6 9 2 5
1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 4 4

Fig. 2. Relationship between error and distance between space point and transmitter
 A Method to Calibrate the Electromagnetic Tracking Instrument 65

Figure 2, when L was enough small, the time of signal transmitting was too short to be
accurately measured by the device, as a result, it brought in an un-negligible error, so
the calibration can only reduce the constant error.
The calibration method is shown in Figure 3.

Fig. 3. Flow chart of Calibration method

2.5 Experiment

We got one space point in each quadrant of the eight quadrants conformed by the
Spatial three dimensional coordinate axis and one space point on each axis, so we had
eleven points which were measured in the experiment. Those points were measured by
Fastrak electromagnetic tracking instrument. The result of the measurement was
processed by the above calibration method. At the end of the experiment, we compared
the result with the standard data got by slide caliper.
66 D.-F. Wu et al.

3 Result and Analysis

The experiment result is shown in Figure 4, Figure 5 and Figure 6.

2
Error befor
calibration
0
Error after
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
calibration
-2

-4

Fig. 4. The compare of the error before and after the calibration (the X axis)

4
3
2 Error befor
1 calibration
0 Error after
-1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 calibration
-2
-3

Fig. 5. The compare of the error before and after the calibration (the Y axis)

4
3
2 Error befor
1 calibration
0 Error after
-1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 calibration
-2
-3

Fig. 6. The compare of the error before and after the calibration (the Z axis)

It is clear that the errors after the calibration were less than the errors before the
calibration. It proved that the method does work.

4 Conclusion and Discussion

Based on the analysis of causes and characters of the error of the electromagnetic
tracking instrument, a calibration method was given, and then an experiment proved the
availability of the method. The method can improve the accuracy when measuring
branches of fruit trees by the electromagnetic tracking instrument.
 A Method to Calibrate the Electromagnetic Tracking Instrument 67

References

1. Polhemus: 3Space Fastrak Users Manual (2000)

2. Ivanov, N., Boissard, P., Chapron, M., Valery, P.: Estimation of the Height and Angles of
Orientation of the Upper Leaves in the Maize Canopy Using Sterovision. Agrononie (1994)
3. Danjon, F., Sinoquet, H., Godin, C., et al.: Characterisation of structural tree root architec-
ture using 3D digitising and AMAP mod software. Plant and soil (1999)
4. Thanisawanyangkura, S., Sinoquet, H., River, P., et al.: Leaf orientation and sunlit leaf area
distribution in cotton. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology (1997)
 A Method of Deduplication for Data Remote Backup

Jingyu Liu1,2, Yu-an Tan1, Yuanzhang Li1, Xuelan Zhang1, and Zexiang Zhou3
1
School of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology,
Beijing, 100081, P.R. China
2
School of Computer Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Technology,
Tianjin, 300010, P.R. China
3
Toyou Feiji Electronics CO., LTD, Beijing, 100081, P.R. China
Liujy01@gmail.com, victortan@yeah.net

Abstract. The paper describes the Remote Data Disaster Recovery System us-
ing Hash to identify and avoid sending duplicate data blocks between the Pri-
mary Node and the Secondary Node, thereby, to reduce the data replication
network bandwidth, decrease overhead and improve network efficiency. On
both nodes, some extra storage spaces (the Hash Repositories) besides data
disks are used to record the Hash for each data block on data disks. We extend
the data replication protocol between the Primary Node and the Secondary
Node. When the data, whose Hash exists in the Hash Repository, is duplication,
the block address is transferred instead of the data, and that reduces network
bandwidth requirement, saves synchronization time, and improves network
efficiency.

Keywords: Disaster Recovery, Deduplication, Hash, Duplicate Data.

1 Introduction
Today, the ever-growing volume and value of digital information have raised a criti-
cal and mounting demand for long-term data protection through large-scale and high-
performance backup and archiving systems. The amount of data requiring protection
continues to grow at approximately 60% per year[1]. The massive storage require-
ment for data protection has presented a serious problem for data centers. Typically,
data centers perform weekly full backups for weeks to months. Local hardware repli-
cation techniques can mask a significant number of failures and increase data avail-
ability. For example, RAID can protect against single disk-failure. Furthermore, cer-
tain raid levels even survive multiple simultaneous failure[2,3,4]. However, local
hardware replication techniques are inadequate for extensive failures or disasters,
which may be caused by environmental hazards (power outage, earthquake, and fire),
malicious acts or operator errors. To ensure continuous operation even in the presence
of such failures, the secondary node (a backup copy of the primary node) is often
maintained up-to-date at a remote geographical location and administered separately.
When disaster strikes at the primary node, the secondary node takes over transaction
processing. The geographic separation of the two copies reduces the likelihood of the
backup also being affected by the disaster. Disaster Recovery is such technique.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 68 75, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 A Method of Deduplication for Data Remote Backup 69

Data Disaster Recovery is an important measurement to ensure the integrity and

availability of computer systems. With the remote replication technology, an offsite
independent backup for the local data is stored via the network[5]. When the local
node is damaged, the data can be recovered from a remote system immediately[4,6].
At first, all data blocks on the disk of the local source server (the Primary Node)
are duplicated to the remote target server (the Secondary Node) to complete the initial
data synchronization. From then on, the data in the Primary Node changed is dupli-
cated to the Secondary Node synchronously or asynchronously via the network[7]. If
the data is transferred offsite over a wide area network, the network bandwidth re-
quirement can be enormous[8].
The Primary Node and the Secondary Node are usually deployed separately in two
buildings that one is very far apart from the other, or even two cities. There are two
ways to transfer the data packet between the nodes, one is then common IP network,
the other is the Fibre Channel[9]. Because the private network is expensive, data rep-
lication between the Primary Node and the Secondary Node usually uses the common
IP network[10]. When the updates are frequent, and the amount of data gets massive,
the performance degrades and the backup data maybe lost because of the low network
bandwidth and the latency.
Some data blocks on the disk are duplication, for example, a file on disk may have
multiple copies or different versions, and the great majority is same[11,12]. In the data
disaster recovery system, all the data blocks of the file need to be transferred to the
Secondary Node when the Primary Node creates a duplicate of the file or updates it.
However, the Secondary Node already contains most sections of the data blocks, and
the data blocks transferred through the network is duplication of the section of the
Secondary Node[13,14,15].
The paper describes the Remote Data Disaster Recovery System using Hash to
identify and reduce the amount of data transmitted over the network, and at the same
time, the technique assures the reliability and availability of the data, and reduces
network bandwidth requirement.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the architecture
of Disaster Recovery System we used, highlighting the features important for perform-
ance. Section 3 discusses implementation of the deduplication method. Section 4 dis-
cussed the design and performance evaluation of the solution. Section 5 summarizes
and describes future work.

2 Architecture
The existing Disaster Recovery System duplicates the data between the Primary Node
and the Secondary Node to maintain data consistency of the two nodes through the IP
network. An extra storage space is used as a Hash Repository to record the Hash of
each data block on the disk. The Hash Repositories of the Primary Node and the Sec-
ondary Node are keep consistency, and both of them update synchronously with the
data blocks on the disks, as shown in Fig. 1. Generally, when the Primary Node re-
ceives the write request, it writes through the local disk immediately and sends the
data packets to the Secondary Node. The Secondary node receives the data packets
and writes through the disk. After it completes the event, it sends back ACK to the
Primary Node, then the event is completed, as shown in Fig. 2[10].
70 J. Liu et al.

the Primary Node the Secondary Node the Primary the Secondary
File System File System
network
Replication IP network Replication
Driver Driver Write data packet

time
Request
Disk Driver Disk Driver

write

write
ACK
Hash Lib Hash Lib

Data Disk Data Disk

Fig. 1. System Architecture Fig. 2. Write Simultaneously

Typically, the size of the data block is 4KB (4096 Bytes), and the Hash is 16 Bytes
(128 bits) that is calculated according to MD5. The Hash Repository storages the
Hash of each data block in sequence. Each data block takes 16 Bytes, 16/4096=1/256,
so the storage space that Hash Repository takes is 1/256 of the storage space that data
blocks take.
The architecture of the Hash Repository is shown in Fig. 3.

Block0 H0
Block1 H1
Block2 H2
Block3 H3
. .
. .
. .
Blockm Hm
. .
. .
. .

Fig. 3. Hash Repository

After the Primary Node receives write request to a data block (the Destination
Block), it writes the data to the Destination Block, and calculates the Hash of data
block to match with the Hash Repository.
If they do not match, the Primary Node transfer the data block to the Secondary
Node and the Secondary Node writes it to the disk.
On the other hand, if they match, it means that the disk of the Primary Node has
the same data. This block (the Source Block) is duplication data. It has been delivered
to the Secondary Node during the previous initialization or data replication, and it also
means that the Secondary Nodes disk already contains data of the source block. In
this case, the Primary Node needs to transfer the Source Block Address and the Desti-
nation Block Address to the Secondary Node Only. Then, the Secondary Node reads
 A Method of Deduplication for Data Remote Backup 71

the data from the Source Block Address of its local disk and writes it to the Source
Block Address.
When the transmission succeeds, both the Primary Node and the Secondary Node
update their Hash Repositories.

3 Implementation
The Primary Node receives a write request to write the data A to the destination block
PD_B. Correspondingly, the data A should also be written to the destination block
SD_B(PD_B=SD_B) of the Secondary Node, as shown in Fig. 4. The Primary Node
does as follows: 1) the Primary Node writes data A to the destination block PD_B; 2)
calculates the Hash of the data A; 3) matches the Hash Repository; if it matches with the
value in SH_A in the Hash Repository where the Hash of the data block PD_A is
placed, it means that the date in PD_A is the same as data A. it is the duplication data.
Similarly, the duplication data exists in the Secondary Node also. We suppose that the
address is SD_A(SD_A=PD_A). Therefore, when the two nodes synchronize, the data
A need not to be transferred. 4) only transfers the source address (PD_A) and the desti-
nation address (PD_B) to the Secondary Node; 5) the Secondary Node gets the network
package and extracts the addresses from it; 6) reads the data from the source address; 7)
writes the data to the destination address; lastly, 8) updates the Hash Repository.

the Primary Node the Secondary Node

Data Disk Data Disk
. .
. .
. .
Hash Lib
PD_A SDB Memory Buffer Hash Lib SD_A SDB
. Memory Buffer
. . .
. Data A .
. . . . Data A
PH_A H(PD_A) . SH_A H(SD_A) .
. .
. PD_B DDB . SD_B DDB
. .
PH_B . SH_B .
. .
.
. .
.
. . . .
SDB: the Source Data block DDB: the Destination Data block

Fig. 4. Example of Replication

For example: in the existing Disaster Recovery Systems, the file F which size is 8MB
(8192KB) is replicated from the A to B. In the 64-bit addressing file system, each
data block size is 4KB. The address of each block consists of 8 Bytes (64bit) compo-
nent, so the file F contains a total of 8192KB/4KB = 2048 data blocks. A total amount
of data of synchronization between the Primary Node and the Secondary Node is
all the data blocks and their destination addresses, 2048(4KB+8B) = 8208KB. With
the method this paper provides, only the source address, the destination address
and the identification information (the size is 1B/block) are transferred because the
file F already exists in the Secondary Node. A total amount of data to be
72 J. Liu et al.

transferred is 2048(8B2+1B)=34KB, so the data to be transferred is

34KB/8208KB1/2410.415% of the former, and that significantly reduces the net-
work bandwidth requirement for data transmission overhead.
When the Primary Node is malfunction, the Secondary Node can start the remote
service system to take over the Primary Node service. Before the Primary Node re-
stored, the Secondary Nodes change is written to the disk and the Hash Repository
updates at the same time, but this update cannot be synchronized to the Primary Node
until it restores. Similarly, When the Secondary Node is malfunction, the Primary
Nodes update cannot be synchronized to the Secondary Node. Date resynchronize-
tion must be performed after the Secondary Node is restored.

ID=0 DBA Data

a
ID=1 DBA SBA

b
DBA: the Destination Block Address
SBA: the Source Block Address

Fig. 5. Network Package Architecture

Comparing Hash Repositories of the two nodes, we can get the collection of the
changed data. The normal node sends these data blocks to the node which used to be
malfunction to maintain the consistency between two nodes. During the transfer proc-
ess, we can use the deduplication technology also.
Each data block size is 4KB, and the Hash size is 16 Bytes, so the Hash Repository
size is 1/256 of the data disk size.
The Address of data blocks Hash in the Hash Repository can be calculated with
the following formula:
Hash Address=Block Address16
Similarly, find the Address of Hash in the Hash Repository, the block address can be
calculated with the following formula:
Block Address= Hash Address/16
When the Primary Node receives write request, it does as follows:
A. For the Primary Node
1) Write the data to the disk.
2) For all data block needed to be written, perform the following steps 3) to 5).
3) Calculate the Hash of each data block.
4) Match the Hash in the Hash Repository.
If it does not match, the Primary Node constructs the network packet, the
structure is shown in Fig. 5(a), and transfers it to the Secondary Node. The
ID in the package is 0 which means the package includes data and the
destination address.
 A Method of Deduplication for Data Remote Backup 73

If it matches, the Primary Node calculates the source address with the formula
above, constructs the network package, the structure shown as Fig. 5(b), and
transfers it to the Secondary Node. The ID in the package is 1 which
means the package includes the source address and the destination address.
5) Update the Hash Repository.
B. For the Secondary Node
1) Receive the network packet from the Primary Node.
2) According to the ID in the network, implement as follows:
if ID=0, extract the destination block address and the data block from the net-
work package, and write them to the data disk.
if ID=1, extract both the destination block address and the source block ad-
dress from the network package. Read the source data block from the source
block address, and write them to the destination block address.
3) Calculate the Hash of data blocks.
4) Update the Hash of the destination data block in the Hash Repository.

4 Evaluation

To evaluate the performance of our solution, we build an experimental system un-

der Linux and compare it with the existing Disaster Recovery System of our lab. To
compare fairly, we try our best to create similar experiment environment. In the
experiment, there are two machines with the same configurations. We divided the
four computers into two groups. One Group is for the existing Disaster Recovery
system, the other is for the system with our solution. Each group has two com-
puters. One is the Primary Node and the other is the Secondary Node. The ma-
chines CPU is Pentium(R) Dual-Core. We deployed 2.0GB RAM in the machine.
The disk of the machine is ST3500418AS (500GB) and NIC is Atheros AR8132.
The OS we used is Fedora 10 (Linux Kernel 2.6.27). The two nodes are connected
with Fast Ethernet.
In the experiment, we designed two projects: one is that the transmitted data is di-
vided into blocks which sizes are 4KB, the other is that the transmitted data is divide
into blocks which sizes are 2KB. In these experiments, we employ a software packet
to simulate to normal operation and record the amount of transmitted data.
The results of the experiment are shown in Fig 6. The figure shows that amount of
transmitted in the new system is only 22.32% maximum and 12.31% minimum of the
former system while divided the date into 4K blocks and it is reach approximately
19% over a period of time (about 20 days). It is only 20.15% maximum and 12.30%
minimum of the former system while divided the date into 2K blocks, and it is reach
approximately 15% over a period of time. That shows the smaller size of the block
can get the higher performance of deduplication. However, there is a question: the
smaller size of the block means the greater workload of CPU. It lowered systems
performance.
74 J. Liu et al.



'HGXSOLFDWLRQ5DWH









       

7LPH'D\
.%%ORFNV .%%ORFNV

Fig. 6. the Rate of Deduplication

5 Conclusion
According to the data replication protocol which is extended between the Primary
Node and the Secondary Node, When the Primary Node receives a write request to
the Destination Block, the Primary Node identifies if it is the duplicate data block
according to the Hash. While the data block to be written is the duplication data
block, it will not be the data block to be transferred to the Secondary Node but the
block addresses which includes the Source Block Address and the Destination Block
Address. The Secondary Node reads the data from the Source Block address of its
local disk and writes to the Destination Block Address. Therefore, when the data is
duplication, the Block address is transferred instead of the data block, and that re-
duces network bandwidth requirement, saves synchronization time, and improves
network efficiency.
To judge the duplication data makes the CPUs workload increased and this may
make the CPU the bottleneck of the system. Future work includes designing a new
method to reduce the CPUs workload to improve the systems performance.

References
1. Yang, T., Jiang, H., Feng, D., et al.: DEBAR: A Scalable High-Performance De-
duplication Storage System for Backup and Archiving. CSE Technical Reports, 58 (2009)
2. Garcia-Molina, H., Halim, H., King, R.P., Polyzois, C.A.: Management of a remote
backup copy for disaster recovery. ACM Transactions on Database Systems 16, 338368
(1991)
3. Polyzois, C.A., Molina, H.G.: Evaluation of remote backup algorithms for transaction-
processing systems. ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) 19(3), 423449
(1994)
4. Ellenberg, L.: DRBD 8.0.x and beyond Shared-Disk semantics on a Shared-Nothing Clus-
ter (2007), http://www.drbd.org
5. Ao, L., Shu, J., Li, M.: Data Deduplication Techniques. Journal of Software 21(5), 916
929 (2010)
6. Reisner, P.: DRBDDistributed Replicated Block Device (August 2002),
http://www.drbd.org
 A Method of Deduplication for Data Remote Backup 75

7. Patterson, R.H., Manley, S., Federwisch, M., et al.: SnapMirror: file-system-based asyn-
chronous mirroring for disaster recovery. USENIX Association (2002)
8. Zhu, B., Li, K., Patterson, H.: Avoiding the disk bottleneck in the Data Domain deduplica-
tion file system. In: Proceeding of the 6th USENIX Conference File and Storage Tech-
nologies, California, USA, February 2008, pp. 114 (2008)
9. Tan, Y.A., Jin, J., Cao, Y.D., et al.: A high-throughput fibre channel data communication
service. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society, Dalian, China
(2005)
10. Reisner, P., Ellenberg, L.: Drbd v8replicated storage with shared disk semantics (2005),
http://www.drbd.org
11. Bobbarjung, D.R., Jagannathan, S., Dubnicki, C.: Improving duplicate elimination in stor-
age systems. ACM Transactions on Storage (TOS) 2, 424448 (2006)
12. Barreto, J., Ferreira, P.: Efficient locally trackable deduplication in replicated systems. In:
Bacon, J.M., Cooper, B.F. (eds.) Middleware 2009. LNCS, vol. 5896, pp. 103122.
Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
13. Aref, W.G., Samet, H.: Hashing by proximity to process duplicates in spatial databases.
Presented at Information and Knowledge Management. Gaithersburg, Maryland, United
States (1994)
14. Eltabakh, M.Y., Ouzzani, M., Aref, W.G.: Duplicate Elimination in Space-partitioning
Tree Indexes. Presented at Scientific and Statistical Database Management (2007)
15. You, L.L., Pollack, K.T., Long, D.D.E.: Deep Store: An Archival Storage System Archi-
tecture. In: Proc. Of the 21st Conf. on Data Engineering (ICDE 2005), pp. 804815. IEEE
Computer Society Press, Washington (2005)
 A Localization Algorithm for Sparse-Anchored WSN
in Agriculture

Chunjiang Zhao, Shufeng Wang, Kaiyi Wang, Zhongqiang Liu,

Feng Yang, and Xiandi Zhang

Beijing Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture,

Beijing, China, 100097
{Zhaocj,Wangsf,Wangky,Liuzq,Yangf,Zhangxd}@nercita.org.cn

Abstract. The location information is very crucial for the sensing data in mod-
ern agriculture. However, positioning errors and sparse anchors are two key
problems that should first be solved for the localization of the sensor nodes. We
proposed a novel algorithm to tackle with these challenges. When the system of
adjacent anchor distance equations is ill, a minimized-stress search algorithm
(MSS) can decrease positioning error greatly. A collaborative sparse-anchored
scheme (CSA) has an excellent positioning effect on low density of anchor,
specifically on marginal sensor nodes. Our experimental result verified validity
and accuracy of the algorithm. It improved feasibility and cost of WSN posi-
tioning technique, significantly.

Keywords: WSN, localization, Sparse anchors, Multi-hop cooperation.

1 Introduction
Recent advances in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology, wireless
communications, and digital electronics have enabled the development of low-cost,
low-power, multifunctional sensor nodes that are small in size and communicate in
short distances [1]. These sensor nodes with sensing, data processing, and wireless
communicating capabilities can be self-organized together in ad-hoc mode and be
deployed in pre-determined or random fashion in inaccessible terrains or disaster
relief operations. Therefore there are a wide range of applications for wireless sensor
networks (WSN): military, infrastructure security, environment and habitat monitor-
ing, industrial sensing, traffic control, etc [2]. Especially, WSN are applied to varied
fields in agriculture to improve the agricultural informatization in recent years [3].
In the last decade, WSN have been increasingly applied in modern agriculture [4].
Sensor nodes can be used for monitoring a wide variety of agricultural parameters that
include the following phenomena: temperature, humidity, moisture, lightning condi-
tion, soil makeup, livestock ID, and so on [5]. However, the sensing data is not mean-
ingful without the company of the sensing location. Naturally, the localization of
WSN nodes is very crucial for sensing data usage. Furthermore, accurate location
might also be useful for routing and coordination purposes in large scale WSN.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is the most well known location service in
use nowadays. The approach taken by GPS, however, is unsuitable for the low-cost,

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 76 86, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 A Localization Algorithm for Sparse-Anchored WSN in Agriculture 77

low -power large scale sensor networks nodes in agriculture because of the following
reasons: cost, power consumption, inaccessibility, imprecision, size [6].
It is necessary to develop an alternative inexpensive, more applicable localization
approach. This paper will present the novel localization algorithm in sparse-anchored
WSN.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: The next section gives a brief expla-
nation of theoretical background. Section 3 is our proposed algorithm of localization
system. Section 4 describes the resolution of the sparse-anchored problem. Section 5
is experimental results and analysis. Finally, section 6 concludes the paper.

2 Theoretical Background
Triangulation, scene analysis, and proximity are the three principal techniques for
location sensing [7]. Typically, lateration is the most popular location method that
employs triangulation technique. Lateration computes the position of an unknown node
by measuring its distance from multiple reference positions. Calculating an object's
position in two dimensions requires distance measurements from 3 non-collinear an-
chors as shown in Figure 1. In 3 dimensions, distance measurements from 4 non-
coplanar anchors are required. But, these circles can not intersect at the same point
sometime for the error of distance measuring.

Fig. 1. Lateration localization scheme

Fig. 2. Multilateration examples

78 C. Zhao et al.

The most classic distributed lateration algorithm is AH-Los algorithm proposed by

Andreas Savvides, et al. This algorithm defined three operational primitives: atomic
multilateration, collaborative multilateration and iterative multilateration.
If an unknown node have three or more neighboring anchors and have measured
the distance to neighboring anchors, atomic multilateration can be deployed to deter-
mine the position of unknown node. Figure 2(a) illustrates a topology for which
atomic multilateration can be applied.
The error of estimated position can be expressed as the difference between the
measured distance di and the estimated Euclidean distance (Equation 1). The x and y
are the estimated coordinates for the unknown node. According to the minimal mean
square estimate (MMSE) [8], i.e. Equation 2, the optimal solution of x and y can be
obtained.

f (x, y) = d (x x ) 2 + (y y ) 2 (1)
i i i i
n
min(F( x, y)) = min f i (x, y) 2 (2)
i =1

If a node has three or more neighboring anchors, an over-determined system with a

unique solution for the position of unknown node can be yielded. By setting fi(x,y)=0,
squaring and rearranging terms, equation 1 became equation 3.
x 2 + y 2 2x i x 2y i y = d i2 ( x i2 + y i2 ) (3)

If unknown node has k neighboring anchors, k equations like equation 3 can be

achieved. Then, we can eliminate the x 2 + y 2 terms by subtracting the kth equation
from the rest, depicted as equation 4.

2(x k - x i )x + 2(y k - y i )y = d i2 - d 2k ( x i2 + yi2 ) + ( x 2k + y 2k ) (4)

This system of equations has the form of AX = b and can be solved using the matrix
solution for MMSE.
Collaborative multilateration can be deployed in the situation where the number of
1-hop neighboring anchors is less than 3, but multi-hop anchors can provide adequate
information to locate the position of the unknown node. Figure 2(b) illustrates a basic
example. The unknown node 1 has two 1-hop anchors and two 2-hop anchors through
the unknown node 2. We can build the system of linear equations like equation 4 and
then obtain the solution of equations using MMSE.
When an unknown node achieved its position using atomic multilateration or col-
laborative multilateration, it can inform its neighboring unknown nodes that it has
become an anchor. If the informed unknown node satisfies the conditions of atomic
multilateration or collaborative multilateration, it can estimate itself position. This
process can be iterative until the positions of all the nodes that can have three or more
anchors are estimated eventually. This is iterative multilateration principle.
In this paper, we proposed novel algorithms to improve position error and position
ratio under sparse-anchored condition.
 A Localization Algorithm for Sparse-Anchored WSN in Agriculture 79

3 Localization Algorithm

AH-Los algorithm eliminates the x 2 + y 2 term in equation 3 by subtracting the kth

equation from the rest. Essentially, the solution of system is the intersection of com-
mon chord equations between ith circle and kth circle. As depicted in figure 3, equa-
tions 5 represent 3 circles with each anchor position as center and the distance from
the unknown to the anchor as radius. The first equation subtracted from the second
equation gives common chord line L1 and The first equation subtracted from the third
equation gives common chord line L2. The intersection of line L1 and the line L2 is
the estimated position of the unknown node.
x 2 + y 2 2x 1 x 2y1 y = d12 ( x12 + y12 )
x 2 + y 2 2x 2 x 2y 2 y = d 22 (x 22 + y 22 ) (5)

x + y 2x 3 x 2y 3 y = d ( x + y )
2 2 2
3
2
3
2
3

Fig. 3. The intesection of L1 and L2 is the estimated position

Anchor Real position Estimated position

Fig. 4. Let different kth as the subtrahend, have different error

80 C. Zhao et al.

When this common chord lines is parallel to each other, only small error of esti-
mated anchor position can make a very large error of the intersection position. As
demonstrated in figure 4, three anchors upside are close to each other and a anchor
downside is far from the other anchors, the solution of equations has higher error. Let
different anchor equation as the subtrahend, the solution have different error. The red
circle represents the real position of the unknown node. Four red asterisks denote four
neighboring anchors of the unknown node. Four blue triangles denote the estimated
position with different anchor as the subtrahend.
Our algorithm does not eliminate x 2 + y 2 term in equation 3. Setting z = x 2 + y2 , we
can get the system of equations as follows:
z 2x1x 2y1 y = d12 ( x 12 + y12 )
z 2x 2 x 2y 2 y = d 22 ( x 22 + y 22 ) (6)

z 2x i x 2y i y = d i2 ( x i2 + y i2 )
The system of equations has the form of AX =b where

1,2x 1 ,2y1

1,2x 2 ,2y 2
A= X = [z, x , y]
T
......

1,2x i ,2y i

d12 x 12 y12
2
d 2 x 2 y 2
2 2
=
and b .
......

d i2 x i2 y i2

1
The solution can be solved by X = (A A ) A b . At the same time, using
T T

delta = z - x 2 y 2 as judge condition, we can judge if the system of equations is ill.

When the condition number of the equations is very large, the delta is also very large.
This means the position error is too large to locate the node. We proposed the mini-
mized-stress search localization algorithm (MSS) to tackle with this situation.
Before presenting the algorithm, we first make some definitions.
Definition 1. The distance between the current position of the unknown (x,y) and the
ith neighboring anchor (xi,yi) is dicur and the measured distance to ith neighboring

anchor is di .The stress from ith anchor is F i where

Fi = ((1 d i / d icur ) * ( x i x ), (1 d i / d icur ) * ( y i y )) (7)

As dicur,> di , the direction of Fi is pointed to the ith anchor from current position,
vice versa.
 A Localization Algorithm for Sparse-Anchored WSN in Agriculture 81

Definition 2. The resultant stress of the unknown, F , is composed of every compo-

nent stress Fi .

F = F 1 + F 2 + ... + F i
(8)
The process of the MSS algorithm is described as follows:
Step 1: when the system of equations 6 is ill, we first select two anchors which the
distance between them is the farthest and then compute the intersection of two anchor
circles which radius is the measured distance from anchor to unknown node.
Step 2: We select each of intersection as search original position and compute the

each component stress F i and then composed the resultant stress F by equation 7
and equation 8, respectively.

Step 3: Pulled by the resultant stress F , each estimated position move to new
position (xn,yn). Next, we judge if the new position have less distance error than the

old position As shown by equation 9, F x , F y ,Lstep denotes x axis component , y axis
component and the steplength for moving, respectively.

x n = x 0 + L step * F x
(9)
y n = y 0 + L step * F y
k
Xigma = (d icur d i ) 2
i =1

Step 4: If Xigma now < Xigma old , x 0 x n , y 0 y n , Otherwise

steplength steplength / 2 and repeat step 2 for several times.
Step 5: when estimated position cannot move on, we turn F 90 degrees clock-
wise or 90 degrees counter clockwise to test a new marching direction. If we find a
new direction, step 2 is repeated again. Otherwise the process is terminated. So we
estimated two possible final positions.
Step 6: We compare the two final distance residuals and then select the final posi-
tion with the smallest residual as the position of the unknown node.

Fig. 5. The example of MSS algorithm process

82 C. Zhao et al.

The MSS algorithm have overcome the defect of higher position error when the equa-
tions is ill-conditioned and conquered the drawback of one starting point that is ease
to get in the local minimum. A sample process of MSS algorithm is demonstrated in
the figure 5.

4 Sparse-Anchored Localization Algorithm

After iterative multilateration localization is repeated, The position of the unknown

nodes that only have two anchors or one anchor eventually can not be determined We
proposed to utilize the collaboration of its one or two anchors to locate the position of
the unknown.
Under the condition of only two adjacent anchors, the unknown can estimate itself
position U or U, as shown in figure 6.

Rmax
Rmax

A3 A4

A1 A2

Unknown node Anchor

Fig. 6. Localization algorithm with only two 2-hop anchors

The unknown sent the two possible positions, U and U to its 1-hop anchors, i.e.
A1 and A2, and then the one-hop anchors pass the possible positions to the 2-hop an-
chors, i.e. A3.and A4. The two-hop anchors will judge if U or U is in its maximum
sensing range, Rmax. Once either of the two possible positions belongs to the maxi-
mum sensing range of A3 or A4 by computing distance, the unknown node is informed
that this position is excluded from the estimated position because A3 or A4 have not
been its 1-hop anchor. When each of U and U can not be excluded, their midpoint is
taken as the estimated position. This method can be deployed in the larger scale, such
as 3-hop scale or multi-hop scale.
Another case is where the unknown node only has a 1-hop anchor. The previous
algorithm will be helpless. We will resort to another method to locate the position
approximately.
 A Localization Algorithm for Sparse-Anchored WSN in Agriculture 83

I4

I3
Rmax

I5
I2
d

I1 I6

Unknown node Anchor Intersection point Estimated position

Fig. 7. The Localization algorithm with only one 1-hop anchor

As shown in figure 7, the unknown node has one 1-hop anchor and three 2-hop an-
chors. The circle with the distance d as radius has six intersection points with the
maximum sensing range of three 2-hop anchors, i.e. I1, I2, I3, I4, I5 and I6,. We can
compute the distances from the intersection points to three 2-hop anchors, respec-
tively. Once the distance for the intersection point is less than Rmax (the largest sens-
ing range), the intersection point is excluded. Finally, the intersection points, I1 and I6,
are left. So the estimated position is on the pink arc from I1 to I6. We can take the
midpoint of the arc or the midpoint of the line from I1 to I6 as the estimated position.
As this scheme has a larger error, the estimated position should not be taken as anchor
in the iterative process.

5 Experimental Results
To verify our proposed localization algorithm, we randomly generate a scenario with
200 nodes within a square field (100x100) in Matlab. These nodes are deployed ran-
domly in the field and can measure the distances to the adjacent nodes in the sensing
range R by RSSI or other ranged methods. The anchor ratio to all nodes is Aratio. To
simulate real ranged error, the true distances (d) are blurred with Gaussian noise, er.
So the measured distance have the distribution, d*(1+N(0, er)).
When the transmission range of the nodes(R), the range error(er) and anchor ratio
(Aratio) is set to 15, 5% and 10%, respectively, the topology is shown in figure 8. The
blue triangles represent the anchors, the red circles represent the unknown nodes, and
the azury lines represent the wireless connections between the nodes.
Figure 9 shows the positioning result of our MSS and CSA algorithms. The starting
point of the blue arrows represents the estimated position and the end point of the blue
arrows represents the real position. The longer the blue arrow is, the larger the posi-
tioning error is.
84 C. Zhao et al.

When there are approximate 9 connectivity degree and 10 percent anchor ratio,
AH-Los algorithm can achieve 90 percent position ratio and 6-7% position error
(about 20 cm) [9,10]. But under sparse-anchored conditions, there are higher position
error and lower position ratio.

Fig. 8. The topology with R=15, er=5% and Aratio=10%

Fig. 9. Final position estimation result

Under the same situation, our algorithms have a higher positioning ratio of 100%
and lower average positioning error of 2.45%.
Anchor density has a significant effect on the positioning ratio and error. Contrast
to the AH-Los algorithm, the positioning ratio was shown with various anchor density
 A Localization Algorithm for Sparse-Anchored WSN in Agriculture 85

in figure 10. As shown, when the percentage of anchors is low, our MS-CSAL algo-
rithm substantially increased the positioning ratio. These algorithms can not only
effectively decrease the number of anchors to lower the cost of WSN, but also im-
prove the localizing of the unknown node on the edge of the networks.

AH-Los algorithm our SM-CSAL algorithm

100
90
o 80
i
t
a
R 70
g
n
i 60
n
o
i
t 50
i
s
o 40
P
30
20
10
0
5 15 25 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Anchor Percentage

Fig. 10. Effect contrast between AH-Los and MSS-CSPL

6 Conclusion
We have proposed a novel MSS-CSA algorithm for WSN positioning in agriculture.
The minimized-stress algorithm improved the positioning precision greatly when the
system of multi-anchors positioning equations is ill. The collaborative sparse-anchored
localization algorithm has solved the positioning problem of anchor deficiency, special
for the unknown node on the edge of WSN in agricultural positioning. Our simulation
experiments have verified the effect of the algorithm in terms of positioning ratio and
positioning errors. Our future work will be concentrated on the Zigbee-based imple-
mentation and analysis of error propagation in agricultural positioning.

Acknowledgments
This work is supported by National 11th Five-year Plan for Science & Technology of
China under Grant no. 2009BADB6B02.

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 A New Method of Transductive SVM-Based Network
Intrusion Detection

Manfu Yan1 and Zhifang Liu2

1
Department of Mathematics, Tangshan Teachers College, Tangshan Hebei, China
3005@tstc.edu.cn
2
Network Technology Center, Tangshan Teachers College, Tangshan Hebei, China
lzf@tstc.edu.cn

Abstract. Based on the existing Transductive SVM and via introducing smooth
function P ( , ) to construct smooth cored unconstrained optimization prob-
lem, this article will build the optimization model accessible to degenerate solu-
tions to generate an improved transductive SVM, introduce simulated annealing
to degenerate the optimization problem, and apply such a Support Vector Clas-
sifier to generate a new method of network intrusion detection.

Keywords: optimization; unconstrained problem; transductive SVM; network

intrusion detection; simulated annealing.

1 Introduction
Network intrusion detection is a safe mechanism with dynamic monitoring, prevention
or resistance against network intrusion [1]. The network-intrusion detection system can
be used to discover and identify the behavior and attempt of intrusion in the system via
monitoring and analyzing the network flow and system audit records to give out an
alarm of intrusion in order to facilitate the administer to take effective measures to
mend the loopholes of the system and fill up the system [2].
Network intrusion detection is used to separate user behaviors normal data of from
its abnormal data, which essentially can be regarded as the classification. The data to
describe the behaviors of users is of multi-index as usual. Therefore, it can be expressed
with an n-dimensional vector. In this way, the network-intrusion detection problem can
be summarized as data group for normal or abnormal behavior of users, i.e. two kinds
of classification problems of n-dimensional vector, which can help create the detection
methods and system via the support vector classifier. But studies and practices indicate
that as to the network-intrusion detection problem, the methods and system built by the
use of ordinary SVM (e.g. C-SVM) are not desirable in the precision of detection. Thus,
we try to apply the transductive support vector classifier to create the detection methods
and introduce the simulated annealing method to degenerate the optimized model.

2 The Improvement of Transductive Support Vector Machine

Generally, for Support Vector Machine, it is set up by given trainingset
T = {( x1 , y1 ) ,L , ( xl , yl )} (1)

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 87 95, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
88 M. Yan and Z. Liu

Here, xi X = R n , yi Y = {1, 1} , i = 1,2,L , l . We normally call them Inductive Support

Vector Machine [3].
Vapnik has discussed a kind of sorting algorithm for Transductive Support Vector
Machine, it is different from Inductive Support Vector Machine. It provides a mutual
independent set, which follows joint distribution, besides the given trainingset T.
S = { x1* , x } ,
*
m (2)

Here x1* X = R n .
For TSVM, we want to find a optimized function f ( x, w0 ) from a particular function
set F = { f ( x, w )} , so that the risk

R ( w) =
1 m
m i =1
(
L yi* , f ( xi* , w) ) (3)

is minimized. Here w is a general parameter of the function, L ( y, f ( x, w) ) represents

the loss due to estimation of y by f ( x, w) , that is to say, here we interested in the
function value of f ( x, w0 ) on given fixed points xi* , not all the function values within
the field of definition.

2.1 Unconstraint Problem

Initially, the optimization of TSVM is [4]

l m
min 1
w + C i + C * *j
2
(4)
wH ,bR , y*R , , * 2 i =1 j =1

s.t. yi ( ( w xi ) + b ) 1 i , i = 1, , l , (5)

y*j ( ( w x ) + b ) 1 , j = 1, , m,
*
j
*
j (6)

i 0, i = 1, , l , (7)

*j 0, j = 1, , m, (8)
We would like to simplify initial problem (4) (8) in this section, it is reduced to un-
constraint problem.
Theorem. Consider the solution for (4) (8), it must satisfy
y *
j (( w x ) + b) 0
*
j (9)
for all x*j

Prove: Suppose the solution for the problem is ( w , b , , , y 1 , , y m )

* * *
if for some x *
j ,
( w x ) + b 0 , then y
*
j
*
= 1 Since when y = 1 , y *
*
j ( *
j )
( w x ) + b 0, 1 y
*
j
*
j ( (w x ) + b
*
j ) , as
(( w x ) + b ) < 1
j j

minimized objective function, it must satisfy = 0 or 0 = 1 y

* * * *
j j j j
 A New Method of Transductive SVM-Based Network Intrusion Detection 89

When y j = 1 , y*j ( ( w x*j ) + b ) 0, *j 1, which is large than then objective function

*

value when y*j = 1 .

Similarly, for some x*j , ( w x*j ) + b 0 , then y j = 1
*

* *
(
Namely, for all xj , y j ( w x j ) + b 0,
*
)
Based upon the theorem above, we can change the constraint (6) and (8) of problem
(4)(8) into
(
j = 1 (w x j ) + b + ,) j = 1,2, L, m (10)

However, for variable i , i = 1,L , l , we got

j = (1 y i ((w xi ) + b ))+ , i = 1,2, L , l (11)
Here, function ( ) is single variable function,
+

, 0;
( ) + = (12)
0, < 0
Base on this, we could convert problem (4) (8) into unconstraint optimization.
l m
1
w + C (1 yi (( w xi ) + b)) + + C * (1 ( w x*j ) + b ) +
2
min (13)
w,b 2 i =1 j =1

2.2 Smooth Unconstraint Problem

Since unconstraint problem(13) is not smooth it is not able to be solved by regular

optimization method. As a result, we think about modifying the second and third
part of objective function for problem (13), so that it becomes smooth, in order to
construct a smooth unconstraint problem that is similar to unsmooth and unconstraint
problem (13). Because of that, we introduce an approximate function for unsmooth
function () +
1
P ( , ) = + ln(1 + e ), (14)

Here, parameter >0, obviously the function above is smooth; we could prove it as
well. When , function P (, ) converges at () + such that the second part of
unconstraint optimization (13) is transformed into
l
C P (1 yi (( w xi ) + b), ). (15)
i =1

and the third part is transformed to

m
C * P(1 ( w x*j ) + b , ) (16)
j =1
90 M. Yan and Z. Liu

The unsmooth term is still inside (16), so we decide to use following function to
approximate smoothly.
1
P( , ) = + ln(1 + e 2 ) (17)

We could deduce some the following theorem by making use of the properties of
P (, ) :
Now, unconstraint problem (13) approximates optimization problem
l m
1 2
min w + C P(1 yi ((w xi ) + b), ) + C* P(1 P((w x*j ) + b, ), ). (18)
w,b 2 i =1 j =1

When , is large enough, the solution of smooth unconstraint problem (18) will most
approximate unsmooth unconstraint problem (13).

2.3 Smooth Unconstraint Problem with Kernel

If we take account of linear partition of input space, we could introduce a mapping from
input space X to Hilbert space H
X H
: (19)
x X = ( x)

and kernel function

K ( x, x) = ( ( x) ( x)), (20)

Apply l1 module w 1 on objective function of problem (4)---(8), we got optimization

problem
l m
min w + C + C * * (21)
w,b , , *
1 i j
i =1 j =1

s.t. yi (( w xi ) + b) 1 i , i = 1,L , l , (22)

y *j (( w x*j ) + b) 1 *j , j = 1,L, m, (23)

i 0, *j 0, i = 1,L, l , j = 1,L, m. (24)

We know that if , * is the solution of dual problem for problem(4) (8), then the

solution of initial problem(21) (24) to W could approximately represented as
l m l m
W = yi i Xi + y*j *j X *j = (i i )(xi ) + (*j *j )(x*j ). (25)
i=1 j =1 i =1 j =1

We could alter problem (21) (24) to following problem, by making use of above
expression
 A New Method of Transductive SVM-Based Network Intrusion Detection 91

l m l m
min
, , * , * ,b , , * , (
i =1
i + i ) + ( *j + *j ) + C i + C * *j
j =1 i =1 j =1
(26)

l m
yi ( ( k k ) K ( xk , xi ) + ( k* k* ) K ( xk* , xi ) + b) 1 i , i = 1,L , l , (27)
k =1 k =1

l m
y*j ( ( k k ) K ( xk , x*j ) + ( k* k* ) K ( xk* , x*j ) + b) 1 *j , i = 1,L , l , (28)
k =1 k =1

i 0, i = 1,L , l , (29)

*j 0, j = 1,L , m, (30)
l m
Here we use ( i + i ) + ( *j + *j ) to replace w 1 .
i =1 j =1

The method is similar to that of previous section we could transform problem

(26) (30) into smooth unconstraint optimization problem by introducing smooth
function
P(, ) and P ( , ) .
l m
min
, , * , * ,b , , * , (i =1
i + i ) + ( *j + *j )
j =1
l l m
+C P (1 yi ( ( k k ) K ( xk , xi ) + ( k* k* ) K ( xk* , xi ) + b ), ) (31)
i =1 k =1 k =1

m l m
+C * P(1 P( ( k k ) K ( xk , xi ) + ( k* k* ) K ( xk* , x*j ) + b), ), )
j =1 k =1 k =1

When , is large enough, above problem is similar to problem(26) (30)

consequently, we could create decision function after we got the optimum solution
* * *
( , , , , b , , , )of this problem.
l m
f ( x ) = sgn( k k ) K ( xk , x) + ( k* k* ) K ( xk* , x) + b), (32)
k =1 k =1

Additionally, using this decision function to decide the category of the points in test set
S.

2.4 Conclusion Improvement of TSVM

a) Assume known trainingset T = {( x1 , y1 ) ,L, ( x1 , y1 )} , here
xi X = R n , yi = {1,1} , i = 1,L, l ; known test set S = { x1* ,L , xm* } , here xi* X = R n ;
b) Choose suitable parameter C and C * , choose suitable kernel func-
tion K ( x, x ) ; construct and find the unconstraint problem (31), thus got optimum solu-
tion (,  , * ,  * , b) ;
c) Create decision function:
92 M. Yan and Z. Liu

l m
f ( x) = sgn( k k ) K ( xk , x) + (k* k* ) K ( xk* , x) + b)
k =1 k =1

Thereby, for any test point belongs to S, the decision function will provide the category
for it.

3 New Method on Network Intrusion Detection

As the objective function of problem 31 has a continuous gradient and hesse matrix, as
well as unconstrained, it can be solved by basic algorithm to unconstrained problem.
However its objective function is not convex function thus a number of local optimal
solutions may exist, and through the general unconstrained algorithm may not acquire
global optimal solution. In the following global optimal algorithm simulated an-
nealing algorithm will be introduced to solve problem (31), and the model will be
introduced to network intrusion detection.

3.1 Simulated Annealing Algorithm

First, we will introduce simulated annealing algorithm. Simulated annealing algorithm

is a kind of random search method known as Monte Carlo method, which allows the
objective function to have random changes in the increasing direction. Therefore,
simulated annealing algorithm can jump out of local minimum point. This algorithm
was proposed by Metropolis as early as 1953, originated from simulation to solid an-
nealing process. The annealing process starts at a certain high enough temperature, and
almost every random motion are acceptable under this temperature. Then the tem-
perature decreases slowly according to some cooling rule and tends to zero. Enough
time is needed for the system to reach a stable state at each temperature point, and
finally places in a state with lowest energy, to obtain a relative global optimal solution
to the optimization problem. In which, one solution xk to the optimization problem and
its target value f(xk) correspond to a solid microstate k and its energy Ek respectively.
The temperature T in the annealing process is a control parameter decreasing by the
algorithm process. The algorithm adopts Metropolis acceptance criteria. In each step of
the algorithm, a new candidate solution generates randomly. If the new solution de-
creases the objective function, it is acceptable; otherwise whether to accept it will be
decided in form of exponential probability. Probability P to accept the new solution is:
exp( f / T ) f > 0,
p= (33)
1 f 0.
In which, f is the variation of objective function caused by random disturbance and T
represents temperature. From formula (33) we can see that for a given f, when T is
relatively high, acceptance probability to the new solution which increases the function
is larger than the probability when T is relatively low. Thus the entire algorithm keeps
the iterative process of generate new solution judge accept or discard till find the
optimal solution finally. The specific algorithm is as follows:
Algorithm A. Simulated annealing algorithm
a) Suppose k=0, T= T0, in which T0 is the initial temperature. Parameter L and
initial value x0 are given;
 A New Method of Transductive SVM-Based Network Intrusion Detection 93

b) Generate a new candidate xk+1 by random disturbance of xk;

c) Calculate f = f(xk+1) - f(xk);
d) If f0, accept the new solution xk+1=xk. If the stop criteria is satisfied, the
algorithm stops and x= xk+1; otherwise give a random value in the range of 0
to 1 obeying uniform distribution. If exp(-f/T)>, accept the new solution
xk+1=xk;
e) Suppose k=k+1, if kL, jump to step b);
f) Decrease T0 according to temperature cooling rule. Suppose x0=xk and k=0,
and jump to step b).
In the above algorithm, parameters we need to select include the initial temperature
value T0. Simulated annealing algorithm requires a large enough T0 to ensure jumping
out of the local optimal solutions, that is to ensure exp(-f/T0)1. Selection of a too
large T0 will cause a too long algorithm period, while a too small T0 will cause the
algorithm traps in the local optimal solution too early. The other parameters need to be
selected are iteration times L under each temperature, initial solution x0. Besides the
decreasing rule of temperature T also needs to be known, generally taken as
Tk+1=Tk,0<<1; and the final value of temperature, actually the final temperature
value often chose as close to 0.

3.2 Network Intrusion Detection

As the widespread use of network, log data is very large. Some network attacks such as
DNS spoofing, denial of service, port scanning, etc. are generally very difficult to be
directly discovered. Using data mining technology, normal and abnormal action model
can be acquired from massive logs, and then detect intrusion action [5]. Data mining
technology commonly used in intrusion detection system includes neural network,
genetic algorithm [6] and so on. There are also researchers using support vector ma-
chine to conduct some tests on actual intrusion detection [7].
In essence, intrusion detection is actually a classification problem, that is to separate
the normal action data and abnormal action data of users through detection. In which
the data describing user action is often multi-index. The feasibility of using support
vector machine to conduct intrusion detection has been verified in [7]. As we focuses
only on behavior of the current user, thus hereby we attempt to use improved deduction
support vector machine to discuss the new method of network intrusion detection.
Data adopted in the test is a batch of network connection record set [8]. This batch of
original data is a recovered connection information based on the data obtained in IDS
evaluation by U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1998
[9], including 7 weeks network traffic with about 5 million connection records, in
which there were a large number of normal network traffic and various attacks, thus has
a strong representative. As the amount of data is significantly large, here we only select
attacks of DOS type to conduct our experiments, and determine the dimension number
of the problem is 18 according to detection attribute set needed by DOS type attack
provided by [9]. 200 normal connection information data are extracted from
the original data set as the positive-type set, and 200 DOS type attack connection
94 M. Yan and Z. Liu

information data are extracted as the negative-type set, then the positive-type point set
and negative-type point set are randomly separated into training set and test set ac-
cording to some ratio (6:4).
C-support vector machine [10] and improved deduction support vector machine are
used respectively to solve the classification problem of the above composition. When
solving optimization problem in the improved deduction support vector machine, simu-
lated annealing algorithm introduced in last section is used. Both models adopt RBF
kernel function. During the test, the parameter C, C* , as well as in RBF kernel function
adopt multiple values respectively. Given different combinations of these parameters, test
the performance of the two algorithms under different combinations. Table 6.1 is a test
result under one group of the combinations as C=C*=100 and =2, in which detection
accuracy is the ratio of correctly detected samples in the test set to the total number of
samples in the test set; false positive rate is the ratio of normal samples that are mistaken
detected to abnormal samples to total number of normal samples; detection rate is the
ratio of detected abnormal samples to total number of abnormal samples.

Table 1. Result comparison

Detection Result CSVC Algorithm2.4

Detection Accuracy 79.9% 81.2%
False Positive Rate 0.54% 0.47%
Detection Rate 77.5% 80.1%

Data in the table indicate that, usage of improved deduction support vector machine
can obtain higher detection accuracy. Certainly, the test result depends on rational
selection of parameters. In practical applications, cross validation or LOO error method
(can refer to [3]) can be adopted to determine optimal parameters.

4 Conclusion and Perspective

With reference to the results of the said discussion, the detection precision of improved
transductive SVM instead of C-SVM is higher, indicating that only by studying and
creating SVM intentionally according to the particularity of problems when using SVM
to solve practical problems can it achieve more desirable effects of application. As for
solving the network intrusion problem, the results of detection can depend on the proper
selection of parameters besides the selection and study of the varieties of SVM. And in
fact, it is available to adopt the cross validation or LOO err (see [3]) to determine the
optimized parameter, which is also one of the directions to study on transductive SVM
in the future. Besides SVM, neural net and genetic algorithm can be applied to conduct
the network intrusion detection via the data extraction technology. And it is required to
make a study of these technologies applied to the detection on network intrusion and
make comparisons between them, and even compare them with the detection methods of
other technologies to further argument the advantages of these new methods, all of
which are the problems requiring further studies on theory and practice.
 A New Method of Transductive SVM-Based Network Intrusion Detection 95

References
[1] Jiang, J., et al.: Study and Review on Network Intrusion Detection. Journal of Software 11
(2001)
[2] Nei, Y., et al.: Network Information Safety Technology. Science Press, Beijing (2001)
[3] Deng, N., Tian, Y.: Support Vector Machine - A New Method in Data Mining, pp. 77162,
pp. 224272. Science Press, Beijing (2004) (in Chinese)
[4] Yan, M.: Support Vector Machines for Classification and Its Application. China Agri-
cultural University, Beijing (2005) (Doctors Degree Paper)
[5] Lee, W., Stolfo, S.: Data mining approaches for intrusion detection [EB/OL]
(2000-10-12/2002-03-01),
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~wenke:papers/usenix/usenix.html
[6] Balajinath, B., Raghavan, S.V.: Intrusion detection through learning behavior model.
Computer Communication 24(12), 12021212 (2001)
[7] Li, H., et al.: SVM-based Network Intrusion Detection. Journal of Computer Research and
Development 40(6), 6 (2003)
[8] http://kdd.ics.uci.edu/databases/kddcup99/kddcup99.html
[9] Lee, W., Stolfo, S., Mok, K.W.: A datamining framework for building intrusion detection
medels. In: The 1999 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privary, Oakland, CA (1999)
[10] Deng, N., Tian, Y.: Support Vector Machine Theory, Algorithm and Expansion, pp.
9798. Science Press, Beijing (2009)
 Design and Simulation of Jujube Sapling Transplanter*

Wangyuan Zong**, Wei Wang***, Yonghua Sun, and Hong Zhang

School of Mechanical and Electric Engineering, Tarim University Alar,

Sinkiang 843300, P.R China
Tel.: 0997-4683859 13031270332
zwyzzx@sina.com

Abstract. This paper is aiming at designing a novel jujube transplanter with

mechanic arms, which can support the sapling for a while when other operations
is going on. It improves uniformity and stability. Pro-E software has been used
for the design process, by which transplanting process has been analyzed and
simulated.

Keywords: Density Jujube Plantation; Sapling Transplanted; Bionic Manipulator;

Kinetic Simulation.

1 Introduction

As a Chinese special economic fruiter, the cultivated area of jujube trees has increased
rapidly in southern Sinkiang in recent 7 years. The cultivated area of the jujube of
southern Sinkiang has reached about 300,000 hm2 by the end of 2009. The higher and
more extensive demand to the corresponding machinery equipment for jujube planting
was put forward (Liu Lei et al, 2008). This project developed a kind of jujube transplant
machine for the high-density planted model of jujube to adjust to the requirements of
jujube industry rapidly development in southern Sinkiang.

2 Features and Requirement

The high-density planted model of jujube is the generally adopted model in southern
Sinkiang. The high-density planted model is able to realize early results and yield and
improve the utilization ratio of land in early and the economic benefit. There are two

forms of the high--density planted model: Single-density whose space between trees is
23m 24m 1.51.0m; Wide connect narrow row whose space between trees is
1.51.54 m. The protection for trees furrow should reservation 1.5m and the inner

*
Project Funding: Subsidized by Sinkiang Science and Technology Supporting Projects
(2009zj19).
**
Wuhan in Hubei, Associate Professor, Research Direction: Agricultural Mechanism.
***
Corresponding Author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 96102, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Design and Simulation of Jujube Sapling Transplanter 97

diameter should be 1m and the both sides of the ridge width is 25 . It can not
intercropping other crops either in the reservation or on the ridge. The ditch and ridge
should be treaded solidly and flatly. Use the way that buried first, extracted second and

trampling down third to plant. The roots should be ensuring to be stretch in planted
process. The planting depth should be above the root 2~3 (Wang Jianxun et al, 2007;
Si Yanjiang et al, 2007; Zhang Changjiang et al, 2006).

Fig. 1. High-Density Planted Model

Table 1. Planted Technological Requirement of Jujube

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98 W. Zong et al.

The design selects the technical requirements and process characteristics as Fig 1
and Table 1 shows according to the demand of jujube high-density planted model.

3 Working Principles and Structure Design of Jujube Transplanter

3.1 Working Principle

The work of this mechanical equipment is to perform planting in transplanting process.

The furrow opener will complete furrowing in the planting area first before this
machine working. Table 1 shows the concrete parameter.
The tractor mounted jujube transplanter, with specially designed mechanic arms to
support sapling while soil compacted. The mechanic arms can support the jujube a
minute after it planted to maintain the trees orthostatic in covering soil and compacting
in working process. The manipulator will move reversely with the whole equipment by
the same velocity in working. Therefore, the jujube sapling `s movement is the
composite movement v resulted by v1 that the forward movement of whole
equipment and v 2 reverse movement of manipulator. That is v sum = v1 + v2 = 0 this
makes the process of seedlings planting in the ground remained relatively static. The
manipulator will release the sapling and back in situ to prepare the next working after
that the roots have been landfill by the coverer and compacting drum. The retractable
and trajectory of the manipulator is function by the inner adjusting spring and the track
of sapling supported system together and drive by chain conveyor belt.

3.2 Design of Structure

The Fig 2 shows the structure principle of the jujube transplanter.

The operator will sit in the seat 2 and put the sapling stored in seeding chamber 7 into
the bionic manipulator 10 of the supporting system 3. Then the sapling will be planted
into the planting trench by manipulator 10 transmission with the chain. At this time, the
manipulator started to move reversely relative to the whole equipment to maintain the
sapling vertical. The quality soil of planting trench will be covered on the roots by the
front coverer. After that, the press wheel 5 will compact the soil covered. Afterward,
the manipulator releases the sapling under the function of adjusting spring because of
the changing of the moving track. Finally, the back coverer 4 mulches the rest of soil to
the around of the roots and now complete once work of sapling transplanting. Next
step, the manipulator will restore in situ along the track to clip the saplings and wait the
recycling operation. There are two plant holder of the sapling supported system and the
moving distance is the same as the plant spacing. The adjusted Device of Depth
Limited 8 can be use to regulated the depth of the trees planted. Thanks to that the
distance between the manipulator and land, as a reason it assures the trees planted have
an overall height. The velocity of manipulator relative to the whole machine and the
spacing insures the unity of planting spacing and the upright degree of the trees.
 Design and Simulation of Jujube Sapling Transplanter 99

(a)

(b)

Fig. 2. Structure Principle of Jujube Transplanter 1Frame 2Seat 3Sapling Supported System
4Back Coverer 5Press Wheel 6Front Coverer 7Seedling Chamber 8Ajusted Device of Depth
Limited 9Transmission System 10Bionic manipulator
100 W. Zong et al.

3.3 PROE Simulation Model and Structure Parameter

Draw three-dimensional model as the Fig 3 shows in the Pro/E software when the
structure sizes of the transplanter determined. Do dynamics stability through simulation
in the institutional environment of Pro/E for the main components. Shows the
simulated reason that there is no interference between each component of the whole
machine.

Fig. 3. Pro/E Simulation Model

The main technical performance of transplanting machine is as follows:

The size of whole equipment ( lengthwidthheight ): 2017 1214965
Weight: About 210
Mating Power: Variety of wheeled tractors
Efficiency: Related to the velocity of the tractors
Adjustment Range of Spacing: 800
Plant Spacing: 1.0m
Planted Depth: 300 400
4 Trajectory Analysis of Sapling

The sapling supported system of the transplater is the most important component in this
equipment. It can move along the rail surface transported by the chain and be able to
complete the motion of grapping seedling, feeding seedling, supporting seedling and
 Design and Simulation of Jujube Sapling Transplanter 101

-  2   

0 1!

2   

Fig. 4. Structure Chart of Sapling Supported System

design of theory and structure requirements. Therefore, The movement of the sapling is
qualitative that has a certain trajectory. In this design, the plant spacing as s=1, length of
guide in horizontal as L1, length of inclined plane as L2=S-L1, velocity of pull tractor
as v. The displacement of direction of coordinate system Fig 5 shows is obtained on the
base that the seedling folder position as the point of movement. The guide and the
structures of manipulator determine that the angle of manipulator with the ground as
= 90 - before dropping seedling and = 0 after dropping.

Fig. 5. Movement Analysis Within Coordinates of Sapling

102 W. Zong et al.

5 Conclusions

The mechanical transplanting can be able to reduce the labor intensity of farmers,
increase production and income. The jujube transplanter for the high-density jujube
plantation can be capable of reducing the labor intensity and guaranteeing planting
perpendicularity and jujube's neat and unity because of the new principle and
structures.
(1) According to the technological program, design the sapling supporting system
that complete planting automatically and the process of sapling foldersapling
sendingsapling investingsapling releasing.
(2) Design the transmission to ensure that the movement relationship of the
manipulator with the machine so that seedlings planted in the upright;
(3) Design the whole machine to be sure of completing all the operation for casing
and compaction preliminary in the stage of sapling supported.
(4) Design the adjusting device of depth limited to regulate the plating depth in a
certain range according to the quality of the saplings.

References

[1] Wang, J., Gao, J.: The Points of Planting and Managing about Jujube in AKESU Area.
SHANXI Fruit Tree, 2223 (January 2007)
[2] Liu, L., Chen, Y., Zhang, Q.: Appliance and Development Survey of Transplant
Technology in Sinkiang Corps. Research on Agricultural Machine Popularize, 204243
(September 2008)
[3] Zhang, C., Xie,C.: Inseminate and Management of shortened orchard, p. 22. Northwest
Horticulture (June 2006)
[4] Si, Y., Shong, F.: The Lecture of Jujube Plant Technology in Sinkiang (part four). Country
Science, 3839 (April 2007)
 A Precision Subsidy Management System for
Strawberry Planting in ChangPing District of BeiJing

Zhang Chi, Chen Tianen, and Chen Liping

National Engineering Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture,

Beijing 100097, China
zhangc@nercita.org.cn

Abstract. The misuse of pesticide and fertilizer take a great pollution to the ag-
ricultural environment, which seriously affects the quality and safety of agricul-
tural products. The government put forward a series of policies of subsidy to
lead the farmers to proper pesticide application and scientific farming. But the
effect doesnt turn out as it wished to be because of the backward implementa-
tion methods and Stat methods. This research provides a Precision Management
method for effectively managing subsidies for agriculture. Based on Non-
contact IC card, the authors developed a Precision Management System for ag-
ricultural related subsidies management. This system was applied in one center
and eleven experiment stores in ChangPing district in Beijing and solved
problems like poor instruction for planting, tardy in subsidies providing and in-
accurate information of stat during the strawberry growing season. Through this
system, farmers can get the subsidies and instruction at the moment they buy
agricultural materials, government can obtain the accurate data, and then ad-
justment the policies in time to get the desired effect.

Keywords: IC card; subsidy of agricultural materials; precision management;

agricultural products safety.

1 Introduction
Agricultural pollution has been neglected for a long time due to the high environ-
mental capacity, low level of industrialization, and low population density in rural
areas in China. Excessive fertilization, sole-nutrient fertilization and overdose of ni-
trogenous fertilizer lead to problems like imbalance of soil nutrient, low utilization
ratio of fertilization and agricultural environmental pollution. Shoddy fertilizers in-
duce decline of agricultural product quality, even threaten peoples life security [1].
According to State Environmental Protection Administration, agricultural pollution
occupies as high as 1/3-1/2 of the total amount of nationwide pollution [2]. Thus, sci-
entific farming and reduction of agricultural pollution is the key point to realize agri-
cultural sustainable development strategy.
Local governments has taken many measures to solve this problem, such as grant
subsidies to recommended agricultural implements in order to standardize agricultural
tools and set up agricultural technical advice station to provide information for scien-
tific farming and rational maturing. These instrumentalities remarkably increase the
quality of agricultural products and bring down the agricultural pollution, but there is

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 103109, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
104 C. Zhang, T. Chen, and L. Chen

deficiency. Most of the subsidies are released by the end of a year, that is, the allow-
ances are mostly granted after the crop planting period. On the one hand, farmers can
not get the subsidies in time; on the other hand, local governments can not get accu-
rate information of requirement of agricultural means of production.
Aiming to solve this problem, this paper provides a precision management method
based on non-contract IC card. Assembling government administrative department,
agricultural implement agency and farmers together, the authors developed a preci-
sion management system based on non-contract IC card to ensure that all the subsi-
dies could be granted in time and that feedbacks could be send back in time. This
system was applied in one center and eleven agencies in strawberry planting areas in
ChangPing district in Beijing and proved to be efficient.

2 System Analysis and Design

2.1 Requirement Analysis

Whether information about subsidies of agricultural materials and scientific farming

can be conveyed to the farmers precisely will directly affect the agricultural environ-
ment and the quality and safety of agricultural products. Meanwhile, the subsidies
arriving in time or not will affect farmers enthusiasm for planting. Based on this, the
primary goal of our system is to set up a platform among the government administra-
tive department, agricultural sales departments and farmers in order to pass the
information about subsidies of agricultural materials and scientific farming to farmers
precisely. Also through this system, providing of subsidies will become more timely
and efficient, as a result, farmers enthusiasm of planting will be enhanced to a great
extent.
Our government conducts the subsidies of agricultural materials aiming to ensure
the quality of agricultural products and improve agricultural environment. So the sub-
sidies of agricultural materials have to be managed precisely and provided in time so
as to ensure the effective implementation of this beneficial policy. For this reason,
another function of this system is to provide a tool using which the government can
manage the subsidies of agricultural materials precisely. At the same time, by apply-
ing this system, related department can achieve a statistical analysis of the informa-
tion about subsidies of agricultural materials so as to help the government make good
policies, and to speed up our agricultural development in the end.

2.2 System Structure

To meet the actual requirement, the system consists of six parts such as management
subsystem, store subsystem, leader view subsystem, a centre database, several store
databases and a huge number of IC card. Due to the different network condition in the
agents, the whole system is designed in a telescopic C/S structure, through the
VPN(virtual private network), each subsystem can connects to each other out of the
network condition limited. All agencies submit the sale information to the centre da-
tabase at a fixed time, consequently, the reliability and stability of the system can be
ensured. The leader-view subsystem adopts a B/S structure; leaders can get the real-
time information of subsidies anywhere through the browser. Fig 1 is the structure of
Precision Management System for the subsidy of agricultural materials.
 A Precision Subsidy Management System for Strawberry Planting 105

Management
subsystem

Web Client

NewWor
k Web Client

Web Server
DataBase Leader subsystem Web Client

Store subsystem Store subsystem Store subsystem

Fig. 1. The structure of Precision Management System for the subsidy of agricultural materials

2.3 The Major Business Process

According to the procedure of strawberry production in ChangPing distinct, the man-
agement subsystem inputs the first batch of data based on the land distributiton data
and the details of subsidy. Adopt the mechanism one farmer one card, each farmer
gets a IC card with his name, account, quota of subsidy, permit time and the printed
growing instructions. In accordance with the latest information of subsidy download
from the management subsystem, the payment for agricultural materials is made up of
two parts, the one is cash part, paid by farmers, the other is subsidy, deducted from
The Major Business
Process
Farmer Store Database Management

The first
Information
batch of
Input
information
Information
download
Growing instructions in the
Distribute IC
Get IC card card
card

Consumption Card validate

Transaction

Distribute Submit transact Statistic

Get subsidy
subsidy records analysis

Policy
Adjustment

Fig. 2. The major business process of Precision Management System for the subsidy of agricul-
tural materials
106 C. Zhang, T. Chen, and L. Chen

the IC card. Stores take a record of each transaction, and submit the records to man-
agement subsystem in a fix time. The management subsystem achieves a statistical
analysis of the distribution process and using circumstances about subsidies of agri-
cultural materials through these records. Based on the results of the statistics, gov-
ernment can adjust subsidy policy in time and then play a better role in guiding. Fig 2
is the major business process of Precision Management System for the subsidy of
agricultural materials.

2.4 The Key Technology

2.4.1 Real-Time Performance of the System

The major problems to be solved in the system are how to distribute subsidy in time
and accurate statistics the data of subsidy. IC card of non-contact type (M1) is used,
the farmers name, account, balance, subsidy freeze, distribute date, commencement
date, check date, ending date, card status and growing instructions are stored in the
sectors of IC card. When farmer buy the agricultural materials, store subsystem calcu-
lates the total price and the subsidy should be distributed, subsidy bill is deducted
from IC card, the balance is paid in cash. Store subsystem save the details such as
account, name, price, number, cash, subsidy, serial and assistant into store database
with status 0 when each transaction is finished. Store subsystem checks the records
periodically, while finding records with status 0, immediately submits these records
to management subsystem and updates the status with 1. Though this, the subsidy
can be distributed in time and data of subsidy can be accurate statistics.

2.4.2 System Security

The whole system is a distributed system. In the server aspect, adopts the dual module
hot spare(DMHS), if one server is crash down, System can switches to another server
automatically in two minutes, which guarantees the security of database. In the data
interaction aspect, set up a virtual private network, each subsystem has a multiple
verification mechanism and all data is delivered unidirectional, which ensure the
security of the data.

3 System Implementation
3.1 Management Subsystem
Considering the factors of development efficiency, interface effects and user demand,
we used Visual C # as the development language, under the Visual Studio 2005 envi-
ronment, combined with ESRIs ArcGIS Engine 9.3 SDK for system development.
After comprehensive consideration of the data security, operating efficiency and sys-
tem extension, chose SQL Server 2005 as the data base.
Management sub-system was comprised of three function modules including the IC
card management module, information maintenance module and data query statistics
module. It is precisely the information publish and integrate centre of the precision
management system for the subsidy of agricultural material, which provides IC card
and growing instructions for farmers, recommended agricultural materials and subsidy
information for agencies, accurate statistical data of subsidies for the government de-
partments. Fig 3 shows the card distribution interface of management sub-system.
 A Precision Subsidy Management System for Strawberry Planting 107

Fig. 3. Sending card page of the management subsystem

3.2 Store Subsystem

As a bridge between the government and farmer the store subsystem complete the
whole transaction processes. The distribute store subsystem acquires the information
of the recommended agricultural materials and related subsidies information from the
management subsystem and then transmit to the farmer. Store subsystem distributes
subsidies to farmers as soon as they buy the agricultural materials with agricultural
subsidies IC card, and then saves the detailed information for each transaction. Every
store uploads the transaction data to the central database periodically to summary,
aiming to query and stat. Fig 4 is the sale page of store subsystem.

Fig. 4. Sale page of store subsystem

108 C. Zhang, T. Chen, and L. Chen

3.3 Leader View Subsystem

Leader view subsystem provides a rich query and statistical functions. User can query
the grant general progress of agricultural subsidies with the conditions of area, kind
and time, the detailed circumstances of agricultural subsidies granting and agricultural
products using the conditions of town, month / quarter and agricultural materials
name. All results are compared in different dimensions and displayed in graphs and
tables. Analyzing these results, the management department of government can know
the farmers demand and subsidies grant progress roundly. Fig 5 is the statistics page
of the leader subsystem.

Fig. 5. Subsidy statistics by month page of the leader subsystem

4 The Practical Application

Finishing the development work of the precision management system, it takes the
agricultural materials management department of ChangPing district in BeiJing as the
center, set up eleven experiment agencies in the towns like Xingshou, Xiaotangshan,
Baishan, Shahe, Machikou, Cuicun, Five thousands farmers are benefited for it. the
system adopts the mechanism of ' one farmer one card ' to realize unified management
on agricultural materials recommendation, purchase, sale and subsidies of the whole
district, making a connection between sale and subsidy of the agricultural materials,
realizing the accurately recording of sale information, the real-time summarizing of
the subsidy data and the timely distribution of subsidy, integrating the resource of
strawberry grow effectively, mobilizing the energies of farmers and Guaranteeing the
quality of agricultural product at the same time, laying the foundations of the devel-
opment of strawberry industry in ChangPing district.
 A Precision Subsidy Management System for Strawberry Planting 109

5 Conclusion
To meet the needs of precision management of granting subsidies during strawberry
planting, this paper designed and developed a precise managerial system of subsidies
supervision. Employing modern communication technology, this system built an in-
formation alternation platform among government administrative department, agricul-
tural implement agency and ordinary farmers. Based on non-contract IC card, this
precise system of subsidies supervision could send the statistic feedback in time; the
farmers could promptly receive the subsidies and get guidance of scientific planting
from the government. As a management system controlling the inception of agricul-
tural material investigation, this project achieved the traceability of agricultural
material during strawberry planting; reduced pollution caused by absurdness fertilizer
application and consequently ensured the quality of agricultural production.

Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the students of National Engineering Research Center for Informa-
tion Technology in Agriculture who took part in the field data collection, and Dr.Chen
Tian-En for his comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. The National
Technology Support Project, Project no. 2008BADA4B03 and The 863 Plans Pro-
jects, Project no. 2010AA10A301 are gratefully acknowledged for the support of our
research.

References
[1] Li, B., Tan, C., He, R.: Prevention and Control of Fertilizer Pollution on Environment.
Science and Technology of Modern Agriculture (4), 193195 (2009)
[2] Guo, Y., Zhang, C., Zhang, L.: On Agricultural Pollution in China. Journal of Anhui. Agri.
Sci. 37(4), 17731775 (2009)
[3] Tian, Y., Jin, O.: Desiging and Implementation of GPRS Network Vending Machine
Based on IC Card Payed. Computer Knowledge and Technology 6(7), 17551757 (2010)
[4] Zheng, J., Zhou, H., Xu, Y., Maocheng: Toward-target precision pesticide application and
its system design. Transactions of the CSAE 21(11) (2005)
[5] Zhang, H., Zheng, J., Zhou, H., et al.: Key technologies fir integration of information flow
for precision pesticide application system. Transactions of the CSAE 23(5), 130136
(2007)
[6] Zhou, Z., Cao, W., Zhu, Y., Wang, S., et al.: GIS-based information system for crop pro-
duction management. Transactions of the CSAE 21(1), 114118 (2005)
[7] Li, H., Shi, A.: Design and Implementation of an Automobile Exhaust Emission Inspecting
Data Management Information System Based on IC Cards. Computer Engineering & Sci-
ence 32(1), 156158 (2010)
[8] Ren, M., Zhang, X., Zhang, J., Wang, Z., et al.: Development of web-based Chinese to-
bacco germplasm resources information system. Transactions of the CSAE 26(3), 209215
(2010)
[9] Ji, Z., Sun, C., Qian, J., et al.: Pig healthy breeding information management system based
on.NET. Transactions of the CSAE 24(supp. 2), 230234 (2008)
 A Semantic Search Engine Based on SKOS Model
Ontology in Agriculture

Yong Yang, Jinhui Xiong, and Shuyan Wang

School of Information and Electrical Engineering, Shengyang Agricultural University,

110866 Shenyang, China
yangsyau@163.com

Abstract. A simple agriculture ontology system was constructed under

extended SKOS model in this paper. A theme relevance algorithm based on
terms distances in ontology system was tested and applied in improving the
Pagerank evaluating. And also an online agricultural semantic search engine
named as Sonong was implemented and deployed for service on internet. This
online engine provides semantic hierarchy inference with the ontology system
and a satisfying ranking list of retrieved information.

1 Introduction
Search engine is playing a dominant role in internet information retrieval.
Requirements in domain semantic search have seen mounting up with internet
information explosion. Though application of IT in agriculture in china is still in its
infancy, the number of agricultural websites and rural community users has steeply
increased in recent years [1]. These provide the domain search engine development
with plenty information and netizen population.
It has seen great progresses in domestic agricultural domain search engine research
in china. Liu etc. introduced a theme filter in general search engine, and improved
accuracy and completeness in agricultural information retrieval by adopting algorithm
of keyword oriented vector space model [2]. Xian etc. employed agricultural ontology
in index system to capture semantic relations between terms and implemented a
prototype search system [3]. Zhou etc. reviewed agricultural semantic search on
system structure, functions, and key algorithms, and practiced a structural indexing on
Chinese literal web pages by introducing semantic relationships under the SDD
algorithm into full text indexing [4]. Zhou etc. constructed an agricultural search
engine from Nutch architecture, and improved the accuracy by using agricultural
lexicon, theme filtering and ranking techniques [5]. These achievements have
furthered the research on agricultural domain search engine.
In this paper, a simple agriculture ontology system was constructed under the
extended SKOS model. A theme relevance algorithm based on termsdistances in
ontology system was tested and applied in improving the Pagerank evaluating. An
online agricultural semantic search engine named as Sonong was implemented and
deployed for service at www.sonong.com. This online engine provides semantic
hierarchy inference from the ontology system and has gained satisfying ranking lists
in retrieved information.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 110118, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 A Semantic Search Engine Based on SKOS Model Ontology in Agriculture 111

2 Agriculture Ontology
Ontology is, from a philosophic viewpoint, the study of existence, of all kinds of
entities - abstract and concrete - that make up of the world [6]. It is the study of a
priori concepts. A formalized ontology is defined as an explicit specification of shared
concepts and theories, one that represents the intended meaning of a vocabulary
[7][8]. This formal representation enables computer operations as well as aiding
human comprehension [9]. A linguistic ontology contains a list of terms in a glossary
for a specific domain and relationships between terms. A mixed ontology is made up
of a concept hierarchy. The concept hierarchy, called TBOX in knowledge base,
consists of terms with generalization or specification relationships [10].
We mapped the Chinese Agricultural Thesaurus into a light ontology system under
an expanded SKOS model. SKOS is an area of work developing specifications and
standards to support the use of knowledge organization systems (KOS) such as
thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading systems and taxonomies within the
framework of the Semantic Web. SKOS provides a standard way to represent
knowledge organization systems using the Resource Description Framework (RDF).
Agricultural ontology consists of a concept hierarchy. Each concept has RDF
attributes such as preferred terms, non-preferred terms of synonymic terms,
hierarchical relationships, and associative relationships [11][12]. The SKOS model
was expanded to formalize term relations such as prefer-of, nonprefer-of, subclass-of,
superclass-of and related-of in the Chinese Agricultural Thesaurus (Figure 1). The
expanded model defined four classes such as Subject, ConceptScheme, Concept and
TopConcept, and six attributes such as skos:inScheme, skos: prefLabel, skos:altLabel,
skos: broaderTransitive, skos: narrowerTransitive, skos: related, skos: memberof
(Figure 2). The class Subject and attribute skos: memberof are the expanded model
elements.
Jena inference engine was integrated in Sonong system to identify implied
relationships under concept hierarchy [13]. Also the consistency of the hierarchy was
checked, for example, to verify cases of shared subclasses between different concepts.

Fig. 1. Expanded SKOS Model

112 Y. Yang, J. Xiong, and S. Wang

Fig. 2. SKOS Concept Model

3 System Architecture
Figure 3 shows a three-component system architecture including information
retrieval, reprocessing and indexing. It is the Sonong system implementing model.

Fig. 3. Architecture of Sonong system

 A Semantic Search Engine Based on SKOS Model Ontology in Agriculture 113

3.1 Webpage Retrieval

Webpage retrieval module consists of crawlers, site theme identifier and URL
database updating procedures with responsibilities for retrieving web pages from
internet, identifying agricultural related pages and sites, filtering less related ones, and
updating the URL database. When a page is retrieved, the identifier checks its theme,
digs out URLs embedded, picks out less related themes and pages, saves related ones
in document database, and updates the URL database with URLs dug out. This
process keeps running at given intervals.

3.1.1 Distributed Web Crawlers

Pages on internet are captured by hyperlinks referring to each other. Following the
link relations the crawlers collect pages from sites and databases automatically, and
dig out fresh links from the collected pages. A distributed crawler set was deployed
for page retrieval in Sonong system. Each has a URL queue. The process starts with
an initial URL set. These URLs are allotted into each crawlers URL queue by the
controller. When a page was downloaded, the crawler would dig out links in the page
for URL database, and its queue would be filled with new URLs from database.

3.1.2 Site Identifier

Site identifier serves as a theme filter with combination of agricultural ontology
system. Ontology is applied to improve theme relevance algorithm by checking
distances between terms. Site identifier parses web pages, analyzes URLs and
structure of the pages, evaluates the importance of the URLs, and filters pages by
thresholds. It also conducts crawlers to their next destinations. Site identifier
recognizes an agricultural site through its ratio of URLs remained.

3.2 Information Preprocess

Information preprocess includes duplicates removing, PageRank calculating and

inverted indexing.

3.2.1 Duplicates Removing

The development of internet has resulted in the flooding of numerous copies of web
documents. By eliminating the duplicate URL, clustering procedures and signature
analyzing, the duplicate documents may be ignored. Sonong system adopted a method
based on feature codes. Page text is identified by primary code and auxiliary code.
The primary code is derived from paragraph structure while the auxiliary code from
the content. The primary codes are clustered first, the auxiliary codes are matched.
The algorithm has been proved efficient.

3.2.2 Page Rank Calculating

The most popular method to evaluate the importance of a page is PageRank algorithm
which considers it a vote if a page is referred to by a link. Votes do mean importance.
Meanwhile, the importance of the page which refers to is also taken into account.
High PageRank of a page donates the voted page more importance. The Sonong
system furthered this idea. The theme relevance factor is considered in PageRank
calculating to result in more accurate ranking list.
114 Y. Yang, J. Xiong, and S. Wang

3.2.3 Inverted Indexing

Inverted indexing is well known efficient for full text indexing. The Sonong index
system is founded on the apache Lucene program which is considered a perfect
architecture for full text indexing. But Chinese is not support in Lucene. So the
language parser and full text index tool kit of Lucene must be improved to support
Chinese indexing functions.

3.3 Query Interface

Query interface of Sonong system is a kind of semantic parser for request strings
posted by users. It analyzes the posted strings with a Chinese word segment agent and
generates a keyword set. Keywords generated are inferred with Jenna inference
machinery in agriculture ontology represented in OWL. A hierarchy of keywords will
be retrieved with terms related to keywords. This hierarchy helps users refine their
requests effectively.

4 Key Algorithms
4.1 Ontology Oriented Theme Relevance Algorithm
The site identifier evaluates the theme relevance of pages with ontology inference,
and filters the pages according to the evaluation. Vector Space Model (VSM) is a well
known model for theme relevance algorithms. To improve the accuracy of theme
filter, the weight of related terms inferred from agriculture ontology was taken in
account in calculation of eigenvector of page text.
The inferred terms are divided into two sets keyword and keyword . A term and its
synonymies are elements of keyword set, general terms, narrower terms, and related
terms are contained in keyword set. The distance of a term from itself and its
synonymies is 0, therefore the relevance is 1. Closer the distance is between two
terms stronger relevance they are. Formula 1 shows this idea.

W = e ( Dis ( keyword , keyword )) (1)

Where W is the weight of terms, it is an exponential function, is a predefined

constant Dis ( keyword , keyword ) is the distance of terms.
So for arbitrary two terms from keyword and keyword , suppose x x keyword
y keyword ,
the weight of x is:

W ' = e ( Dis ( y , x )) (2)

In general, terms in title of a document are more expressive than those in content. So
the document is usually divided into two parts, and assigns title with higher weight
account. Thereby for a given theme D, the relevance of a page with D can be
calculated with formula 3.
 A Semantic Search Engine Based on SKOS Model Ontology in Agriculture 115

sim ( D, p ) = T sim ( D, T ) + c sim ( D, C )

= T e ( Dis ( k ,t )) + C e ( Dis ( k ,c )) (3)
t T cC

Where, D defines a theme, and k D . P is a page, and T C is its title and content
respectively, and terms t T , c C . T is weight of title, c is weight of content,
and T + c = 1 .
Considering the cardinality of T and C, the relevance should be calculated by
formula 4, which is an application of reference 24.

T e( Dis(k ,t )) + C e( Dis(k,c))
sim(D, p) = tT cC
'
(4)
T NT + c Nc
Where NT is the cardinality of set T, N C cardinality of set C.

4.2 Improvement of PageRak

The in-degree of a web page is an important indicator in evaluating its PageRank.

General PageRank algorithms are basically static beyond any query requests. So
PageRank of pages could be calculated in silent. This ensures efficiency of search and
response. However, there are numerous improvements about general PageRank
algorithm. The rank list of pages retrieved for users in Sonong system is based such
an improvement that enables the relevance of linked pages being calculated in a
PageRank evaluation. Suppose v is a page that links to page u, and B(u) is a collection
of v. F(v) is a set contains all pages linked to v. w is an element of F(v). PR(v) is the
PageRank of page v calculated by general PageRank algorithm. S(v) is the relevance
between v and u, and can be calculated by formula 4.
In addition to the contribution of PageRank that v brings to u, the relevance of v
and u would be taken into account as PR ( v ) S ( v ) . However, page v has a collection
of pages viz. F(v) linked to, they also share contribution from v. Taken relevance
between v and elements in F(v) as S(w), the actual contribution that v brings to u can
be calculated by formula 5.
PR ( v ) S ( v )
PR ( u ) = (5)
S ( w)
wF ( v )

Considering all pages linked to u, PageRank of page u with respect to the relevance
between pages can be calculated by formula 6.
PR ( v ) S ( v )
PR ( u ) =
'
(6)
vB ( u ) S ( w)
wF ( v )
116 Y. Yang, J. Xiong, and S. Wang

5 Tests on Algorithms and Using Scenarios of System

5.1 Tests on Algorithms

Table 1 presents the test result of theme relevance algorithm. Under the experiences
of pretest with sample data, T , C and is set to 0.6, 0.4 and 0.7 respectively.
Among 200 tested pages, half are selected agricultural document. The rest are
retrieved randomly from internet by crawlers.
Table 1. Result of theme relevance test

Relevance Pages Relevance Pages

0.9-1 13 0.4-0.5 17
0.8-0.9 49 0.3-0.4 20
0.7-0.8 35 0.2-0.3 39
0.6-0.7 12 0.1-0.2 6
0.5-0.6 7 0-0.1 2

It shows that there are 116 pages of which the relevance is more than 0.5.
Personal check shows that there are 96 percent of the selected 100 agricultural
pages of which the relevance is more than 0.5, 62 percent of which the relevance is
more than 0.8.
The improved PageRank algorithm is tested with 17000 pages collected by
crawlers. Taking theme agriculture as the query request, 631 pages retrieved under
general PageRank algorithm, and 96 pages with improved algorithm. Rank list of
retrieved pages shows pages with high PageRank have also high theme relevance.
5.2 Scenarios of System
It listed out all related terms inferred from ontology system and presented their
relationship in a tree structure. Users can refine their query requests by navigating the

Fig. 4. Hierarchy retrieved

 A Semantic Search Engine Based on SKOS Model Ontology in Agriculture 117

Fig. 5. Pages retrieved

hierarchy, and then post their refined request to Sonong sever, final search result with
page rank list is presented in Figure 5 and Figure 6.

6 Conclusion
Based on ontology and search engine development techniques, a theme relevance
algorithm was proposed and applied in improvement of PageRank algorithm. A
semantic search engine for agriculture was implemented and deployed for online
services. The search engine provides semantic hierarchy inference with the ontology
system and a satisfying ranking lists of retrieved information. Further research of
agriculture semantic search engine will mainly concern the evolvement and
refinement of agriculture ontology, and improvement of key algorithms.

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 A System for Detection and Recognition of Pests in
Stored-Grain Based on Video Analysis

Ying Yang, Bo Peng, and Jianqin Wang

College of Information & Electrical Engineering, China Agricultural University,

Beijing, P.R. China
hbxtyy@126.com, wjqcau@126.com, pengbo_cau@126.com

Abstract. This paper presents a system for detection and recognition of pests in
stored-grain based on video analysis. Unlike current systems which conduct
analysis of static images, the proposed system uses video data captured by cam-
era and performs video analysis to detect and recognize pests in grain. By using
video data instead of static images, techniques such as motion estimation and
multiple-frame verification are used to locate, count and recognize pests. Com-
pared to systems based on image processing, the proposed system is more
robust to moving pests and avoids missing and re-counting of moving pests.
Furthermore, by analyzing motion of pests in video, the system can only count
living pests and ignore dead ones, which are recommended by national standard
of grain quality and cannot be achieved by current systems based on static
image processing.

Keywords: video analysis, pest detection, pest recognition, store grain.

1 Introduction
It is well known that pests inflict great damage to stored grain. For instance, in China,
pests in grain cause loss of more than one billion Yuan every year. To avoid damag-
ing to stored grain, it is vital to detect, recognize, and count pests in stored grain,
since these operations offer information such as pest species and pest density for fur-
ther measurements.
In earlier research efforts, pests are detected, recognized and counted manually
[1-2]. For these methods, the results depended on environments and human operation,
which make the methods unreliable. Other researchers try to detect pests automati-
cally using near infrared spectrum or X-ray scanning [3-4]. These methods can yield
good results, but they are of low efficiency and require expensive devices. These
days, methods based on machine vision and computer image processing become the
most popular method due to their low cost, high efficiency and good performance [5-
14]. These methods usually analyze images of grain taken by a camera to detect pests
and use classifiers such as Neural Network or Support Vector Machine to recognize
pest species. There are two major problems of these methods: first, since only one or
few static images are processed, noises in images and moving pests may cause detec-
tion errors; secondly, it is impossible to decide whether the pests detected are living in
static images, while only living pest density are considered in national standard of
grain quality since only living pests can cause damages.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 119124, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
120 Y. Yang, B. Peng, and J. Wang

To solve the problems of current machine-vision-based systems, this paper pre-

sents a system for detection and recognition of pests in stored-grain based on video
analysis. The system uses video data captured by a camera and performs video analy-
sis to detect and recognize pests in grain. By using video data instead of static images,
techniques such as motion estimation and multiple-frame verification are used to
locate, count and recognize pests. The proposed system is more robust to moving
pests and avoids missing and re-counting of moving pests. Furthermore, by analyzing
motion of pests in video, the system can only count living pests and ignore dead ones.

Fig. 1. Architecture of the proposed system

As shown in Fig. 1, the proposed system consists of two subsystems: video collec-
tion subsystem and video processing system. The two systems will be detailed in
Section 2 and Section 3.

2 Video Collection Subsystem

The video collection subsystem is used to capture video of stored-grain. It is mainly a
hardware subsystem similar to that proposed in [6].
As shown in Fig. 1, the video collection is composed of four major components:
grain sampling device, grain conveying device, illumination device and video capture
device. The grain sampling device is used to take samples of stored grain. The device
works like a pump and sucks grain though pipes to the conveying device. The convey-
ing device is a conveyer belt moving at constant speed. The grain is placed of single
layer on the belt, which makes all pests in grain can appear in the video. The illumina-
tion device is a LED light which makes sure the video captured in good and constant
illumination condition. The video capture device consists of a CCD camera and video
capture card. The device is connected to a computer through USB port. When the
device is running, video of grain on the conveyer belt is captured and transferred into
computer memory at real time.
The main difference between the proposed video collection subsystem and current
image-based systems (such as the system in [6]) is that the proposed system takes
video of grain instead of static images. Unlike current systems which take every im-
age within a short interval (0.6 second in [6]), our system takes continuous video at
 A System for Detection and Recognition of Pests in Stored-Grain 121

speed of 25 frames per second. The video is transferred and stored into computer
memory and disk for further processing in the video processing subsystem.

3 Video Processing Subsystem

The video processing subsystem is a software system running on a computer. It re-
ceives video signal captured by the video collection subsystem as input and performs
video analysis to detect, count and recognize pests in the video.
Before video analysis, the continuous video signal is first segmented into video
segments. The length of segment depends on moving speed of the conveyer belt. In
our implementation, the segment length is set as 2 seconds.
As shown in Fig. 1, the video processing procedure includes 3 stages: pest detec-
tion, living pest counting and pest recognition, which correspond to the three major
modules of the video processing subsystem.

3.1 Pest Detection Module

In current systems based on image processing, since only one static image is proc-
essed, detection errors may be caused by noise, and miss or re-counting may be
caused by motion of pests. In the proposed system, a segment of frames in video is
used instead of a single image, so verification across multiple frames can be per-
formed to avoid missing and re-counting caused by noise or pest motion.
Before multi-frame verification, pests are segmented in each frame of the input
video: First, the image is processed using image sharpen to increase the difference
between pest areas and the background. Then, pest areas are segmented from back-
ground using thresholds obtained by K-means clustering of the pixels in the image.
Finally, more accurate areas of pests are obtained by morphological operations.
After obtaining pest areas in each frame, multi-frame verification is performed us-
ing a neighbor-searching method. For each pest area in each frame, the image area
around the pest area is divided into multiple blocks. For the prior and next frame,
searching of pests is performed in the neighbor blocks. If pest areas exist, similarity is
calculated between pest areas in current frame and in adjacent frames. Finally, deci-
sion is made of whether the pest area in current frame is a false detection by thresh-
olding the similarity. An illustration is given in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Illustration of multi-frame verification

122 Y. Yang, B. Peng, and J. Wang

It can be seen that by using multi-frame verification, errors caused by noise or pest
motion can be avoided. Therefore, better detection results can be obtained using the
proposed system.

3.2 Living Pest Counting Module

As motioned above, in current system based on image processing, it is difficult to

only count living pests and ignore dead ones since only static images are processed. In
the proposed video-based system, a segment of video is processed. Therefore, living
pests can be detected by analyzing their motion in the video.
Since the grain on the conveyer belt is moving, motion of living pests can not be
detected simply by using difference of frames. Therefore, the aim of living pest detec-
tion based on video analysis is to detect local motion of living pests within global
motion of grain in the video.
In the living pest counting module, global motion estimation is performed to obtain
parameters of motion between grain and the camera. In our work, a six-parameter
affine model is used: if the 2D coordinates of one point on an object in continuous
frames are ( x, y ) and ( x ', y ') , the affine model of six parameters is

x = a1 x + a2 y + a3 , y = a4 x + a5 y + a6 (1)

where a1 , a2 ,...a6 are parameters related to the camera. In our work, these parameters
are estimated by global motion estimation of feature points which may be fix points
marked on the conveyer belt. When global motion parameters are estimated, local
motion of pest areas can be detected across multiple frames, and pests without motion
are classified as dead ones.
When living pests are detected in each video segment, the count of living pest will
accumulate to give total count of living pests.

3.3 Pests Recognition Module

The aim of pest recognition is to recognize species of pests. In current systems based
on image processing, recognition errors may be caused by noise or override between
grain and pest. In the pest recognition module of the proposed system based on video
analysis, a multi-frame verification technique is also utilized to achieve better
performance.
For each frame in the video segment, features including gray value, area, circum-
ference, texture are extracted for pest areas recognition. These features are input into a
SVM classifier to recognize the specie of the pest. The SVM classifier is trained with
samples of pests using the same image features. The classification result of SVM is
represented as probabilities of each species.
After getting specie-probabilities of each frame, multi-frame verification is per-
formed by calculating the average probability value of each specie and choosing the
one with maximum average probability as final recognition result.
 A System for Detection and Recognition of Pests in Stored-Grain 123

4 Conclusions
This paper presents a system for detection and recognition of pests in stored-grain
based on video analysis. While current systems conduct analysis of static images, the
proposed system performs video analysis to achieve better performance. The system
consists of video collection and video processing subsystems. In the video processing
subsystem, techniques such as motion estimation and multiple-frame verification are
used to locate, count and recognize pests.
As to our knowledge, the system proposed in this paper is the first system which
performs video analysis for pest detection and recognition in stored grain. Compared
to systems based on image processing, the proposed system is more robust to moving
pests and avoids missing and re-counting of moving pests. Furthermore, the system
can only count living pests and ignore dead ones, which is recommended by national
standard of grain quality and cannot be achieved by current systems based on image
processing.

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 A Tabu Search Approach to Fuzzy Optimization of
Camellia Oleifera Fertilization

Qin Song1, Fukuan Zhao1,*, and Yujun Zheng2

1
Department of Biotechnology, Beijing University of Agriculture
102206 Beijing, China
song_qin@yeah.net, zhaofukuan@sina.com
2
Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100093 Beijing, China
zhengyujun@yahoo.cn

Abstract. Traditional optimization methods have been applied for years to

high-yield fertilization models, which are usually well formulated by crisp coef-
ficients and variables. Unfortunately, real-world crop growing environment and
process are often not deterministic. In this paper we establish a fuzzy mathe-
matical model between Camellia oleifera yield and fertilization application
rates, in which variation coefficients of N, P, K are described with fuzzy num-
bers. In particular, we present a tabu search algorithm for finding a set of fertili-
zation solutions in order to maximize Camellia oleifera yield based on fuzzy
measures including expected value, optimistic value and pessimistic value. Our
approach is more realistic and practical for real-world problems by taking vague
and imprecise data into consideration, provides more comprehensive decision
support by generating a set of high-quality alternatives, and can be applied to
fertilizer decision for a variety of other crops.

Keywords: fuzzy optimization, tabu search, Camellia oleifera.

1 Introduction

Crop yield response models have been playing an increasingly important role in vari-
able-rate fertilization decision-making. There are several widely-used quantitative
mathematical models including the linear-plus-plateau model, the quadratic-plus pla-
teau model, the quadratic model, the exponential model, and the square root model,
which often disagree when identifying the fertilizer application rates [1]. In many
cases, it is hard for the farmers to place a high confidence level on the results of the
models, the main reason of which is that the models always generate so exact and
crisp solutions but the environment is uncertain and the measurement is imprecise in
nature. For example, rather than say that the crop yield would be 1000kg, it is more
reasonable to say that the crop yield would be at least 800kg, at most 1150kg, and
most likely to be 1000kg.
*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 125130, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
126 Q. Song, F. Zhao, and Y. Zheng

First initialized by Zadeh [2], the concept of fuzzy sets has been well developed
and applied to many conventional mathematical methods to reflect the ambiguity and
uncertainty in real world. However, until recent years, little attention has been given
to fuzzy mathematic models on crop growth and yield. Kandala and Prajneshu [3]
first proposed a fuzzy linear regression approach for crop yield forecasting using
remotely sensed data which lies in an interval instead of a single number. In [4] Yu et
al selected linear functions as membership functions in fuzzy synthesis evaluation of
different irrigation and fertilization on growth of greenhouse tomato. Fuzzy decision
concepts have also been used on the extension of some other optimization methods in
agriculture fertilizer applications. For example, Li et al [5] presented a support vector
machine algorithm to generate fertilization fuzzy rules to increase linguistic interpret-
ability and acquisition capability of knowledge. Palaniswami et al [6] used a fuzzy
neural network to predict the coconut yield in which fuzzy membership values of the
independent variables were used as the input layer for the network.
In this paper we establish a fuzzy mathematical model between Camellia oleifera
yield and fertilization application rates, in which variation coefficients of N, P, K are
described with fuzzy numbers. Under the fuzzy environment, it is not desirable to find
a single optimum for Camellia oleifera yield by applying one-step optimization tech-
niques such as the Gauss-Newton method, and thus we present an extended tabu
search algorithm for finding a set of Pareto optimal solutions based on fuzzy measures
including expected value, optimistic value and pessimistic value. In comparison
with crisp methods, our approach is more realistic and provides more comprehensive
decision-making support by taking uncertain information and multiple criteria into
consideration.

2 Preliminaries
First we present some basic concepts of fuzzy sets, sufficient to understand the paper.
A fuzzy set is a pair (A,) where A is an ordinary set and is a function: A[0,1]. For

each x A, (x) is called the grade of membership of x in (A,). x is said to be not
included in (A,) if (x)=0, x is said to be fully included if (x)=1, and x is called a
fuzzy member if 0<(x)<1.
Let X be the universe of discourse, A fuzzy set =(A,) of X is said to be convex if

and only if for all x1 and x2 in X and [0,1] the following equation always holds:
(x1+(1-)x2) min((x1), (x2)) (1)
A fuzzy number is a convex, normalized fuzzy set (A,) whose membership function
is at least segmentally continuous and has the functional value (x) = 1 at precisely
one element, where A is a subset of the real number R.
One of the most commonly used fuzzy numbers is the triangular fuzzy number rep-
resented by (a,b,c), whose membership function is defined as follows:
( x a) /(b a), if a x < b

( x) = (c x) /(c b), if b x < c (2)
0,
otherwise
 A Tabu Search Approach to Fuzzy Optimization of Camellia Oleifera Fertilization 127

Let 1=(a1,b1,c1) and 2=(a2,b2,c2) be two triangular fuzzy numbers, the basic fuzzy
arithmetic operations on them are defined as follows [7,8]:
1+2 = (a1+a2,b1+b2,c1+c2) (3)

1-2 = (a1-c2,b1-b2,c1-a2) (4)

1 = (a1,b1,c1) (5)

12 = (a1a2,b1b2,c1c2) (6)

1/2 = (a1/c2,b1/b2,c1/a2) (7)

For fuzzy numbers, there is a variety of measures developed ranging from the trivial
to the complex. Liu [9] proposed a credibility measure that satisfies normality,
monotonicity, self-duality, and maximality. Given a triangular fuzzy number

=(a,b,c) and a credibility level [0,1], the expected value, -optimistic value and
-pessimistic value of are respectively defined as follows:
E() = (a+2b+c)/4 (8)

2b + (1 2 )c, if 0.5
O ( x) = (9)
( 2 1) a + ( 2 2 ) b, else

(1 2 )a + 2b, if 0.5
P ( x) = (10)
(2 2 )b + (2 1)c, else

3 A Fuzzy Fertilizer Response Model for Camellia Oleifera

A field experiment was conducted in Yichun area, Jiangxi province, China. The se-
lected Camellia oleifera trees were in full bearing period. The experimental area was
360 ha and divided into 45 parts, and the plant density is about 68~75 trees/ha. The
three-factor quadratic model was used for describing the relationship between the
yield of the fruits (kg/ha) and the concentration of N, P, and K:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Y = a~1 N 2 + a~2 P 2 + a~3 K 2 + b1 NP + b2 PK + b3 NK + ~
c1 N + c~2 P + ~
c3 K + d (11)
~ ~ ~ ~
where coefficients a~1 , a~2 , a~3 , b1 , b2 , b3 , ~
c1 , ~
c2 , ~
c3 and constant d are all triangu-
lar fuzzy numbers. Based on the historical data, the value ranges are set as 6.5 N
8.4, 11.5 P 15.8, 25.0 K 40.2. By performing fuzzy regression analysis based
on the quadratic programming formulation [10], we obtained the regression coeffi-
cients in Equation (11) as shown in Table 1.
128 Q. Song, F. Zhao, and Y. Zheng

Table 1. The fuzzy regression coefficients

a~1 a~2 a~3 ~ ~ ~ ~

c1 ~
c2 ~
c3 ~
b1 b2 b3 d
a -0.66 -4.55 -0.39 6.45 1.84 -3.27 9.17 6.05 14.67 832.1
b -0.60 -4.10 -0.35 6.70 2.00 -3.10 9.30 6.10 14.90 850.2
c -0.52 -3.96 -0.32 7.20 2.25 -2.93 9.65 6.52 15.40 874.5

Nevertheless, we should be careful here for negative coefficients: the addition of

two negative fuzzy numbers should use the Equation (3), while the addition of a posi-
tive fuzzy number and a negative fuzzy number should use the Equation (4); if a
fuzzy number contains both positive and negative components, e.g., 1 = (-0.5, 0.5,
1.0), we should perform a normalization on the equation to make it contain only pure
positive numbers and pure negative numbers.

4 A Tabu Search Algorithm for Finding Optimal Fertilization

Solutions
Since fuzzy numbers are represented in nature by possibility distributions, it is diffi-
cult to determine clearly whether one fuzzy number is larger or smaller than the other
[11]. In consequence, for quadratic regression models with fuzzy coefficients, it is not
desirable to find a single optimum for by applying one-step optimization techniques
such as the Gauss-Newton method. Instead, we should use a comprehensive approach
that takes more than one ranking criteria into consideration.
To measure and compare the results of the fuzzy yield response model (11), we
employed here three important fuzzy ranking criteria including expected value, opti-
mistic value and pessimistic value. Given two fertilizer solutions which result in
~ ~ ~ ~
yields Y1 and Y2 respectively, we say Y1 dominates Y2 if they satisfies
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
E (Y1 ) E (Y2 ) , O(Y1 ) O(Y2 ) and P(Y1 ) P(Y2 ) . Under the circumstance of multi-
ple criteria decision, it is desired to find a set of non-dominated solutions instead of a
single one.
Tabu search, first proposed by Glover [12,13], is a meta-heuristic search that re-
peatedly moves from a current solution to the best of neighboring solutions while
avoiding being trapped in local optima by keeping a tabu list of forbidden moves. It
was extended to continuous problems by Cvijovic and Klinowski [14] and to multi-
objective optimization problems by Hansen [15]. The follows present an innovative
tabu search algorithm for working out the non-dominated fertilizer solutions for the
Camellia oleifera yield response model:
Step 1. Find an arbitrary initial solution x0, initializes the empty tabu list T, let x = x0,
E* = E(x0), O* = O(x0), P* = P(x0), Q = {x0}.
Step 2. In the current solutions neighborhood N(x), select all the solution x' that satis-
fies any of the following criteria: (1) E(x') > E*, (2) O(x') > O*, (3) P(x') > P*, add x' to
the solution set Q and delete those solutions being dominated by x' from Q, and
update E*, O*, or P*. If E(x') > E*, update the tabu list T and let x = x', go Step 2.
 A Tabu Search Approach to Fuzzy Optimization of Camellia Oleifera Fertilization 129

Step 3. If no such a solution satisfying E(x') > E* and all the neighborhood solutions
are tabu, or some of the termination conditions are reached, the algorithm stops and
returns Q.
Step 4. Otherwise, select an x' in N(x)\T with the best expected value in E(x'), update
the tabu list T and let x = x', go Step 2.
In the above algorithmic framework, the neighborhood of a fertilizer solution [x1, x2,
x3] is defined as the set of six solutions including [x10.1, x2, x3], [x1, x20.1, x3] and
[x1, x2, x30.1], where 0.1 is a preset increment value (for other yield response models,
the increment value can be adjusted according to the units of measurement used and
the fertilizer application quantities estimated).
We run the tabu search algorithm for solving the Camellia oleifera yield response
model. The credibility level was set to 0.25; the algorithm stopped after 528 itera-
tions, and the result non-dominated solution set contained 6 solutions as shown in
Table 2. As we can see, solution #5 and #6 reached the maximum expected yield
value 1162.5, in which #6 reached the maximum optimistic value 1295, and #1
reached the maximum pessimistic value 1036.

Table 2. Non-dominated solution set for the Camellia oleifera yield response model

N P K Y E(Y) O(Y) P(Y)

#1 6.6 11.7 25.0 (931, 1140, 1365) 1144 1252 1036
#2 6.8 11.8 25.0 (929, 1141, 1369) 1145 1255 1035
#3 7.1 12.1 25.0 (924, 1143, 1380) 1147.5 1262 1034
#4 7.3 12.3 25.0 (921, 1145, 1386) 1149.25 1266 1033
#5 8.4 13.4 25.0 (905, 1158, 1429) 1162.5 1294 1032
#6 8.4 13.6 25.0 (902, 1158, 1432) 1162.5 1295 1030

5 Conclusion

The paper establishes a fuzzy mathematical model between Camellia oleifera yield
and fertilization application rates, in which variation coefficients of N, P, K are de-
scribed with fuzzy numbers. In particular, we present a tabu search algorithm for
finding the non-dominated fertilization solution set on three fuzzy measures including
expected value, optimistic value and pessimistic value of the Camellia oleifera yield.
Our approach is more realistic and practical by taking vague and imprecise data into
consideration, and supports more comprehensive decision-making by generating a set
of high-quality alternatives.
The fuzzy yield response model can be applied to a wide variety of crops more rea-
sonably and effectively, and the algorithmic framework can be applied/extended for
solving the quadratic and other kinds of models. Moreover, more fuzzy ranking crite-
ria can be included in order to providing more comprehensive and complicated deci-
sion support. Our ongoing work also includes developing an integrated software tool
to support fuzzy data analysis, regression modeling, problem solving, and visualized
fertilizer decision-making.
130 Q. Song, F. Zhao, and Y. Zheng

Acknowledgments. The work was supported by the Funding Project for Academic
Human Resources Development in Institutions of Higher Learning under the Jurisdic-
tion of Beijing Municipality (PHR200907136).

References
1. Cerrato, M.E., Blackmer, A.M.: Comparison of models for describing corn yield response
to nitrogen fertilizer. Agronomy J. 82, 138143 (1990)
2. Zadeh, L.A.: Fuzzy sets. Information & Control 8, 338353 (1965)
3. Kandala, V.M., Prajneshu: Fuzzy regression methodology for crop yield forecasting using
remotely sensed data. J. Indian Soc. Remote Sensing 30, 191195 (2002)
4. Yu, N., Zhang, Y.L., Zou, H.T., Huang, Y., Zhang, Y.L., Dang, X.L., Yang, D.: Fuzzy
evaluation of different irrigation and fertilization on growth of greenhouse tomato. In: 2nd
Intl Conf. Fuzzy Information and Engineering, Guanzhou, China, pp. 980987 (2007)
5. Li, M., Fang, D., Zhang, J., Zhang, Q.: A new approach for fuzzy fertilization forecast
based on support vector learning mechanism. In: 4th Intl Conf. Fuzzy Systems and
Knowledge Discovery, Haikou, China, vol. 2, pp. 321325 (2007)
6. Palaniswami, C., Dhanapal, R., Upadhyay, A.K., Manojkumar, C., Samsudeen, K.: A
fuzzy neural network for coconut yield prediction. J. Plant. Crop. 36, 2429 (2008)
7. Dubois, D., Prade, H.: Operations on fuzzy numbers. Int. J. Sys. Sci. 9, 613626 (1978)
8. Kaufmann, A., Gupta, M.M.: Introduction to Fuzzy Arithmetic Theory and Applications.
Reinhold, Van Nostrand (1991)
9. Liu, B.: Uncertainty Theory, 2nd edn. Springer, Berlin (2007)
10. Lee, H., Tanaka, H.: Fuzzy approximations with non-symmetric fuzzy parameters in fuzzy
regression analysis. J. Oper. Res. Soc. Japan. 42, 98112 (1999)
11. Kwang, H.L., Lee, J.H.: A method for ranking fuzzy numbers and its application to deci-
sion-making. IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems 9, 677685 (1999)
12. Glover, F.: Tabu search, part I. ORSA J. Comput. 1, 190206 (1989)
13. Glover, F.: Tabu search, part II. ORSA J. Comput. 2, 432 (1990)
14. Cvijovic, D., Klinowski, J.: Taboo search: an approach to the multiple minima problem.
Science 267, 664666 (1995)
15. Hansen, M.: Tabu search for multiobjective optimization: MOTS. In: 13th Intl Conf. Mul-
tiple Criteria Decision Making, Cape Town, South Africa (1997)
16. Zheng, Y.J.: Extended tabu search on fuzzy traveling salesman problem in multi-criteria
analysis. In: Chen, B. (ed.) AAIM 2010. LNCS, vol. 6124, pp. 314324. Springer, Heidel-
berg (2010)
 AgOnt: Ontology for Agriculture Internet of Things

Siquan Hu1, Haiou Wang1, Chundong She2, and Junfeng Wang3

1
School of Information Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing,
Beijing 100083, P.R. China
2
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
3
College of Computer Science, Sichuan University
husiquan@ustb.edu.cn

Abstract. Recent advances in networking and sensor technologies allow

various physical world objects connected to form the Internet of Things (IOT).
As more sensor networks are being deployed in agriculture today, there is a
vision of integrating different agriculture IT system into the agriculture IOT.
The key challenge of such integration is how to deal with semantic
heterogeneity of multiple information resources. The paper proposes an
ontology-based approach to describe and extract the semantics of agriculture
objects and provides a mechanism for sharing and reusing agriculture
knowledge to solve the semantic interoperation problem. AgOnt, ontology for
the agriculture IOT, is built from agriculture terminologies and the lifecycles
including seeds, grains, transportation, storage and consumption. According to
this unified meta-model, heterogeneous agriculture data sources can be
integrated and accessed seamlessly.

Keywords: Agriculture Internet of Things, Ontology, Semantics.

1 Introduction

Recent advances in networking, sensor and RFID technologies allow connecting

various physical world objects to the IT infrastructure, which could, ultimately,
enable realization of the Internet of Things (IOT) and the Ubiquitous Computing
visions [1] [2] [3]. IOT has great potential in Agriculture. Consider the future vision
of the food lifecycles are well recorded from seeds, cultivation, products,
transportation, food processing, sales in supermarket, it is exciting to have public
confidence on food security and tremendous additional value to the agriculture and
food suppliers.
However, in the agriculture internet of things, the data are sourced from different
organizations and information technology facilities; it is an enormous challenge to
integrate them into a workable system so that the midstream firms and the end
consumers can query the history of the agricultural products unhindered by the
bounds of the previous venders. One of the most important requirements of such
integration is that the data semantics are consistence among the different phase of the
products. To achieve such target, a unified ontology of agriculture products should be
utilized by all the information systems of the different phases. Ontology is a new

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 131137, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
132 S. Hu et al.

concept that is emerging from the various Semantic Web initiatives, which roughly
speaking can be defined as a semantic system that contains terms, the definitions of
those terms, and the specification of relationships among those terms.
In this paper, we proposed AgOnt - agriculture ontology for the purpose of
agriculture internet of things. To keep the ontology light-weighted, we ignore the
complexity of the specific agriculture activities or food processing; only the
environments of the agriculture products are paid close attention to so that all the
history can be queried by the follow-ups users. The remainder of the paper is
organized as follows: section 2 presents the design of proposed AgOnt ontology. In
section 3 the query of AgOnt based knowledge base is discussed. Section 4 highlights
existing related work briefly. Section 5 concludes the current work and discusses
possible future avenues for this research.

2 AgOnt Ontology
Ontology gives formal description on the hierarchical categories for real world
knowledge [4], [5], [6]. Our approach uses ontology to capture the semantics of
agriculture grains and their cultivation, logistics, storage history in the application of
agriculture IOT. The purpose of building this ontology is to provide a mechanism for
semantic interoperation between different systems (clouds) in the global agriculture
clouds computing system. The semantic integration based on the ontology provides a
solid basis for the integration of heterogeneous agriculture information system to form
a huge information platform to record the grain lifecycles from the seeds, plant
cultivation to food consumption.
AgOnt is based on the IEEE Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) [7],
which is the largest formal public ontology in existence today and used widely for
research and applications in search, linguistics and reasoning. To capture the
semantics of the grain or food lifecycle terminologies, we not only are able to define
the environment of a product, but also describe the recall relationship between the
succeeding forms such as the seeds and the plant, the wheat and the ponder, etc.

2.1 Structure of the Ontology

We create AgOnt ontology on the basis of two kinds of relationships in the lifecycle
of agriculture products. One is the relationship of a product and its properties such as
location, timestamp, environments parameters, processing status, etc. The other is the
relationship between a product and its source products such as a plant and its
seedlings where the plant grows from. Currently, we have defined 3 relationships
between entities in our ontology generation: Is-a, Has-property, and Source-from:
z Is-a: entity A is an instance of entity B.
z Has-property: entity A has a property B.
z Source-from: entity A sources from entity B.
To describe and maintain the knowledge cleanly, we identify 5 main primitive domain
classes as the top level ontology of the AgOnt as in Fig. 1.
 AgOnt: Ontology for Agriculture Internet of Things 133

z Product class is used to describe the instance of agriculture products such as

seeds, wheat, ponder, etc. It is the core of the whole ontology, which is a
reflection of the view of thing-focused in the internet of things.
z Phase is a simple class to capture the conception of position in the lifecycle of
the agriculture product. Phase is a property of any product.
z Time class is a supplement for phase to describe the concrete timestamp of the
product activity. It is a property of any product.
z Location class is to capture where the product is and what organization is
responsible for the maintenance of the agriculture phase
z Condition class captures the environment parameters of the product.
Thing is a dummy root for all classes in the ontology hierarchy. To illustrate the
relationship source-from, Fig. 1 gives an example between Seed and Seedling
to show the grow-up or evolution of agriculture product. It is obvious that Seed and
Seedling are the second level ontologies.

Fig. 1. The Top Level ontology of AgOnt

The Product class hierarchy is showed in Fig. 2. All agriculture products are dived
into 5 subclasses, Seed, Seedling, Plant, Crop and Processed food, with each sources
from previous. Crop capture the concept of the product cropped directly from the
field. Different from it, Processed food describe the product produced by food
processing factories.
The Phase class describe the abstract activity of the product ignore the specific
characteristics. Currently we have 6 kinds of phases showed in Fig.3.
The Condition class captures all the sensor output to log the environment data of
the product. Depending on the phase, the conditions of a product may have different
properties. These property data are captured by smart sensors and can be propagated
into the IOT. Fig. 4 shows a snippet of the conditions.
134 S. Hu et al.

Fig. 2. The extended Product ontology

Fig. 3. The extended Phase ontology

Fig. 4. The extended Condition ontology

3 Querying on Agriculture Knowledge Base Based on AgOnt

Ontology
The AgOnt ontology provides a logical base where the semantics of the history of an
agriculture product. Different agriculture information systems can integrate into a
self-consistent knowledge base via a semantic middleware showed in Fig. 5.
 AgOnt: Ontology for Agriculture Internet of Things 135

Middleware
Query Interface

AgOnt
Reasoning
Ontology
Server
Models

Fig. 5. Reasoning on the knowledge base

A user can query the abnormal condition history of a product after the knowledge
base is built based on the ontology. The knowledge base has two kinds of
descriptions. One is the classification of the agriculture terminologies and their
relationship, the users and machines can reason and analyze the structure association
of agriculture concepts. The other is the concrete instances of the products, their
conditions and relationship, where the users and machines can judge what the history
condition caused an unsatisfied product at the end. For example, assume at some
phase a decayed product ABP is found, the user wish to identify where the problem
comes from. Depending on the setting of abnormal condition, the user can query the
history to find which phase may cause it. Assume the abnormal condition is the
temperature > 4 degC and the humidity > 30%, following query procedure is built to
identify the problem.
Set a search depth upper bound H;
Searchdepth=1;
CurProduct=ABP;
do {
Select x from products where CurProduct source-from x
and x has-Property temperature > 4 degC
or x has-Property humidity > 30%;
If x is not empty, return x;
else { CurProduct =x; searchdepth ++;}
} while (searchdepth < H)

4 Related Work
In the agricultural sector there exist already many well-established controlled
vocabularies, such as FAO's AGROVOC Thesaurus [8]. However, to build a semantic
tool entirely effective on the Internet, there is a need to re-assess the traditional
"thesaurus" approach and move towards to the development of "ontologies". Taking
FAO's multilingual thesaurus AGROVOC as a starting point, the AOS Concept
Server [9] is a project for such purpose with helping structuring and standardizing
agricultural terminology to be used in a wide range of systems in the agricultural
domain. The Concept Server will provide a core ontology in the domain of agriculture
136 S. Hu et al.

that people can take as a starting point for building more detailed domain specific
ontologies. Although it is a really huge data store in agriculture, the server is more
informatics-oriented than food lifecycles tracking.
Xie et al. [10] presented an agriculture-specific ontology to meet the requirement
of agricultural knowledge processing and discussed the method for agricultural
knowledge acquisition and representation.
Gangemi et al. [11] aimed at building an ontology in the fishery domain through
the conceptual integration and merging of existing fishery terminologies, thesauri,
reference tables, and topic trees. The ontology will support semantic interoperability
among existing fishery information systems and will enhance information extraction
and text marking, envisaging a fishery semantic web.
In summary, above ontologies are not helpful from the view of agriculture IOT
application, where more semantic interoperability between grain or food lifecycles is
focused. It is necessary to create a specific ontology suitable for the integration of
multiple data sources of multiple phases so that all history record can be recalled.

5 Conclusion and Future Work

The AgOnt ontology gives a description of the concepts of agriculture terms and
lifecycle between seeds, grains, transportations, storage and consumption. According
to the classified domain terms and definition based on attribute descriptions in the
ontology, a semantic middleware can reason on the food healthy knowledge. By using
this proposed approach, the distributed agriculture products information system can
be accessed seamlessly. Thus follow-up users can know the history of the product
before making a further processing. And the mechanism can also be used to recall
when and where may take responsibility when a problem is found.
The future work is to find mechanisms of managing the agriculture ontology at
runtime, to build a user query model to map various user requirements to reasoning
procedures, and to sum up the experience of migration from the legacy systems to an
ontology-based system.

Acknowledgement
Project supported by the National High Technology Research and Development
Program of China (2008AA01Z208 and 2009AA01Z405), the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (60772150), and the Youth Foundation of Sichuan
Province (2009-28-419) and the Applied Basic Research Program of Sichuan
Province (2010JY0013).

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2. Yan, L., Zhang, Y., Yang, L.T.: The Internet of Things: from RFID to the Next-Generation
Pervasive Networked Systems. Auerbach Publications, FL (2008)
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http://naist.cpe.ku.ac.th/agrovoc
10. Xie, N.F., Wang, W.S., Yang, Y.: Ontology-based Agricultural Knowledge Acquisition
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Technologies in Agriculture, vol. 1, pp. 349357. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
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Amsterdam (2002)
 Auto Recognition of Navigation Path for Harvest Robot
Based on Machine Vision

Bei He1, Gang Liu1, Ying Ji1,2, Yongsheng Si1,2, and Rui Gao1
1
Key laboratory of Modern Precision Agriculture System Integration Research,
Ministry of Education, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100083, China
2
College of Information Science & Technology, Agricultural University of Hebei,
Baoding 071001, China
chujining@163.com

Abstract. An algorithm of generating navigation path in orchard for harvesting

robot based on machine vision was presented. According to the features of or-
chard images, a horizontal projection method was adopted to dynamically rec-
ognize the main trunks area. Border crossing points between the tree and the
earth were detected by scanning the trunks areas, and these points were divided
into two clusters on both sides. Resorting to least-square fitting, two border
lines were extracted. The central clusters were gained by the two lines and this
straight line was regarded as the navigation path.Matlab simulation result shows
that the algorithm could effectively extract navigation path in complex orchard
environment, and correct recognition rate was 91.7%. The method is proved to
be stable and reliable, and with the deviation rate of simulation navigation angle
compared with the artificial recognition angle is around 2%.

Keywords: Navigation path, Machine vision, Orchard environment, Image

segmentation, Least square-fitting.

1 Introduction
As a type of agricultural robot, fruit-picking robot has great potential application
prospect. Picking robot technology mainly includes three aspects: recognition, picking
and movement[1]. Recognition contains recognition of ripe fruits, and acquiring the
location of fruits; picking mainly includes the design of the mechanical arms and
motion control; movement mainly refers to robot navigation. At present, the recogni-
tion has been studied and researched by many research institutions and has become a
relatively mature method to many varieties of fruits and vegetables like apples, or-
anges, cucumbers etc[2-6]. However, the research about robot navigation based on
open environment of orchard is rare on report[7].
As the development of automation, generally used navigation sensors include
global positioning system (GPS), vision sensor, ultrasonic wave sensor, laser scanner
and geomagnetic direction sensor at present[8-9]. Current research mainly focuses on
two promising methods, machine vision and GPS navigation. Most of these studies of
automatic guidance systems dealt with spatial positioning-sensing systems and steer-
ing control systems for following a predetermined path[10]. And there are only a few

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 138148, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Auto Recognition of Navigation Path for Harvest Robot Based on Machine Vision 139

researches on the field of the orchard navigation robots. Among them, applying ma-
chine vision to orchard navigation has lots of advantages, and can effectively solve
the problems in autonomous navigation of agricultural robot as explained below. First
of all, it does not require a specific navigation aid. Secondly, machine vision can
adapt complex environment, including complex terrain, unknown and variable envi-
ronment parameter, etc. Lastly, more flexible visual field, integrate information and
high reliability and accuracy will be used. The robot can move autonomously more
effectively with vision technique applied to the navigation of harvesting robot.
The research of the paper is mainly about traveling device, vision system, Arm &
gripper of the apple picking robot. Machine vision system is to recognize and locate
fruits and the navigation system is to provide the moving route shown as the Figure 1.
This paper presents a method which adopts machine vision to acquire orchard images
which are studied to obtain the navigation route to achieve robot visual navigation.

Fig. 1. Components of the robot

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Characteristics of the Orchard Environment Image

Orchard navigation, like farmland Navigation, can also use the ridge boundary line
detection that makes the aerial view of the whole orchard as target to obtain the navi-
gation route through its visual system so as to complete autonomous navigation op-
eration[11]. Actually, the orchard environment is complex with its non-structural
characteristics and diverse background. Besides, the orchard is affected by natural
sunshine, temperature and other natural aspects. Different size of fruit trees and varied
growth patterns make the orchard more uncertain, which raises the real-time require-
ment of orchard navigation.
The plants of early crops in the farmland such as wheat, soybeans, etc. are rela-
tively short and are cultivated neatly by row. Each row is parallel to another[12].
Meanwhile, the crops are usually green, the crop rows are consecutive and in line
shape or small curvature and the navigation characteristics detected do not mutate
140 B. He et al.

within a short time[13].However, fruit plants have different height, complex levels
and random spatial arrangements, the vision system can hardly detect the obvious and
consecutive navigation characteristics and cannot use the algorithm of current farm-
land visual navigation system directly.
The plants of standard fruit trees are really tall with a trunk height of 70-80cm as
usual, which makes it more obvious to make a distinction between trunk and back-
ground in visual. Based on these characteristics of standard fruit trees, the intersection
points of trunks and the ground can be found after highlighting the main trunks. And
these points can be used to generate the navigation path.

2.2 Image Acquisition and Laboratory Equipment

The Images used in the experiments are collected from the apple orchard in Nanlang
village, Qinshui County, Shanxi province and taolin village, Changping District Bei-
jing. The resolution of the collected images is 640 480. The image processing com-
puter is configured to be 2.2GHz frequency, 1.25G memory. The simulation platform
is Matlab R2009a

2.3 Identification of the Main Area

At present, most apple trees are planted in dense manner, but different standard trees
have different growth patterns. The apple trees in Nanlang village, Shanxi province
are the mixture of both Gala and Fushi, which have similar characteristic with Qiao-
hua tree whose trunk is about 70-80cm high. Based on this characteristic, the main
area of apple tree can be made more visible through the color characteristics of image
segmentation. Through the analysis of profile control line graph shown as follows, a
suitable partition factor can be found to study the color characteristics of trunks and
the background area. As shown in the Figure 2.

Fig. 2. Result of line profile map

 Auto Recognition of Navigation Path for Harvest Robot Based on Machine Vision 141

As to the study of line L, R and B pixels are the components of their gray value re-
spectively. The yellow curve represents R-B value. It is easy to find that there is little
difference between Red R and Blue B of the trunk area, while R and B of the soil
differ a lot and green component of the leaves is a little bit more obvious. R-B can
separate the trunk area and the orchard background effectively. It can be seen from
the yellow curve that the R-B components of the trunk are in a peak region, while the
R-B components of the background area are in the much falter region. The little noise
produced in the process of orchard pruning trimming where the branches fell on the
ground will be eliminated in later algorithm.
Having the original image been transformed into gray level by using the R-B color
factors, the optimal segmentation threshold value can be obtained by two-dimensional
OTSU algorithm[14]. And then get the gray image diarized, so as to acquire the re-
quested information in the trunk area. The algorithm not only uses the intensity distri-
bution information of the points but also consider the relevant pixel space information
among the points, which makes it better than one-dimensional OTSU segmentation
algorithm.

(a) (b) (c)

(a) Original image (b) Gray image (c) two-dimensional OTSU

Fig. 3. Binary image of the orchard

There will be a small amount of dry branches, weeds, etc., on the ground, which
can be regarded as noise. The small branches are also easy to produce noise. Before
accessing to the trunk region, morphological image processing is needed to avoid
effects which noise has on the extraction of trunks characteristics. The above images
are corroded and dilated by 3*1 respectively. The corrosiveness is to remove the ef-
fects of small and dry branches, the dilation in the growth direction of trunk is to
eliminate empty. After this process, there will still be some noise left, which should
be removed to avoid the misunderstanding of the extraction of future characteristics.
First of all, give the morphology image area mark, and calculate the area of each re-
gion, then remove the area of land that is less than 1/15 of the largest area, finally we
can get the binary image shown as Figure 3 and 4(a).
142 B. He et al.

(a) (b)
(a) Image by post-processing (b) Distribution diagram of each line horizontal projection

Fig. 4. The main trunk area detection by horizontal projection

From the binary image in Figure 4(a), it can be seen that the intersection of the
main trunk and the ground are concentrated in the lower part of the image, the further
the main trunk area is, the smaller the image is. The upper part of the image is small
branches, sky, and so on. In order to highlight the main trunk area, the local character-
istics of fruit trees can be neglected, and the horizontal projection method is used to
extract the main trunk area. The steps are as follows:
Set image resolution to M N , I (i, j ) as the image gray value point ( i , j ) , then
scan the binary image progressively, and calculate the horizontal projection value of
each line s (i ) ,
M
s (i ) =
j =1
I (i , j ) ( i = 1, 2 , L , N )

which is to select the appropriate threshold, if it is appropriate, it is the main trunk

area. Otherwise, it is not.
From Figure 4(b), it is easy to see that the horizontal line value in the central area
is really low. That is the line where the trunk, small branches and the sky separate
from each other. In actual practice, first set threshold T = 200 , record the row num-
ber and keep the pixel value below the line when the horizontal line number is smaller
than the threshold value to extract the trunk area. In the image processing, extract
main parts of the image area if the horizontal projection value is smaller than the
threshold, the image resolution in the follow-up process is M h.

2.4 Main Feature Point Extraction

According to the features of standard tree that the trunk are upright and obviously
easy to distinguish, the intersection of the trunk and the ground can be regarded as
 Auto Recognition of Navigation Path for Harvest Robot Based on Machine Vision 143

feature points to represent fruit trees, to reduce calculation. As the impact of small
branches, a very small amount of noise is still existed in the picture after trunk extrac-
tion. By using the area threshold method, an area of less than the maximum area of
1/80 of the region is removed to get a binary image whose trunk area is clear as
Figure 5(a) shows.
Feature point extraction algorithm is described as follows:
1. Set an empty matrix P, the size is the same as the size of the trunk extraction re-
gional image, marked as M h .
2. Mark regionally the images whose noise has been removed. Scan each region
which represents each fruit tree that has trunk feature. Suppose that there are n re-
gions exist in this image.
3. Scan the marked region k line by line. Setting the current row is row i , tested
them one by one by order of the columns. If the pixel value of the current detec-
tion point ( i , j ) is k, meanwhile, the meeting point ( i , j 1) of the pixel values
and point ( i + 1, j ) values are both 0, the tested point is suit to the features that
the intersection of the trunk and the ground.(Referred as the candidate point).
4. Put the coordinates of the suitable candidate points in region k into the empty ma-
trix P. Test again. Search the point has the largest abscissa value, which means
finding the point that is closest to the ground to represent the fruit trees. Set the
remaining points as background points.
5. If the detecting area k = n , stop searching. Otherwise, return (3).
6. After scanning the feature points by the above steps, each region will have a
unique feature point to represent the fruit tree. By comparing 60 apple pictures
which were taken in similar position, different time, different parts, fruit trees--the
intersection of the trunk and the ground distribute on both sides of the image ac-
cording to the probability. Therefore, when the feature points are classified, firstly
the vertical midline of the image (half of the total number of columns the image)
is taken as the base line of the feature points to classify. When the feature points in
the image are on the left, the corresponding coordinates will be saved into array
Q1; otherwise, when the feature point in the image are on the right, the corre-
sponding coordinate values will be saved into array Q2.

2.5 Navigation Path Line Detection

Similar to crops, fruit trees are naturally formed in a straight line. Similarly, the path
of mobile robot in a short time can be approximately seen as a straight line. So the
straight-line path model can be used on the study [13].The most generally used line
detection methods are the least square method and the Hough transform and some
methods based on these forms. This paper takes the intersection points of fruit trees
and the ground as the feature points. Feature points in the vision field are limited, so
the least square method which has high speed and accuracy, are adopted to test the
two junction lines. Finally the robot's navigation path is generated by extracting the
center points of the junction line.
144 B. He et al.

(a)

(b) (c)
(a) The main trunk area (b) Feature points (c) Navigation line detection

Fig. 5. Guidance path line of an apple orchard (Qinshui, Shanxi)

3 Results and Analysis

The angle between geometric central line which serves as navigation line and hori-
zontal line is an important factor of navigation. It decides the angle that the robot
needs to adjust. It means the robot is walking along the best direction of safe moving
in visual field, when the angle is close to 90 [11].
60 images were used to test the algorithm. 20 images are taken in orchards in
Nanlang Village, Qinshui County, Shanxi province, and the rest are taken in orchards
in Taolin Village, Changping District, Beijing. Correct recognition rate was 91.7%.

Table 1. Comparison of navigation lines in different orchards

The number of The

The Weather Figure Segmente extracted feature points simulation
orchard Condition number d result navigation
Left line Right line
angle /()
Taolin, Sunny Effective
Fig.6 3 3 114.2
Beijing (Front lit) Fig.6(b)
Qinshui, Sunny Effective
Fig.5 5 6 82.5
Shanxi (Front lit) Fig.3(c)

Qinshui, Effective
Cloudy Fig.7 5 5 95.8
Shanxi Fig.7(b)
 Auto Recognition of Navigation Path for Harvest Robot Based on Machine Vision 145

Table 1 shows the segmentation, extracted feature points and simulation angles gen-
erated by this algorithm under different orchard environment and the automatic extrac-
tion of navigation lines in the two different orchard backgrounds. It can be seen from
the table, the navigation line could be auto generated in various orchards environment.
The angles of the simulation navigation lines are nearly 90and can fulfill the path
extracting request of autonomous navigation in complex orchard environment.

(a) (b) (c)

(d)

(e) (f)
(a) Original Image (b) Segmentation Image (c) Image by post-processing (d) The
main trunk area (e) Feature points (f) Navigation line detection

Fig. 6. Guidance path line of an apple orchard ( Taolin, Beijing)

Five images which are failure to extract the navigation line are all taken in Taolin
Village, Changping District of Beijing. Firstly the main failure reason is the complex-
ity of background. And there are the iron rods next to fruit trees, which can cause the
adjacent segmentation of trunk regions, reduce the feature points, result in detection
errors. Secondly, because of the light effect, there are many shaded area in trees, re-
sulting in the similar color of dry twigs and leaves, causing false segmentation.
To verify the reliability of the algorithm, the simulation result was compared with
manual recognition. Four images were taken from each orchard. Calculate the hori-
zontal level of artificial fitting navigation under Matlab to get the deviation between
the artificial recognition angle and simulation navigation angle. (shown as Table 2),
and the deviation turns out to be around 2%.
146 B. He et al.

(a) (b) (c)

(d)

(e) (f)
(a) Original Image (b) Segmentation Image (c) Image by post-processing (d) The
main trunk area (e) Feature points (f) Navigation line detection

Fig. 7. Guidance path line of an apple orchard ( Xinshui, Shanxi)

Table 2. Comparison between simulation and artificial recognition

Simulation Artificial Devia-

The orchard Deviation
Number navigation recognition tion
Environment rate /%
angle /() angle /() /()

1 113.2 110.6 2.6 2.35

Taolin, Beijing 2 106.9 103.6 3.3 3.19
(Fig.6 etc) 3 94.1 97.2 3.1 3.19
4 80.7 83.8 3.1 3.70
5 82.5 83.9 0.6 0.72
Qinshui, Shanxi 6 86.1 85.7 0.3 0.35
(Fig.7 etc) 7 93.8 92..6 1.2 1.30
8 87.5 86.8 0.7 0.81
 Auto Recognition of Navigation Path for Harvest Robot Based on Machine Vision 147

4 Conclusions
(1) The color difference R-B and two-dimensional OTSU algorithm was employed to
segment the trunk from the background. Dead leaves and soil background did not
affect the segmentation of the trunk region. But the algorithm is not effective when
processing green weeds on the ground. Morphological method was adopted to elimi-
nate the noises such as tiny branches and fading leaves, horizontal projection method
was adopted to dynamically recognize the tree trunks, and the region segmentation
was used to eliminate the influence of tiny branches for a second time. This algorithm
can extract the main trunk area effectively.
(2) By scanning the trunks areas, border crossing points of the bottom of the tree and
ground were detected, and these points were divided into two clusters on both sides
based on neighboring relationship. Resorting to least-square fitting, two border lines
were extracted. The central line was gained by the two lines. It is robust and effective
in many orchard environments. The recognition rate is 91.6%.
(3) The simulation result is compared with artificial recognition in two orchard envi-
ronment. The result shows that the generated navigation path is reliable, safe and can
satisfy the moving request of harvesting robot.
(4) This algorithm is suitable for the orchard where the ground had less weed and the
main area of standard trees were more visible. For the stunted trees, if there are more
weeds and the background is extremely complex in an orchard, it is better to improve
the algorithm or use another method.

Acknowledgments. This research is sponsored by the project 2006AA10Z255 and

National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.30900869). All of the men-
tioned support is gratefully acknowledged.

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 An Agricultural Tri-dimensional Pollution Data
Management Platform Based on DNDC Model

Lihua Jiang1,2, Wensheng Wang1,2, Xiaorong Yang1,2,

Nengfu Xie1,2, and Youping Cheng3
1
Agriculture Information Institute, Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences,
Beijing, 100081, China
2
Key Laboratory of Digital Agricultural Early-warning Technology,
Agriculture Information Institute, Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences, Beijing, 100081
3
Agriculture Bureau, Huailai County, Hebei Province, 075400, China
{jianglh,wangwsh,yxr,nf.xie,youping}@caas.net.cn

Abstract. DNDC is a computer simulation model of carbon and nitrogen bio-

geochemistry in agro-ecosystems. It is used in agricultural tri-dimensional pol-
lution control widely. Learning from abroad advanced technologies and research
methods, we have developed an agricultural tri-dimensional pollution data
submission and management platform based on DNDC model. The platform is
very important for sharing and building our agricultural carbon and nitrogen
chain database.

Keywords: DNDC, United Storage, Format Conversion.

1 Introduction

DNDC (DeNitrification-DeComposition) is a computer simulation model of carbon

and nitrogen biogeochemistry in agro-ecosystems. The model can be used for pre-
dicting crop growth, soil temperature and moisture regimes, soil carbon dynamics,
nitrogen leaching, and emissions of trace gases including nitrous oxide (N2O), nitric
oxide (NO), dinitrogen (N2), ammonia (NH3), methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide
(CO2). Studying on carbon and nitrogen chain in agricultural tri-dimensional pollution
[1] and blocking carbon and nitrogen pollution sources is very important for prevention
and treatment agricultural carbon and nitrogen pollution [2]. Development DNDC [3]
model needed data management system can undoubtedly provides important scientific
support for our country agriculture carbon and nitrogen emission reduction [4] database
construction and data sharing.
Study and develop a data submission, management and supporting DNDC model
platform for every level user in agriculture tri-dimensional [5] preventive treatment centre.
Data submission and management module provides data management interface for ad-
ministrators and is in favor of adjusting agriculture tri-dimensional pollution data. Assis-
tant DNDC [6] model module can read out data from DNDC database for users and create
txt files and also imports DNDC model results to database according to user willing.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 149154, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
150 L. Jiang et al.

2 Platform Main Functions

This platform is made up of distributed data submission and management module,

submitted data centralized management module and assistant DNDC module. The
functions of platform are shown in figure 1.

platform

Data Submission System Assistant DNDC System

Result files Read

Central Administrator Database Base Administrator Connect Database Create txt file
in Database

Data Database personal User Data Table Base Site Region Site Mode Region
Operation Management Management Operation Submission Operation Operation Mode Mode Result Mode Result
Property Management

Batching Submission

Region Management
Submit Item by Item

Climate File
Data management

Fertigation File
Table management

Personal Info Modify

Base management

Table Selection

Property Selection

Apply Feedback

Base Info Modify

Flooding File

lab_clim File
Property Apply

Change Apply

GIS File

Fig. 1. Platform main functions

2.1 Distributed Data Submission and Management Module

Distributed data submission and management module provides several function inter-
faces for users and base administrator can realize heterogeneous data submission. Base
administrator can submit the collected agricultural tri-dimensional data to central da-
tabase by using function interface in favor of centralized and unified management.
Central administrator can manage all base submitted information including modifying
and deleting the information. In addition, base administrator can self-determine the
submitted tables and corresponding attributes of tables and make up personal operation
interface. The platform realizes personal management.

2.2 Submitted Data Centralized Management

Platform can realize central management of submitted data from bases and provides
functional interface in which central administrator can modify construction of database
directly. It is very convenient and visual for users to operate database. The operation of
database construction includes adding and deleting tables and adding and deleting
attributes of tables.
 An Agricultural Tri-dimensional Pollution Data Management Platform 151

2.3 Assistant DNDC Module

Functions of the module is shown in figure 2 including database connecting, data

format conversion from database to DNDC model, storage of results from DNDC
stimulation model to database . DNDC model sometimes will use some text files for
example climate files, fertigation files, flooding files in site mode and initial data files
in region mode and these files can created in assistant DNDC module. User can read
result files from DNDC model to database in the platform. Within the power of privi-
lege, user can select different formats result files in different modes and store them in
corresponding database.

Txt batch data Txt format data

read in data DNDC model read out results
calculate software
Csv format data
Input data item by item

acquire data

build up platform, read out data

Database

read in build up platform, read out

from database, convert format, acquire data
result file and convert to
and create DNDC model
database recognize format.
recognized documents

Fig. 2. Main functions logic diagram of assistant DNDC module

3 Key Technologies

In developing process, we solve the key technology problems including distributed

heterogeneous data submission, data submission item by item or in batch, format
conversion from database to DNDC model, storage of DNDC model results, function
management mechanism based on role and so on.

3.1 Distributed Heterogeneous Data Submission Technology

In distributed data submission process, the tables submitted by different bases are dif-
ferent. If in designing process, every base is shown all the tables, the system is not well
targeted and not convenient for users. But if every base corresponding table is designed in
advance, it is also not perfect, because it is possible to change the submitted data tables.
The fields in tables are in the same reasons. Aiming at above problems, the platform
provides table views and user personal control of submission interface fields display
function. At first, users can select needed tables by random in platform and then naviga-
tion bar will embody users personal choice and provide pointed interface. In the next
152 L. Jiang et al.

place, users can select corresponding field attributes of tables in function interface and
make up personal submission interface. It is convenient for different users to operate.

3.2 Data Submission Item by Item or in Batch Technology

Distributed data submission and management module mainly realizes different bases
and different information submission function. So submission function is the key and
difficult problem of the platform. Because the quantity of bases using the platform is
not limited and data bulk submitted by bases is not limited, if system only provides
submission item by item function, when submitted data bulk is so large, system will
waste a lot of time. So system also provides submission in batch function. In submis-
sion data item by item, formats of submitted data must be controlled seriously when
base administrator submits data to central databases. In submission item by item in-
terface, platform provides description of submitted attributes data format and clear clue
of input error. User can realize submit a small quantity of unpacked data correctly.
When user needs to submit a mass of packed data, data submitting in batch module is

needed and shows superiority fully. The system provides two different batching sub-
mission means: Import from Excel files to database. If user has already stored col-
lected data in definite format in Excel files and can use the batching submission in-

terface to import them to central database quickly after mapping. It can save a lot of
importing item by item time. Import data from local database to central database. In
many cases, user stores collected data in local database in favor of partial management.
At the moment, user can use batching submission module to copy local data to central
database quickly.

3.3 Format Conversion Technology from Database to DNDC Model

The central database stores data from every base. Administrator stores them in fixed
format to many stables in database. When DNDC model is used to stimulate agricul-
tural tri-dimensional pollution preventive treatment, data in database is needed and a lot
of them need to be adopted in fixed text document format. Formats of the data in da-
tabase should be converted to format which DNDC model can recognize and use.
Format conversion is a dynamic form. Platform shows all choices possibly used in text
files, every table name relevant to DNDC model in database and all fields name of the
tables. When user uses the platform, he can decide items in text file and the table and
fields in database.

3.4 Storage DNDC Model Results to Database Technology

User uses DNDC model to stimulate and get some results. According to different
stimulation in different modes, the result files have two formats: txt and csv. The format
of result data in above two formats result files is the same and assistant DNDC module
can read out and show data items of result files. If user wants read data item in result files
in some table in database, he can dynamically select data item in choice box. In the
process of reading in, user can decide how to map data items into the fields in tables or
whether read data items to correspond tables in database. And txt result file data can be
 An Agricultural Tri-dimensional Pollution Data Management Platform 153

read in five tables in the database and user can decide whether read in tables or which
tables should be read in. Csv result file data can be read in one table in database. When
user selects fields corresponding to data item, he can import all data to database. When
the above two types of files are imported to database, the user name is stored in data-
base automatically in order that central administrator can adjust database management.

3.5 System Function Management Mechanism Based on Role

The system has three user roles: central administrator, base administrator and DNDC
user. Base administrator collects local base data and submits to platform. Central ad-
ministrator has all management privilege and can limit base administrator manage-
ment privilege. When DNDC user uses DNDC model, central administrator will give
privilege to use assistant DNDC model. DNDC user can be base administrator and
central administrator and also other privileged user.

4 Technology Innovation

4.1 Distributional Heterogeneous Agricultural Tri-dimensional Pollution Data

Submission Technology

The platform solves distributed heterogeneous agricultural tri-dimensional pollution

data submission in many nodes technology and provides table views and personal
control of submission interface fields display function. At first, user can select needed
tables at random in the platform and navigation bar will embody user personal selec-
tion and provides pointed interface. Secondly, user can select corresponding field at-
tributes of tables and create personal submission interface. It is convenient for different

users to operate different operations. Platform provides data submission item by item
and batching submission. In submission data item by item interface, formats of
submitted data must be controlled seriously when base administrator submits data to
central databases. Platform provides description of submitted attributes data format and

clear clue of input error. User can realize submit a small quantity of unpacked data
correctly. Batching submission: Platform provides two different batching submis-
sion methods: importing from Excel files to central database and importing from local
database to central database. By the batching submission module provided by system,
users can copy data in local database quickly to central database.

4.2 Mutual Access Technology of DNDC Model Software and Database

In the process of DNDC model accumulation software working, users should input
relevant data and read in some fixed format text files under some circumstances. All
data should be read out from database, so DNDC software is needed to be able to visit
database and can read the data. The result data stimulated by DNDC model should be
stored in database and DNDC software is required to mutual access with database.
Assistant DNDC module can realize DNDC and database mutual access and data
transmission. When data is read from database and built up txt files, the platform not
154 L. Jiang et al.

only shows txt files but also tables and fields in database. So user can decide how to
map by himself. When part of result data from DNDC model is stored in database,
result files has different formats and store in different formats. After user selects the
loading result files, platform will show every data item and field names of tables in
database. User can decide how to map data item in result files to fields of tables in the
database and read in result data to database. It is convenient to user.

5 Conclusion

Combined with our country ecology system actual situation, introducing foreign de-
veloped DNDC model and development carbon and nitrogen emission reduction mo-
tivation model can help scientists and engineers judge intuitively and make a strategic
decision. So we build up a mutual platform in which collect and manage data for
DNDC model. For studying agricultural tri-dimension pollution, validation, amend-
ment and operation agricultural tri-dimension pollution carbon and nitrogen emission
reduction motivation model needs a lot of data support, so standardization of database
is very important. In the platform, database can receive all the collected data from bases
administrator. Central system administrator can adjust database according to types of
collected data in order to supporting our country actual situation and DNDC model.

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Science and Technology Major Project of the
Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant No. 2009ZX03001-019-01),
Special fund project for Basic Science Research Business Fee, AIIS(Grant No. 2010-J).

References

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China 8(4), 464471 (2009)
3. Chen, P.Q., Huang, Y., Yu, G.R.: Carbon cycle of terrestrial ecosystem. Science Press,
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pine. Journal of Environmental Sciences 20, 339346 (2008)
 An Analysis on the Inter-annual Spatial and Temporal
Variation of the Water Table Depth and Salinity in Hetao
Irrigation District, Inner Mongolia, China

Jun Du1,2, Peiling Yang1,*, Yunkai Li1, Shumei Ren1, Xianyue Li1, Yandong Xue1,
Lingyan Wang1, and Wei Zhao1
1
College of Water Conservancy and Civil Engineering, China Agricultural University,
Beijing 100081, China
2
Bureau of Ningxia Farm, Yinchuan Ningxia 750001, China
dujun7927@163.com, yangpeiling@126.com, liyunkai@126.com,
renshumei@126.com, xueyandong1104@yahoo.cn,
lxywater@yahoo.com.cn, wanglingyan@163.com

Abstract. Long-term Yellow River irrigation and the unique natural conditions in
the Heitao Irrigation District (HID) Inner Mongolia, China, has led to serious
environmental problems such as the shallower groundwater table and soil
secondary salinization, etc. The conflicts among socio-economic development,
water shortage and environmental degradation have become increasingly critical.
By using the statistical methods, geo-statistical methods and ArcGIS9.0, we
analyze the temporal and spatial variation of depth to water table (DWT) and
groundwater salinity in the three different irrigation seasons in 2001, 2002 and
2003 respectively. The results show that DWT and groundwater salinity has
formed a ribbon distribution after the long-term Yellow River irrigation. DWT is
medium spatial correlative and the average spatial autocorrelation distance is
18.5km; the groundwater salinity is strong spatial correlative and the average
spatial autocorrelation distance is 12.5km. The inter-annual distribution of DWT
and groundwater salinity in 2001 is quite similar with it in 2002 and 2003. The
DWT in western area, eastern area and a small part of middle area are shallower
than other area in HID. The average DWT in March reached maximum and its
minimum is in November each year. There are two high salinity degree zones
(M>5000mg/l and even some other M>30000mg/l). The shallower groundwater
salinity in the southeast and northwest are higher than that of in the middle part of
HID. The shallower water table depth is, the higher the salinity of groundwater will
be; the deeper water table depth is, the lower the salinity of groundwater will be.

Keywords: Hetao Irrigation District, Depth water table, groundwater salinity,

spatial and temporal variation.

1 Introduction
The HID (4019-4118 N, 10620-10919 E) is one of the three largest irrigation
districts in China and be located the arid western part of Inner Mongolia Autonomous

*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 155177, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
156 J. Du et al.

Region, China (Fig.1). The total land area of the HID is about 1.1104 km2, the irrigable
land area is about 0.77104 km2, but due to salinity problems, the currently irrigated
land area is only about 0.57104 km2. HID is in the mid-temperate zone with conti-
nental-monsoon arid climate. The weather is dry and hot during summer and severely

cold with little snow in winter. From November to next March is a freeze-thaw period.
Mean annual temperature is 6.3~7.7 . During the winter the average air temperature
are -10 C and the soil freezing depths about 1.0 m. The average annual pan evapora-
tion is about 2164 mm. Across HID, the average annual precipitation 168 mm recently
10 years. The the average ground slope is about 1/8000~1/4000 (from southwest to
northeast). The ground elevation ranges from 1043 m to 1018 m. The main soil types
are irrigation-warping soil and saline soil which was the non-zonal soils in HID. The
average soil bulk density (0-100cm) is 1.45 g/cm3 (Yang Jingyu, 2006).

Fig. 1. Map of Irrigation District located and observation wells distribution

The most common crops are sunflower, wheat, and corn. Flood irrigation is the most
common irrigation method in the HID. The average depth of irrigation is 450 mm.
Farmland is typically irrigated 7 times each year in 3 irrigating seasons. The 3 irrigation
seasons are: summer irrigation (3 irrigation times, from April to June), the first-autumn
irrigation (3 irrigation times, from July to September), and the second-autumn irriga-
tion (1 irrigation times, from October to November). The summer and first-autumn
irrigation are during the growing season of the crop. The purpose of the second-autumn
irrigation period is to bank soil water and leach salt. From 1989 to 2005, the average
annual water diversion of irrigation from the Yellow River is 5.2109 m3 by 1 main
canal and 13 sub-main canals. Farmland recession water is drainage into the
 An Analysis on the Inter-annual Spatial and Temporal Variation 157

Wuliangsuhai Lake (Fig.1) by 1 main ditch and 10 sub-main ditches (Wang et al.,
2004), and the average annual drainage amount was 0.5109 m3. The water diversion of
irrigation in 2001, 2002 and 2003 was 4.89109 m3, 5.08109 m3 and 4.1109 m3 re-
spectively. The salts which are brought by the irrigation water onto the farmland soil
averages annually 235.5108 kg, but the average annual discharged salt from the entire
district by drainage is only 75.0108 kg (Wang et al.,2004). For the period from 1987 to
1997, the average annual salt accumulation was estimated to be 3 mg/ha (Feng et al.,
2003). About half of the irrigated cropland is saline-alkali soil (Feng et al., 2005). DWT
is typically 1.0~1.5 m during the growing season and about 0.5 m following the sec-
ond-autumn irrigation (from October to November) (Hao et al., 2008a).
Due to the arid climate, the water diversion from Yellow River is critical for agri-
culture in the HID. There are significant negative effects from flood irrigation and canal
seepage. The resulting shallower DWT combined with intensive evaporation has
produced a very high threat of soil salinization. About 18.8% of the total land area in
the irrigation district has been abandoned because of the salinization problem, and
about 43.0% of the irrigated area is significantly impacted salinization problem of
various degrees (Qu et al., 2007). Geological structure, geographical conditions, and
climate factors determine the hydrological cycle and the resulting potential for salini-
zation. In HID, there are many factors affecting the salinity such as precipitation,
evaporation, DWT, and water diversion irrigation from Yellow River (Wang et al.,
2007; Yue et al., 2009). The geological structure determines that the major hydrologic
pathway for groundwater loss away from the HID is through the phreatic evaporation
(Hao et al., 2008a). And the accumulated salt in the deeper soil were dragged into the
surface soil in this process. So, the process of groundwater discharge is the dominated
factors related to the production, development, and evolution of the soil salinization in
HID. Irrigation (precipitation), infiltration, drainage, and groundwater evaporation,
create the natural-artificial surface water system that is the most important factor in
hydrological cycle for the HID (Hao et al., 2008a).
A previous study showed that shallower groundwater had a significant effect on
evaporation-transpiration and on soil water salinity. Evaporation exacerbated the sur-
face soil water salinity, while the transpiration reduced the soil water salinity in the
growth period of vegetation (Zhang et al., 2004). Climate condition and groundwater
level fluctuation were the major environmental factors on the salinization of soil (Chen
et al., 1997). Some studies on the salinity and DWT in HID showed that DWT is in

1.5m 2.0m contribute to the crops uptake the groundwater, but to minimize salin-
izion, DWT should be controlled below 2.0m from the soil surface (Kong, 2009). When
the water diversions from the Yellow River to the HID were reduced by 30%, there was
resulting higher of DWT and reduction in salinity soil, but there was greater potential
for soil water deficit and crop water stress. (Qu et al., 2007). Other researchers have
reported on the soil salinization issues in HID such as: saline land improvement, the
relationship between the soil salinization and the DWT, the distribution of salt in the
soil profile, the salt balance, and the water balance (Yang et a1.,2003; Kong, et
a1.,2004;Wang et a1., 2004; Jia et a1.,2006; Gao et a1., 2008a,b). But there are very
few studies on the distribution of DWT and groundwater salinity in the entire HID.
Therefore, this report is an analysis of the spatial and temporal variation of the DWT
and groundwater salinity.
158 J. Du et al.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 DWT Measurement and Water Samples Analysis
In this analysis, the HID was divided into 5 irrigated areas: Yigan, Jiefangzha, Yongji,
Yichang and Wulate (Fig.1). There were 178 wells (Fig.2) distributed over the entire
District. Seventy-five wells were used to observe the DWT, 42 wells were used to col-
lect groundwater samples, while 61 well were used for both DWT and water samples.

measuring
line the well mouth

the ground
surface

Leaking hole
Bobber
non-woven Fabric
.1m Filter Layer
?0

groundwater
surface

m Well shaft
.25
well bottom R0

Artesian Water

Fig. 2. The observation wells construction

The water quality analysis was performed at the Bayannur Water Conser-
vancy-Science Institute Laboratory, Linhe, China. The constituent ions included: Na+
and K+ (determined by the flare photometer method), Ca2+ and Mg2+ (determined by
EDTA titration), CO32- and HCO3- (determined by the acid titration), CL- (determined
by AgNO3 titration method), SO42- (determined by EDTA indirect titration method).
DWT was measured directly by a measuring tape with a detector at the end (Fig.2).
The detector gave a signal when it reached the water surface and the length of the tape
was recorded. Depth to groundwater table was calculated by subtracting the above
ground wells body height (L1) from the recorded length of the tape. DWT calculate is
given by:
DWT=L-L1 (1)
Where DWT is the distance from the ground surface to the groundwater table. L is the
distance from the well mouth to the groundwater surface. L1 is the distance from the
well mouth to the ground surface. DWT were measured once a week. Water samples
for chemical analysis were collected at 15 in every month.
 An Analysis on the Inter-annual Spatial and Temporal Variation 159

2.2 Typical Years and Typical Irrigation Period

Data from 2001, 2002 and 2003 years were analyzed to determine the inter-annual
variation of DWT and groundwater salinity, which will continue in time and reflects the
water diversion for irrigation into the HID. Also in this analysis, the March, July, and
November was taken as typical period which was the fluctuation of DWT and the
variation of the shallower groundwater salinity.

2.3 Sampling Site Data and Processing

The value of DWT and groundwater salinity of 178 observation wells were used to
develop the point file with ArcGIS9.0 and project the coordinate transformation to
produced the distribution map for the geo-statistical analysis (Fig.1).Then of DWT and
groundwater salinity from corresponding sampling points were entered into Arc GIS9.0
to form the attributive data to matched the geographic data of sampling points.

2.4 Correlation Analysis

SPSS13.0 was used to analyze the change and relationship between DWT and shal-
lower groundwater in March, July and November respectively. The data of DWT from
7 wells which less affected by the groundwater exploration were selected to analyzed
the annual change of DWT each year (Fig.4, 5, 6). The data of 61 wells DWT were as
abscissa and with the corresponding salinity degree of groundwater as ordinate to make
the relation curve to analyze the relationship between the groundwater salinity and
DWT (Fig.25) in March, July, and November, respectively.

2.5 Geo-statistical Method and Processing

Geo-statistical methods and ArcGIS9.0 were used to analyze the temporal and spatial
variation of DWT and groundwater salinity from 2001 to 2003. Geo-statistical methods
can be used to describe the spatial variability of environment and reveal the spatial

heterogeneity and spatial pattern of natural phenomena (Pebesma et al. 1997). The
semi-variogram model and Kriging interpolation are the two main geo-statistical
methods used in this analysis (Jin et al.,1999; Sousa et al., 1999; Desbarats et al., 2002;
Vijendra et al., 2004; Tong et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2007; Yue et al., 2009; Hu
et al.2001, 2009; Husam,2010).
To get a better spatial estimation from sampling points, the variance of estimation
error should be minimal. The Kriging method was used to obtain the variance of es-
timate. The advantage of Kriging is that it is the Best Linear Unbiased Estimator of the
unknown fields (Journel and Huijbregts, 1992).The Kriging variance of estimate is
independent of the actual measurements from the field. Ordinary Kriging interpolation
at a point x0 is given by:
n
Z ( x0 ) = ni Z ( xi ) (2)
i =1
160 J. Du et al.

Where Z*(x0) is the estimated value, n is the number of points, Z(xi) is the measured
value at point xi, and i the Kriging weight. To calculate the Kriging variance, the
semi-variogram is needed. The semi-variogram (usually called a variogram) is half
the variance of measurement differences at all data pairs with the same distance (h).
The Kriging variance is given by:

3)
Nh
1
( h) =
2Nh
[Z ( x + h) Z ( x )]
i =1
i i
2

Where r(h) is semi-variogram, h is step length, namely the spatial interval of sampling
points used for the classification to decrease the individual number of spatial distance
of various sampling point assemblages, N(h) is the logarithm of sampling point when
the spacing is h, and z(xi) and z(xi+h) are the values when the variable Z is at the xi and
xi+h positions, respectively.

Fig. 3. Experimental semi-variogram (dots) and fitted semi-variogram model

When computing the semi-variance (h) for different values of h, and when h is
plotted versus (h), an experimental semi-variogram was obtained (Fig. 3. Sousa et al.,
1999). However the experimental semi-variogram is not applicable in Kriging estima-
tion because it cannot be represented by an equation. A semi-variogram model must
then be adjusted to the experimental one, as exemplified in Fig.3 by the fitting of the
Spherical equation. The best-fitted semi-variogram model has been used to produce the
Kriging variance map. Selection of the best-fitted model was based on the condition
that the root-mean-square was close to 0,the average standard error is minimum, the
mean standardized was close to the standard error and the root-mean-square stan-
dardized was close to 1 (Tang, 2007). Then GIS-Spatial Analyst tool in ArcGIS9.0
was used to produce a priority map and the best-fitted mode.
To obtain Kriging variance, construction of the variogram is needed. The variogram
parameters are the sill, nugget, and the range. The nugget is the variogram value at the
origin. Sometimes the nugget is different from zero due to measurement error. The
 An Analysis on the Inter-annual Spatial and Temporal Variation 161

range is the distance at which the variogram reaches the sill value. Three modules
included Spherical model (Eq.4), Exponential model (Eq.5) and Gaussian model (Eq.6)
were used in this study.
(h) = C0 + C1[1.5 ( h / a ) 0.5 ( h / a ) ]
(4)
3

( h) = C0 + C1[1 e h / a ] (5)

( h) = C0 + C1[1 e ( h / a ) ]
2
(6)

Where C0 is nugget, which represents the spatial heterogeneity of the stochastic

component. The sill value, ( C0 + C ), is the attribute of the system or the maximum
variation of the regional variables. The higher the sill value is, the larger the degree of
the total spatial heterogeneity will be. The value of a is the range. Sill (C0+C) and
nugget (C0) were used to describe the spatial heterogeneity. The ratio of nugget: sill
(C0/ C0+C) reflected the total spatial heterogeneity (Li et al., 1995).
In this study, Histogram and Normal QQplot were the geo-statistical modules
used with ArcGIS9.0. These modules were applied to analyze the normality of the 178
wells data of DWT and groundwater salinity each month. The results shown that the
mean data comply with lognormal distribution. The ordinary Kriging interpolation
method was applied to optimal mathematical model, and set the values of Lag size

and Number of lags etc. to get the optimal predication map (Fig.7 24) and the

best-fitted model (Eq.4 6). Table 1 2 lists several models with their respective sill
and nugget.

3 Results and Discussion

3.1 Analysis of the Spatial Structure of DWT and Groundwater Salinity

The ratio of C0: (C0+C) reflected the total spatial heterogeneity. A higher ratio indicates
that the stochastic component was the main factor caused the spatial heterogeneity. The

ratio of C0: (C0+ C1) was in the range of 25% 75% of the spatial structure of DWT in
the three years(Tab. 1). It shown that the spatial structure variation of DWT was not
only affected by the structure factors but also by the random factors (the stochastic
component). Due to the average annual precipitation is 168 mm and the irrigation water
is the mainly recharge source of DWT. So the spatial structure variation of DWT was
affected by the time and amount of the agricultural irrigation mainly during the irriga-
tion season. The structure factors such as the terrain, landform and climate would be
responsible for the variation of the spatial structure of DWT when the total water di-
versions of irrigation were reduced. For example, although the water diversions of
irrigation in 2003 were reduced to 80% of the average annual water diversions of ir-
rigation and the ratio of C0: (C0+ C1) of the spatial structure of DWT in July and No-
vember decreased to 34.3 and 37.5 respectively, the distribution of DWT in July and
November 2003 were similar to that of 2001 and 2002(Fig. 8, 11 and 14. Fig. 10, 12 and
162 J. Du et al.

Table 1. The parameters of semi-variogram models for shallow groundwater table depth

Ran Nug Par Sill C0/ (C0+ C1)

Year month Model
km C0 C1 C0+ C1 %
Mar Sph 22.7 0.15 0.11 0.26 58.2
2001 July Exp 11.5 0.10 0.20 0.30 51.8
Nov Sph 13.4 0.24 0.09 0.33 73
March Sph 28.4 0.04 0.01 0.05 72
2002 July Exp 19 0.05 0.06 0.11 46.6
Nov Sph 19 0.16 0.14 0.29 53.6
Mar Sph 22.7 0.03 0.02 0.05 52.7
2003 Jul Gau 19 0.04 0.08 0.13 34.3
Nov Exp 10.7 0.14 0.24 0.38 37.5
mean 18.5 0.09 0.09 0.19 47.8

Table 2. The parameters of semi-variogram models for shallow groundwater salinity

Ran Nug Par Sill C0/ (C0+ C1)

year month Model
km C0 C1 C0+ C1 %
Mar Gau 11.1 0.05 0.68 0.72 6.4

2001 Jul Sph 12.3 0.11 0.64 0.74 14.3

Nov Gau 9.5 0.18 0.53 0.71 25

Mar Sph 23 0.20 0.65 0.85 23.3

2002 Jul Sph 13.5 0.35 0.42 0.77 45.7
Nov Gau 11.8 0.35 0.46 0.81 43.4
Mar Exp 7.9 0.04 0.79 0.83 4.7
2003 Jul Exp 11.5 0.11 0.68 0.79 13.8
Nov Exp 8.4 0.00 0.69 0.69 0.3
mean 12.1 0.16 0.61 0.77 20.1

15.). Therefore, the spatial structure of DWT was the moderate spatial correlation and
the average corresponding distance was 18.5 km among the three years (Tab.1). These
result shown that the co-working of the structure factors and random factors were the
mainly factor of the variation of the spatial structure of DWT in HID.
 An Analysis on the Inter-annual Spatial and Temporal Variation 163

The table 2 shown that the ratio of C0: (C0+ C1) of spatial structure of groundwater
salinity varied from 0.3 to 45.7 in the three years. The spatial structure of groundwater
salinity had the strong spatial correlation and the average corresponding distance was
12.1km. Since the salt which in the irrigation water (the Yellow River water salt content
was 480 mg/l) were the mainly recharge resource of the shallower groundwater salinity,
the different water diversions of irrigation would cause the variation of the shallower
groundwater salinity. Meanwhile, the waste discharge of industries and civil life also
enhanced the variation of it. This result shown that the groundwater salinity was af-
fected by the random factors, such as irrigation water salt, field fertilization and waste
discharge of industries and civil life in HID.

3.2 Analysis of Temporal and Spatial Variation of the DWT

3.2.1 Temporal Variation of DWT

The variation of DWT of 7 wells which without the affects of groundwater exploitation
were similar among the three years (Fig 4, 5 and 6). Namely, the average DWT value
was 2.0 m in January and reached the maximum value (2.5 m) in March, and then
decreased to 1.5 m in May after the summer irrigation. Since the agriculture irrigation
was gradually decreased from August to September, DWT increased to 2.2 m in Sep-
tember. Following the late autumn irrigation which the irrigation water amount were
thirty percent of the total water diversion, the average DWT value rapidly decreased to
1.0 m in November. With the beginning of winter, the DWT gradually increased to 2.0
m by next January. Then, the fluctuation of the DWT completes the annual cycle. These
peaks and valleys demonstrated that the time and amount of agricultural irrigation were
responsible for the fluctuation of the DWT without the effect of irrigation exploitation
in HID.

Fig. 4. Map of DWT variety, 2001

164 J. Du et al.

Fig. 5. Map of DWT variety, 2002

Fig. 6. Map of DWT variety, 2003

 An Analysis on the Inter-annual Spatial and Temporal Variation 165

3.2.2 Spatial Variation of DWT in Typical Period

Owing to the temperature difference between the upper and under boundary of the
freezing soil layer, the high absorption energy makes groundwater in air containing
zone move towards the freezing layer so that the DWT value of 95% area of HID were

in the ranged of 2 3 m in March each year (Fig.7, 10, 13).

Fig. 7. Distributing map of DWT in March, 2001

Fig. 8. Distributing map of DWT in July, 2001

Because the water diversions of irrigation were reduced to 80% of the average an-
nual water diversions of irrigation (52109 m3) in 2003, and the irrigation water
amount were reduced during the summer irrigation season. Therefore, the DWT value

of 80% area of HID were in the range of 1.5 2.0 m, and the regions of DWT in the

range of 2 3 m were continuously in July 2003(Fig.14). Although the DWT of 80%

area of HID were also in the range of 1.5 2.0 m in July 2001, the regions of the DWT

in the range of 2.0 3.0 m were scattered over the southwest in HID(Fig.11). In 2002,
the total water diversions of irrigation were more than that of other two years. And the
166 J. Du et al.

DWT value of 50% areas of HID were in the range of 1.0 1.5 m in 2002(Fig.8). It can
be drawn into conclusion that the distributional-variation of the water diversions of
irrigation among years caused the distributional-variation of DWT in the entire HID. In
other word, the more the water diversions of irrigation were, the shallower DWT in
HID would be.
In additional, the figure 8, 11 and 14 shown that the shallower DWT region dis-
tributed in Yigan, southwestern part of Jiefangzha, minor area of Yongji and Wulate
irrigation region. These regions were the agricultural areas with little in groundwater
exploitation and lower terrain. While the deeper DWT regions distributed in the
northeastern part of Jiefangzha, major part of Yongji and Yichang irrigation region.
These regions were the agricultural areas with the higher terrain and cities-towns. And
an amount of the groundwater exploitation were used to meets the demand of the do-
mestic water, public facilities and urban greening in cities-towns.

Fig. 9. Distributing map of DWT in November, 2001

Fig. 10. Distributing map of DWT in March, 2002

 An Analysis on the Inter-annual Spatial and Temporal Variation 167

Fig. 11. Distributing map of DWT in July, 2002

Fig. 12. Distributing map of DWT in November, 2002

Fig. 13. Distributing map of DWT in March, 2003

168 J. Du et al.

Fig. 14. Distributing map of DWT in July, 2003

Fig. 15. Distributing map of DWT in November, 2003

Take 310#, 223# and 305# well as example, the average annual DWT were 3.7 m, 3.5
m and 3.5 m from 2001 to 2003, which were located around the city of Linhe, Wuyuan
and Qianqi respectively. In second-autumn irrigation season, there was 1 irriga-
tion-time in HID, and the irrigation amount was 30% of the total water diversions of
irrigation. And the terrain slopes gently, the average ground slope is about

1/8000~1/4000 (from southwest to northeast). Therefore, the DWT of the entire HID

were in the two ranges, namely, 0.5 1.0 m and 1.0-1.5 m in November. The range of

0.5 1.0 m distributed in Yigan, Yongji and Wulate irrigation region, and the range of
1.0 1.5 m distributed in Jiefangzha and Yichang irrigation region (Fig. 9, 12, 15).

3.3 Analysis of Temporal and Spatial Distribution of the Groundwater Salinity

The temporal and spatial distribution of the groundwater salinity was quite similar
among the three years (Fig. 16 24). There were two salinity degree zones in the
 An Analysis on the Inter-annual Spatial and Temporal Variation 169

Fig. 16. Distributing map of groundwater salinity in March, 2001

Fig. 17. Distributing map of groundwater salinity in July, 2001

northern and southern of HID, which the salinity degree was more than 5000 mg/l (red
regions) and even, in some local areas, the salinity degree was more than 10000 mg/l.
The northern zone was from Dashuwan (west) to Fenzidi (east), the southern zone was
from Xishanzui extended to Chengnan and Shulinzi. The groundwater salinity of the
major area of Hetao in March and November was M<3000 mg/l and M>4000 mg/l,
respectively. The reasons caused these results were followed:
(1) Because the southwest elevation (1043 m) was higher than that of the northwest
(1034 m) and the southeast (1018 m). The groundwater horizontal movement was from
southwest toward the northwest and southeast. An amount of salt accumulated into the
soil and penetrated into groundwater of the northwest and southeast area of HID.
Therefore, the groundwater salinity in southeast and northwest were higher (M>5000
mg/l) than that of (M<3000 mg/l) the middle area of HID.
170 J. Du et al.

(2) The soil water was in the cycle process of the irrigation recharge and evapora-
tion-transpiration in summer irrigation and first-autumn irrigation season. These
resulted in soil salinization and high degree of groundwater salinity. Under the action of
the high evaporation and transpiration, a large amount of the salt of which accumulated
in deeper-soil and dissolved in groundwater were moved toward and accumulated into
the surface later soil. But the accumulated salt in the surface later soil dissolved ade-
quately into the shallower groundwater again during the second-autumn irrigation
period. So, the groundwater salinity of the major area of HID in November was
M>4000 mg/l. With the lateral seepage of soil water and the horizontal movement of
groundwater, a lot of salt of which dissolved into soil-water and shallower groundwater
was moved away HID during the period from November to the next March. Then, the
groundwater salinity of the major area of HID was M<3000 mg/l in March.

Fig. 18. Distributing map of groundwater salinity in November, 2001

Fig. 19. Distributing map of groundwater salinity in March, 2002

 An Analysis on the Inter-annual Spatial and Temporal Variation 171

Fig. 20. Distributing map of groundwater salinity in July, 2002

Fig. 21. Distributing map of groundwater salinity in November, 2002

Fig. 22. Distributing map of groundwater salinity in March, 2003

172 J. Du et al.

Fig. 23. Distributing map of groundwater salinity in July, 2003

Fig. 24. Distributing map of groundwater salinity in November, 2003

3.4 Relationship between the Table Depth and Salinity of Groundwater

Under arid or semi-arid conditions and regions of poor natural drainage, there was
increasing potential for hazardous accumulation of salts in soils. The salinity was
important index that reflected the degree of human activities on the water quality in-
fluence of the groundwater. Meanwhile the salinity also reflected the distributing
characteristics and change trend of the chemical composition of the groundwater in
some regions. DWT was important as it determines the distance that contaminants had
to travel before reaching the groundwater. Deep groundwater was less vulnerable than
shallow aquifers. In HID, due to the agricultural irrigation water resource was mainly
Yellow River water, and the average annual salinity degree of the irrigation water was
480mg/l. So, the agricultural irrigation time and amount was the mainly factors to
affected the variation of the groundwater salinity. At the same time, the agricultural
irrigation water were also the mainly resource to recharged the groundwater. Therefore,
there was maybe certain correlation between DWT and groundwater salinity in a given
 An Analysis on the Inter-annual Spatial and Temporal Variation 173

temporal and spatial range. Fig.25 (here was given the relation curve in March 2001
only, since other years regression correlation results were similar to it.) shown that
Linear regression between DWT and the groundwater salinity indicated that there were
other factors than water table depth that influenced salinity of groundwater.

35000
30000
l/ 25000 y = -11310Ln(x) + 14511
gm R 2 = 0.1095
/y 20000
ti
ni 15000
la
s 10000

5000
0
0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50
depth/m

Fig. 25. Relationship between DWT and groundwater salinity in March, 2001

The figure 7 24 shown that the special relationship between them in some special
regions. The first relationship existed around the wetland and the lower terrain region.
For example, the average annual DWT of wells 37 and 38 was 0.97 m and 1.01 m,
and the corresponding salinity degree values were 14500 mg/l and 12800 mg/l respec-
tively. Both wells were installed nearby Dashuwan and Daxian Lake (saline lake),
respectively. The average annual DWT of wells 106 was 0.89 m and the corre-
sponding salinity degree values were 8000 mg/l which was installed in nearby the
wetland. The average annual DWT of wells 277 and 278 was 0.90 m and 0.87 m,
respectively, and the corresponding salinity degree values was 31700 mg/l and 31000
mg/l. Both of which were installed in nearby Xian Lake (saline lake). The second
relationship was exists around the cities and towns. In the cities and towns regions, due
to the recharge and exploration of groundwater balanced the fluctuation of DWT and
slow down the salt accumulation in the shallower groundwater. For example, the well
310(Linhe city), 223(Wuyuan city) and 305(Qianqi city) which the average annual
DWT were 3.82 m, 3.76 m and 3.64 m and the corresponding salinity values was 1550
mg/l, 1200 mg/l and 2900 mg/l, respectively.
There were many factors which influence the variation of the table depth and sa-
linity of groundwater such as terrain, climate condition, soil types, quality and time of
irrigation water and the terrain of HID, etc. Although the linear relationship between
the DWT and groundwater salinity were not significant, the distribution of DWT could
reflected the distribution of the groundwater salinity in the certain regions. Namely the
shallower DWT was, the higher the salinity degree of groundwater would be. The
deeper DWT was, the lower the salinity degree of groundwater would be.
174 J. Du et al.

4 Conclusions
Due to insufficient data coverage, the shallower groundwater salinity studies often
require interpolation or extrapolate from a few observation points into large areas. This
was especially critical for groundwater aquifers with complex and extensive hy-
dro-geological heterogeneities at extremely varying scales. The geo-statistics methods
and Arc GIS were very useful for DWT and groundwater salinity studies in HID Inner
Mongolia, China. The spatial structure of DWT was controlled by the terrain, landform
and climate more than the random factors such as the waste discharge of industries and
civil life, the time and amount of the agricultural irrigation. Therefore, DWT was the
medium spatial correlation and the average corresponding distance was 18.5km in three
years. The variation of the spatial structural of the groundwater salinity was mainly
affected by the random factors, and it is the strong spatial correlation and the average
corresponding distance was 12.1km in three years.
There were remarkable differences in the temporal and spatial variation of the re-
charge rate and salinity of groundwater in different irrigation regions, since their
agricultural planting structure and water diversions of irrigation were different.
Meanwhile, massive groundwater exploitation of living and industrial enhanced the
disparity of temporal and spatial variation. However, the temporal and spatial distri-
bution of DWT and groundwater salinity was quite similar between years (from 2001 to
2003) in HID Inner Mongolia. DWT in western, eastern area and a small part of middle
area were shallower than other area in Hetao. The average annual DWT in March
reached the maximum and that of in November reached its the minimum within one
year. The shallower depth region of groundwater distributed in the agricultural area,
and the deeper depth region of the groundwater distributed in cities and towns with
higher terrain.
Due to the geological structure and geographical conditions, a large of salt accu-
mulated into the soil and penetrated into groundwater of the northwest and southeast
area of HID. In northwest and southeast area, the groundwater salinity were
M>5000mg/l and even, in some local areas, M>10000mg/l. Meanwhile, the special
irrigation seasons and climate made the maximum and minimum of groundwater of
HID appeared in the specific period of September and March, respectively. The
groundwater salinity of the major area of HID was more than 4000mg/l in November.
With the lateral seepage of soil water and the horizontal movement of groundwater,
some of the accumulated salt was drained away HID. The groundwater salinity of the
major area of HID was less than 3000 mg/l except the northwest and southeast area in
March.
There were many factors which influence the variation of the table depth and sa-
linity of groundwater such as climate condition, soil types, quality and time of irriga-
tion water and the terrain of HID etc, and the temporal and spatial variation of these
factors was high in the different area. Therefore, the linear relationship between DWT
and groundwater salinity were not significant. In some special areas, however, the
distribution of DWT could reflect the distribution of the groundwater salinity. Namely
the shallower DWT was, the higher the groundwater salinity degree would be. The
deeper DWT was, the lower the groundwater salinity would be.
In this study, we get the characteristics of the temporal and spatial distribution of
DWT and shallower groundwater salinity. We can make the rational agriculture
 An Analysis on the Inter-annual Spatial and Temporal Variation 175

planting structure according with these characteristics. For example, planting the crop
which are the salt-resistant and drought tolerant in the high salinity areas in order to
reduced the amount of the salt which were brought by the irrigation water, and to in-
creased the amount of irrigation water in the second-autumn period to leach more soil
salt. This is quite important to maintain the eco-environmental balance in HID.

Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Changjiang River scholar and creative team devel-
opment plan (IRT0657), the Ministry of water resources community projects: Eco-
logical irrigation district studies on theory basis and supporting technical system
(20071025),the research cooperation projects of China agricultural university and Inner
Mongolia agricultural university and China agricultural university graduate innovative
research(kycx09113).

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 An Efficient and Fast Algorithm for Mining Frequent
Patterns on Multiple Biosequences

Wei Liu1,2 and Ling Chen1,3

1
School of Information Technology, Nanjing Xiaozhuang University, Nanjing, China
2
Institute of Information Science and Technology, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China
3
National Key Lab of Novel Software Tech, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
yzliuwei@126.com, lchen@yzcn.net

Abstract. Mining frequent patterns on biosequences is one of the important re-

search fields in biological data mining. Traditional frequent pattern mining al-
gorithms may generate large amount of short candidate patterns in the process
of mining which cost more computational time and reduce the efficiency. In or-
der to overcome such shortcoming of the traditional algorithms, we present an
algorithm named MSPM for fast mining frequent patterns on biosequences.
Based on the concept of primary patterns, the algorithm focuses on longer pat-
terns for mining in order to avoid producing lots of short patterns. Meanwhile
by using prefix tree of primary frequent patterns, the algorithm can extend the
primary patterns and avoid plenty of irrelevant patterns. Experimental results
show that MSPM can achieve mining results efficiently and improves the
performance.

Keywords: Biological sequence; Frequent Pattern Mining; Primary Patterns.

1 Introduction
Biosequence patterns usually correspond to some important functional (or structural)
elements[1] such as conserved sequence patterns, repeated patterns or combinative
patterns etc. Hence it is very significative to find such patterns in protein family
analysis, transcriptional regulation analysis, and genome annotation etc. The task of
biosequence pattern mining [2] is also the key technique for gene recognition, biose-
quence functional prediction and interactions explanation between sequences. It is one
of the most important research areas in biosequence data mining.
In the area of data mining, lots of sequential pattern mining algorithms have been
proposed in recent years. At present the sequential pattern mining algorithms are
mainly classified as two categories: one is for frequent patterns mining on single se-
quence; the other is for mining in multiple sequences. The former can mine frequent
patterns only for single sequence[3-4], and is unable to synchronously analyze the
relation between frequent patterns from a certain sequence and those contained in the
other sequences. Such analysis is common and necessary in biosequence data mining.
For the latter, according to the definition[5] by Agrawal and Srikan in 1995 based on
the analysis of transaction data: given a sequence set and a user-specified support

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 178194, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 An Efficient and Fast Algorithm for Mining Frequent Patterns 179

threshold, the problem of sequential pattern mining is to find all frequent subse-
quences, that is to say, the counts of the subsequence appeared in the sequence set are
not less than the minimal support threshold. In 1996, Strikant et al. proposed GSP
(generalized sequential pattern mining)[6] which introduced the concept of time and
level-wise constraints based on Apriori algorithm. It mines all frequent patterns by the
use of bottom-up and breadth-first search strategy. But when the sequence database is
a large-scale one, large amount of candidates could be produced and the database
should be frequently scanned. Especially when the sequences contain long patterns,
large amount of short candidate patterns may be generated, which could cause the
problem would be intractable and of lower efficiency. In order to solve this problem,
in 2000 Pei et al. put forward an algorithm named Prefixspan[7] based on pattern
growth approach. It adopts divide and conquer method and continuously produces
much smaller projected databases so as to mine frequent patterns. Since no candidates
are produced in the algorithm, search space is greatly reduced. Its main cost is on the
construction of projected databases and its performance is much higher than Apriori-
based algorithms. Other recent works on sequential pattern mining algorithms have
been surveyed in [8] by Han et al.
However, because of the particularity and variety of mining requirements for
biological data, the previous developed methods can not be applied directly to the
large-scale biological data mining. Therefore extensive efforts have been devoted to
developing some special mining algorithms for biological data, such as PTR-based
algorithms[9-10] by Apostolico et al., ATR-based algorithms[11-18] by Delgrange et
al. and TRFinder algorithm[19] by Beason. Later Kurtz presented REPuter[15] algo-
rithm based on suffix tree which overcame the limitation of the length of input se-
quences. It was based on sequence alignment technique but could hardly find those
frequent repeats among DNA sequences. In 2007, Wang et al made researches on
searching for the similar repeated segments[20] and then introduced a new criteria of
similarity and the concept of SATR(segment-similarity based approximate tandem
repeats). They designed an algorithm SUA_SATR [21] based on SUA with no limita-
tions on pattern length during the searching process. Moreover, with the same similar-
ity, the algorithm is faster than other traditional algorithms for the same DNA se-
quence, although its efficiency should be improved. In 2007 Xiong et al. proposed
BioPM algorithm[22] specially for protein sequence mining. They introduce the con-
cept of multiple supports so as to overcome the disadvantages of traditional algo-
rithms and improve its performance and efficiency. But when the minimal support
becomes lower, it can not keep its high efficiency since numerous projected databases
are constructed. In addition, the algorithm still produces large numbers of irrelevant
short patterns during the mining process. In 2009, Guo et al. addressed MBioPM
algorithm[23] which is an improvement of BioPM algorithm. Based on a pattern
partitioning scheme, the algorithm successfully avoids constructing large amount of
projected databases. But when the lengths of the patterns exceed k, it requires a large
buffer for frequent patterns mining which resulted in huge memory space cost. More-
over, it also takes large amount of time to align the existing patterns with those in the
buffer. All these large time-space costs will cause the low efficiency of the algorithm.
180 W. Liu and L. Chen

To overcome the problems of traditional sequential pattern mining algorithms men-

tioned above, we present a fast and efficient algorithm named MSPM for multiple
biosequence mining. The algorithm mines all frequent patterns rapidly based on the
prefix tree of primary frequent patterns which reflects more biological meanings. Our
empirical studies on the tested data from pfam protein database show that MSPM
algorithm can obtain higher performance and efficiency than the traditional mining
algorithms.

2 Definitions and Concepts

2.1 The Primary Patterns

Definition 1. Let be the alphabet, and S = {S 1, S 2,..., S n } be a string of . Assum-

ing x is a character in , if for string S, there exists integers 1 i 1 < i 2 < ... < i m n
such that s i1
= s i 2 = ...... = s im = x , then we call s (k ) = " s s
x ik
......s i ( k +1) 1 " the kth
ik +1

primary pattern of S with respect to x.

Example 1. Let = {a, b, c} and S = " bacaabcbab " , then the primary patterns of
S with respect to character a are s (1) = " ac " , s (2) = " a " , s
a a a
(3) = " abcb " ,

s (4) = " ab " .

a
From the definition, we can easily get the following lemma.
Lemma 1. For a string S, let its character set be C ( S ) . For an x C ( S ) , suppose
nx
there are n x primary patterns with respect to x in S, then we have s (i ) S
i =1
x
and

n
xC ( S )
x
= S .

Lemma 2. For a string S, summation of the lengths of the primary patterns with re-
spect to all characters in C ( S ) will satisfy:
nx
s x(i) C (S ) S .
xC ( S ) i =1

nx
Proof. By Lemma 1, we can see that s (i)
xC ( S ) i =1
x
xC ( S )
S = C (S ) S

Q.E.D
Because C (S ) and C (S ) , it is can be deduced that
nx
s (i) S .
xC ( S ) i =1
x
 An Efficient and Fast Algorithm for Mining Frequent Patterns 181

Lemma 3. For a string S, the average length of the primary patterns with respect to
all characters in S will be not more than C ( S ) .

Proof. From lemma 2, we know that the summation of the lengths of all the primary
nx
patterns of S satisfies s x (i ) C ( S ) S . Furthermore, by lemma 1 we also
xC ( S ) i =1

know that the number of total primary patterns of S is equal to S . Therefore the aver-
age length of all the primary patterns of S will be not more than C ( S ) . Q.E.D

From the lemmas mentioned above, we can see that all primary patterns can be inter-
cepted in ( S ) time by scanning S. The framework of the algorithm for intercepting
the primary patterns is described as follows:

Algorithm Intercept S
Input: string S;
Output: the primary patterns of S;
begin
For every x C ( S ) do
k=1;
sx ) = ;
( k
Let the first position of x appeared in S be l;
s x(k ) = s x(k )U{s l}
i=l;
repeat
While ( s i x U s ) i
do

s (k ) = s (k )U{s } ;
x x i

i=i+1;
End while
k=k+1 ;
s x(k ) = {s i} ;
i=i+1;
Until s i
=
End for
End

2.2 The Table of Primary Patterns

After getting all primary patterns of S, we can further build a table of primary patterns
for S. All the primary patterns are listed in the table in the lexicographic order so as to
conveniently search.
182 W. Liu and L. Chen

Example 2. For the sequence S = " bacaabcbab " in example 1, after sorting all pri-
mary patterns of S, the table of primary patterns can be built as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. The table of primary patterns for s

Num s m
loc
1 a 4
2 ab 9
3 abcb 5
4 ac 2
5 b 10
6 ba 8
7 bacaa 1
8 bc 6
9 caab 3
10 cbab 7

In the table, each entry is a vector ( Num, s m

, loc ) , where Num is the index of the

entry in the table, s m is the primary pattern and loc denotes the start position of s m in
S.
All the primary patterns obtained by algorithm intercept(S) should be sorted so as
to be arranged in lexicographic order. By Lemma 1, we know that there are S pat-
terns. Suppose that S = n , it costs ( n log n ) time for sorting. Fortunately, for bio-
sequences, is a constant integer. For instance, for gene sequences, = 4 whereas
for protein sequences, = 20 . Hence we can use radix sorting method. Obviously
by lemma 3 we know that the average length of primary patterns is not more
than and their length is imbalance. Because of each pattern with different lengths,
the traditional radix sorting algorithm cant be applied straightforwardly. Therefore,
we present the following sorting algorithm.
Algorithm2 Sort( s m , s m
'' )
Input: s m : the primary patterns of S;
Output: s m '' : the ordered primary patterns table;
Begin
Let the initial character of s mi be x i and l = . If there is x <x
1 2
< ... < x l
in ,

then according to the initial characters of all patterns in s m , we can divide them into
some buckets as s m1, s m 2, ... , s ml ;
s '=
m
For i=1 to l do
 An Efficient and Fast Algorithm for Mining Frequent Patterns 183

After emitting the first character of s mi , we can get a new string set s mi ' . De-
lete all the empty strings from s mi ' .

If s mi
' = then sm' = sm' smi
' End if
End for
Sort( s m ', s m '' );
For i=1 to l do
For each string y in s mi '' do y = y & x i ; end for
endfor
Group s m1 '', s m 2 '', ... , s ml '' into s m '' ;
End
By lemma 2, we know that the summation of the lengths of all primary patterns is
not more than C ( S ) S . Since the algorithm Sort classifies all the characters of
every primary pattern exactly once, its complexity is ( C ( S ) S ) . Because
C ( S ) | | is a constant, its complexity is just ( S ) .

Example 3. Let D={S1, S2, S3, S4} be a set of strings, s 1

= " abcbac " , s 2
= " acbca " ,

s = " bcbabc " and

3 s 4
= " acbabc " . Their primary pattern tables are shown in
Table 2.

Table 2. The primary pattern table of four sequences

The primary pattern table of S1 The primary pattern table of S2

Num s m loc Num s m loc
1 abcb 1 1 ab 5
2 ac 5 2 acbc 1
3 bac 4 3 b 6
4 bc 2 4 bca 3
5 c 6 5 cab 4
6 cba 3 6 cb 2
The primary pattern table of S3 The primary pattern table of S4
Num s m
loc Num s m
loc
1 abc 4 1 abc 4
2 ba 3 2 acb 1
3 ba 3
3 bc 1,5 4 bc 5
4 c 6
5 c 6
5 cbab 2 6 cbab 2
184 W. Liu and L. Chen

2.3 Merging the Primary Pattern Tables

After getting all primary pattern tables of multiple sequences, we can merge them in
order to obtain a merged primary pattern table as shown in Table 3.

Table 3. The merged primary pattern table of multiple sequences

Num s m
Seq
1 ab 2
2 abc 3,4
3 abcb 1
4 ac 1
5 acb 4
6 acbc 2
7 b 2
8 ba 3,4
9 bac 1
10 bc 1,3,4
11 bca 2
12 c 1,3,4
13 cab 2
14 cb 2
15 cba 1
16 cbab 3,4

In Table 3, each entry is denoted as a vector ( Num, s m

, Seq ) , where Num is its

index in the table, s m is the primary pattern and Seq denotes the sequences where
s m appears.

2.4 The Primary Frequent Patterns Mining

Definition 2(Distribution support[22]). Given a set of biosequences D and a subse-

quence T, the distribution support of subsequence T in D is defined as
dis _ sup D(T ) =| {s | s D, T s} | , which is the number of strings in D con-
taining the subsequence T.

Definition 3. A primary pattern P is called a frequent primary pattern if dis_supD(P)

mindis_sup, where positive integer mindis_sup is the minimum support.
By the above definitions, we can build a frequency table for a string set D. For in-
stance the frequency table for primary patterns of string set D in Example 3 is as
shown in Table 4.

In table4, each entry is denoted as ( s m

, Freq ) , where s m is a primary pattern and
Freq denotes the distribution support of s m in the set of multiple sequences D.
 An Efficient and Fast Algorithm for Mining Frequent Patterns 185

Table 4. The frequency table for primary patterns on multiple sequences

Sm Freq
a 4
ab 4
abc 3
abcb 1
ac 3
acb 2
acbc 1
b 4
ba 3
bac 1
bc 4
bca 1
c 4
cab 1
cb 4
cba 3
cbab 2

Let dis_sup be 2, and then based on Table 4, we can easily mine all primary fre-
quent patterns:

a (frequency: 4), ab (frequency: 4), abc frequency: 3), ac frequency: 3), acb (fre-

quency: 2); b frequency: 4), ba frequency: 3), bc frequency: 4); c frequency: 4),

cb frequency: 4), cba frequency: 3), cbab frequency: 2).

Based on above primary frequent patterns and table2, we can easily build the follow-
ing two-dimension table respect to primary frequent patterns on multiple sequences.

Table 5. The two-dimension table of primary frequent patterns on multiple sequences

Sequence
Frequent patterns S1 S2 S3 S4

a {1,5} {1,5} {4} {1,4}

ab {1} {5} {4} {4}
abc {1} {4} {4}
ac {5} {1} {1}
acb {1} {1}
b {2,4} {3,6} {1,3,5} {3,5}
ba {4} {3} {3}
bc {2} {3} {5} {5}
c {3,6} {2,4} {2,6} {2,6}
cb {3} {2} {2} {2}
cba {3} {2} {2}
cbab {2} {2}
186 W. Liu and L. Chen

The element {l 1 , l 2 ,..., l } in the table denotes the set of starting positions of
k

primary pattern in S. For example, the element {1, 5} in the first row of table 5 de-
notes the primary pattern a are respectively in the 1st and 5th positions of S1. Fur-
thermore, we can build the following table similar to Table 1:

Table 6. The primary frequent pattern table of D

Num Sm Loc_set
1 a {1,5}, {1,5}, {4}, {1,4}
2 ab {1}, {5}, {4}, {4}
3 abc {1}, , {4}, {4}
4 ac {5}, {1}, , {1}
5 acb , {1}, , {1}
6 b {2,4}, {3,6}, {1,3,5}, {3,5}
7 ba {4}, , {3}, {3}
8 bc {2}, {3}, {5}, {5}
9 c {3,6}, {2,4}, {2,6}, {2,6}
10 cb {3}, {2}, {2}, {2}
11 cba {3}, , {2}, {2}
12 cbab , , {2}, {2}

In Table 6, each entry is denoted as a vector ( Num, s m

, loc _ set ) , where Num is

the index of this entry in the table, s m is a primary pattern and loc_set denotes the set
of start positions of s m in each sequence.

3 The Prefix Tree of Primary Patterns

3.1 Aggregation Vector and Its Operations

To mine all the frequent patterns in a given biosquence set, a prefix tree is used. In
order to fully comprehend the construction process of the prefix tree, first we give the
following definitions.
Definition 4. Let T = (T 1, T 2, ... , Tn ) be a vector, where Ti is a set, we call T is an
aggregation vector.
Definition 5. Given an aggregation vector T, its support function D(T) can be defined
as the number of nonempty sets in T, that is: D ( T ) = {Ti Ti ;1 i n} .
Definition 6. Assuming T = (T 1, T 2, ... , Tn ) and S = ( S 1, S 2, ... ,Sn ) are two aggrega-
tion vectors , their intersection is defined as
T S = (T 1 S 1 ,..., Tn Sn ) .
 An Efficient and Fast Algorithm for Mining Frequent Patterns 187

Definition 7. Given a set t = ( t1, t 2, ... , tk ) and a number l, the addition operation of
them is defined as t + l = {t1 + l , t 2 + l ,..., tk + l} .

Definition 8. The addition operation on a given aggregation vector

T = (T 1, T 2, ... , Tn ) and a number l is defined as T + l = {T 1 + l , T 2 + l ,..., Tn + l} .

3.2 The Prefix Tree Construction of Primary Frequent Patterns

By algorithm 2 can not only sort the primary patterns, but also can obtain the number
of each primary pattern. And during the recursive process, the number of primary
patterns with the prefix of substring y can also be obtained. By summing up the num-
bers of the primary patterns with the prefix of a certain character or substring y, the
scope [l , u ] of those primary patterns in the sorted primary pattern table can also be
computed. Therefore, while implementing algorithm 2, we can also expediently con-
struct a prefix tree of primary patterns.
Definition 9. For a table of primary patterns, its corresponding prefix tree is a rooted
tree. The path from the root to each leaf denotes a primary pattern and each edge in
the path denotes a character. Children of the same node denote different characters.
Once the prefix tree is construced, all the primary pattern can be obtained by listing
all characters in sequence of each path, one.
From the definition of the prefix tree, we can design an algorithm for building the
prefix tree of primary patterns. It is a recursive process. The algorithm repeatedly
builds the prefix subtree for the nodes from the root to the leaves level by level.
Therefore, we present an algorithm named node-extend (S, d) which constructs a
prefix tree rooted as d for the set S of primary patterns. The framework of the algo-
rithm node-extend is shown as follows.
Algorithm3:Algorithm node-extend(S, d);
Input: S: the set of primary patterns and their starting positions in the alphabetical
order table. Each primary pattern in S takes the form of (s, e) which denotes an
entry of the primary pattern table, where s is a primary pattern and e is the starting
position set of s.
d : the node to be extended.
mindis-sup: the minimal support threshold;
Output: the prefix tree rooted at d for the set S of primary patterns;
Begin
Suppose there are r different first characters in the strings of S; then the strings of
S can be divided into r groups according to their first characters;
Let the group with the first character xi be Si;
For i= 1 to r do
Ti=;
For all strings P of Si do
Emit the first character xi of P and obtain a string P;
If P then Ti = Ti {P '} End if
If | Ti | min dis-sup then
Generate a child di for d;
188 W. Liu and L. Chen

Label the edge(d, di) using character xi ;

The starting position set E(d) on the node d defines assigned as the start-
ing position set of strings in Ti;
Node-extend(Ti, di);
End if
End for
End for
End
Let the primary patterns table of D be D(H), the prefix tree of primary patterns of D
can be built by calling the recursive process Node-extend(D(H), root).
Example 4. For the frequent primary patterns in Table 6, the prefix tree of primary
frequent patterns by the above recursive algorithm can be built as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Prefix tree of primary frequent patterns for D

In the prefix tree shown in fig.1, each character x in the edge denotes the character
or substring that the node represents, {l 1 , l 2 ,..., l k} denotes the set of starting posi-
tion sets of primary patterns with the prefix of x in D. Each inner node b stores a
(b ) (b )
starting node aggregation vector T = {T1(b ) , T2( b ) ,..., Tk(b ) } , where Ti is the starting
th
positions set of the substring corresponding to the i string.
Each leaf node b stores a node-depth Db . Moreover, there are a start-node aggrega-
(b )
tion vector T = {T1(b ) , T2(b ) ,..., Tk(b ) } and a terminative node aggregation vector
(b ) (b ) (b ) (b )
= {E1 , E2 ,..., Ek } , where = T + Db . Ei is the terminative posi-
(b) (b ) (b )

tions set of the substring corresponding to the ith string. Listing all characters on the
edges of each path from the root to each leaf, one primary frequent pattern can be
obtained.

4 Mining Algorithm
4.1 The Generic Frequent Patterns Mining

The limitation of primary frequent pattern is that there is no same character as the first
character in the pattern. The primary frequent pattern table on multiple sequences
mentioned above can only mine primary frequent patterns, but can not mine all the
 An Efficient and Fast Algorithm for Mining Frequent Patterns 189

frequent patterns. We can use the prefix tree of frequent primary patterns to mine
larger frequent patterns by aggregation vector operations on the vectors at each node.
For example, in Fig.1 the frequent patterncbabc can be obtained by expanding the
primary frequent pattern cbab. After getting the prefix tree as fig.1, we can easily
find the path of pattern cbab and then its terminative node vector ( , , {6}, {6})
also can be obtained at the leaf. Next we return to the root of the tree and perform
intersection operations respectively on the starting node vectors of the roots sons and
the terminative node vectors of the primary pattern. For instance in fig.1, after the
intersection operation on the child c, ({3,6}, {2,4}, {2,6}, {2,6})( , , {6},
{6})=( , , {6}, {6}), its support is 2. This means the pattern is frequent. There-
fore we can expand frequent patterncbab by the
operation {cbab} {c} = {cbabc} and a longer frequent patterncbabc is obtained.
From the analysis mentioned above, based on the prefix tree of primary frequent
patterns we propose an algorithm named Span(s, E(s), a) for mining all frequent pat-
terns. It is a recursive process. The algorithm starts from the root and extends patterns
for each node level by level. The framework of the algorithm Span(s, E(s), a) is as
follows:
Algorithm 4: Algorithm Span(s, E(s), a)
Input: a: the node where a is; s: the string that be extended;
E(s) {E1( s ) , E2( s ) ,..., Ek( s ) } : the terminative vector set of s;
Freq-set: the set of frequent substrings;
mindis-sup : the minimal support threshold;
Output: the Freq-set after update
Begin
For each child b of a do
(b )
Assuming that the starting vector of b is T = {T1(b ) , T2( b ) ,..., Tk(b ) } and the
character on edge (a, b) is x.
If b is not an leaf node then
num=0;
For i= 1 to k do
Fi = Ti (b ) Ei( s ) ;
If Fi then num=num+1; endif
End for
Assuming that the set is F = {F1 , F2 ,..., Fk }
If num dis min sup then
If x then
Freq-set=Freq-set {s x} ;
Span ( s x, F , b) ;
Else
Span ( s, F , b) ;
End if
End if
190 W. Liu and L. Chen

Else
E (b) = {E1(b ) , E2(b ) ,..., Ek(b ) } */

E s =E(b);
Span (s, E(s), root);
End for
End
Based on algorithm 4, we present an algorithm Freq-Mining for mining frequent pat-
terns on the string set S.

Algorithm 5: Algorithm Freq-Mining S,root

Input: S: the strings for mining;
root: the root of prefix tree of primary sub-patterns for S;
Output: Freq-set: the set of frequent pattern of S;
Begin
Freq-set= ;
E={T1, T2, , Tk}; where Ti={1,2,,|Si|};

Span ( , E, root) ;
End.

4.2 MSPM Algorithm

(
In this section, we present algorithm MSPM Multiple Sequential Pattern Mining for
Biological Data) for mining the frequent patterns in a biosequence set S. Algorithm
MSPM first mine all frequent primary patterns. Then these frequent primary patterns
can be extended to get all the frequent patterns. Framework of algorithm MSPM is as
follows.

Algorithm MSPM S, minloc_sup
Input: S ; an biosequence set;
mindis_sup: the minimal support threshold;
Output: Freq-set : the set of all frequent patterns;
Begin
For each biosequence Si in S do
Intercept (Si);
Sort( s mi , s mi '' );
End for
Merging all primary pattern tables of multiple sequences and sorting all patterns
by calling algorithm 2;
Building the frequency table of primary patterns and getting set H of all primary
frequent patterns;
Building the two-dimension table respect to frequent primary patterns and then
the frequent primary pattern table of S can be obtained;
Constructing the prefix tree T of frequent primary patterns by calling the recur-
sive algorithm Node-extend( S(H), root);
Freq-Mining S,root ; ( )
End.
 An Efficient and Fast Algorithm for Mining Frequent Patterns 191

5 Experimental Results and Analysis

To test the efficiency of our algorithm MSPM, we made an experiment on two groups
of data for comparisons. In the experiment of first group, the traditional Apriori
algorithm, BioPM algorithm, MbioPM algorithm and our algorithm MSPM are tested
to compare their performance. The experimental results show that the change of
minimal support threshold makes a slight impact on our algorithm MSPM. The test on
the second group compares the computation times of algorithm BioPM, MbioPM
algorithm and MSPM to validate that our algorithm is more effective and faster than
other ones under the same minimal support threshold.

5.1 Test Data and Computational Environment

All testing data in the experiments are from pfam protein database
( )
http://pfam.sanger.ac.uk/ , and the average length of our selected protein sequences
is 1000[24] which ensures the experimental validity. All experiments were conducted
on a 3.00GHZ Pentium 4 with 2.00GB memory. All codes were complied using Mi-
crosoft Visual C++6.0.

5.2 Comparison of the Performance

The purpose of the first group experiment is to prove that the change of minimal sup-

)
port threshold makes a slight impact on our algorithm MSPM. We took protein se-
quence samples from three protein families (G-alpha, Calici Coat, Glyco_hydro_19
of pfam database as testing data. During the process of experiment, we chose 50 pro-
tein sequences with the similar length respectively from three protein families as a
testing data set so as to ensure the diversity of the test data. With each specified sup-
port, we tested 50 sequences using three algorithms. Fig.2 shows the running time of
algorithms Aprior[6], BioPM[22], MbioPM[23] and MSPM for the same biological data
set with different minimal supports.

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DOJRULWKPV
UXQQLQJWLPH6
7KHDYHUDJH



$SULRUL

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0%LR30
  
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Fig. 2. Comparison of the computational times by the four algorithms under different minimum
supports
192 W. Liu and L. Chen

From fig.2 we can see that four algorithms becomes faster when the minimal sup-
port increases. But MSPM algorithm is rather stable and always faster than the other
three ones especially with the lower minimal supports. That is because with lower
minimal supports, Apriori algorithm would produce more short candidate patterns
which necessarily result in the growth of computation time and inefficiency. Similar
to Apriori, the inefficiency of BioPM algorithm is caused by the fact that it must
spend more time in frequently building projective databases. MBioPM algorithm
mines from the patterns with a certain length but it takes large amount of time for
comparing the existing patterns with the patterns in buffer zone. While MSPM uses
primary patterns with longer length for mining, which avoids producing lots of short
patterns and more candidates. Through the merging operation and pattern growth
method based on the prefix tree of primary frequent patterns, the algorithm can accel-
erate mining procedure. The above analysis shows that our algorithm MSPM is more
efficient, stable and faster.

5.3 Comparison of the Computational Time

We test the algorithms on the second data group to compare their computational time
with the same minimal support threshold. The experimental results show our algo-
rithm MSPM is more effective. We took protein sequence samples with the similar
(
length respectively from ten protein families Globin, short chain dehydrogenase,
SBP_bac_9, Acety-ltransferase, GNAT family, ATPase family, Glyco_hydro_19, G-
)
alpha, Calici coat, Birna VP2 of pfam database. We fixed the minimal support as
15%, and compared the computational times by the algorithms BioPM, MBioPM and
MSPM on data sets consisting of different number of sequences from 100 to 600.
Fig.3 shows the comparison of their computation times.

Comparison of the computation time of

three algorithms(mindis_sup=15%)

l
a g ) 8000
t n S 6000
o i (
t n e 4000 BioPM
n m
e u i 2000
h r t MBioPM
T 0
100 600 MSPM

The number of sequences

Fig. 3. Comparison of the computational times by the three algorithms on data sets consisting
of different number of sequences

It can be observed from fig.3 that the running speeds of three algorithms become
slower when the number of sequences increases. But the MSPM algorithm is rather
stable and always faster than other two algorithms. The reason is BioPM algorithm
produces lots of short patterns during the process of iterations at first and then fre-
quently builds projective databases. All of these operations will necessarily increase
 An Efficient and Fast Algorithm for Mining Frequent Patterns 193

the time cost of the algorithm. MBioPM algorithm mines from the patterns with a
certain length but it takes large amount of time to align the existing patterns with the
patterns in buffer zone when mining the k-length frequent patterns. It also repeatedly
creates or eliminates buffer zone during the process of pattern growth. All of these
cause the algorithm be less efficient. MSPM mines frequent patterns from primary
patterns with longer length, which avoids producing lots of short candidate patterns
and reduces the computation time. The merged operation and pattern growth based on
the prefix tree of primary frequent patterns also avoid producing the redundant pat-
terns and greatly improve mining efficiency of our algorithm.

6 Conclusion
Based on the mining requirements and characteristics of biosequential patterns, we
present an efficient and fast algorithm MSPM for multiple biosequence mining. The
algorithm first builds multiple primary pattern tables according to all primary patterns
of multiple sequences. Then through merging operation, the corresponding merged
primary pattern table can be obtained. Based on this merged primary pattern table, all
primary frequent patterns can be easily mined. Furthermore, we also present an algo-
rithm for general frequent patterns mining on multiple sequences. The algorithm con-
structs a prefix tree of primary frequent patterns based on primary frequent patterns
table and thereby mines all frequent patterns rapidly by the use of aggregation vector
operations on the prefix tree. During the process of pattern growth, the algorithm
neither produces any candidates nor constructs a mass of projective databases. This
makes our mining results reflect more biological meanings and also improves mining
efficiency. Our empirical studies on the tested data from pfam protein database show
that MSPM algorithm can obtain higher performance and efficiency than the tradi-
tional mining algorithms.

Acknowledgement. This research was supported in part by the Chinese National

Natural Science Foundation under grant No. 60673060, Natural Science Foundation
of Jiangsu Province under contract BK2008206.

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 An Inspection Method of Rice Milling Degree
Based on Machine Vision and Gray-Gradient
Co-occurrence Matrix

Peng Wan1,2 and Changjiang Long1,*

1
College of Engineering, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, P.R. China
2
College of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, P.R. China
wanpeng09@mail.hzau.edu.cn, longchj@mail.hzau.edu.cn

Abstract. A detection method of the rice milling degree was proposed based on
machine vision with gray-gradient co-occurrence matrix. Using an experimental
mill machine, different milling degree samples of rice were prepared. The rice
kernel image of the different milling degree was get by a machine vision detect-
ing system, then the texture features of the rice image were obtained by using
gray-gradient co-occurrence matrix, at last the Fisher discriminate functions
constructed using stepwise discriminate analysis were used to detect the milling
degree of the rice samples. The testing results show that the average accuracy
rate of the different milling degree detected using the method of 4 rice samples
is 94.00%.

Keywords: Milling degree, Machine vision, Gray-gradient co-occurrence

matrix, Fisher discriminance, Rice.

1 Introduction
The rice process precision is the embryo extent of the processed rice, for the other
saying is how much the embryo of the brown rice have been removed, referring to
brown rice is milled to the extent of the cortex, at the same time that is the appearance
quality of rice and the main indicator advantages and disadvantages of the perform-
ance evaluation of rice quality. According to the rules of "GB 1354-2009 rice," the
process precision of rice by machining accuracy can be divided into one, two, three
and four levels. There are several means to evaluate the processing, the national stan-
dard to provide for the direct comparison method or staining for detection, were
evaluated through artificial sense of concept, but these methods are affected by light
conditions, subjective feelings or many other factors and the accuracy is not high. The
complicated operation process, low detection efficiency, and low accuracy can not
meet the rapid, objective, accurate detection needs[1].
Detected by image analysis of rice processing is a very popular research direction
[2-4]. Different levels of precision processing make the surface texture of the rice

*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 195202, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
196 P. Wan and C. Long

different. This paper uses machine vision technology to study the surface texture
analysis and explore the relationship between precision of rice correspondence and
characteristics of surface texture, in order to achieve accuracy by processing rice
through testing the surface texture of rice.
There are several means of image texture analysis[5-6], this paper use gray-
gradient co-occurrence matrix to analysis the surface texture characteristics of rice.

2 Gray-Gradient Co-occurrence Matrix Detection Method

Gray-gradient co-occurrence matrix embodies the relationship between gray and
gradient of each pixel. Gray of each pixel constitute the basis of an image, and gradi-
ent constitute the elements edges of the image which provide the main image informa-
tion[7]. Therefore, the gray-gradient co-occurrence matrix considers the Joint Statisti-
cal Distribution of the gray and the size of the edge gradient of each pixel.
The operational processes of how to extract the gray-gradient co-occurrence matrix
from the image is shown in Figure 1.

Rice image f(ij)

Obtain the gradient image

g(ij) by the 3x3 sobel
operator processing

Obtain the gray matrix Obtain the gradient matrix

F(ij) by the G(ij) by the
regularization processing regularization processing
f (ij ) Lg g (ij) Ls
F (ij ) 1 G(ij) 1
f max gmax

Obtain the gray-gradient co-occurrence matrix H(ij)

Obtain the gray-gradient co-occurrence matrix H ij 

by the regularization processing to the matrix H(ij)
H (ij )
H (ij )
Lx u Ly

Fig. 1. The operational processes of how to extract the gray-gradient co-occurrence matrix from
the image

Gray-gradient co-occurrence matrix describes the distribution for the gray and gra-
dient of each pixel in an image and the spatial relations between pixels. It is the com-
plex of the gray information and the gradient information, for the reason that we can
extract the characteristic parameters of each image from the gray-gradient
co-occurrence matrix.
 An Inspection Method of Rice Milling Degree Based on Machine Vision 197

This paper differently collects 15 texture index from the images of the rice grains,
such as small gradient strengths(R1), large gradient strengths (R2), gray uneven rep-
resentation(R3), gradient uneven representation(R4), energy(R5), gray mean(R6),
gradient mean(R7), gray mean square(R8), gradient mean square(R9), rele-
vance(R10), gray entropy(R11), gradient entropy(R12), mixing entropy(R13), iner-
tia(R14), inverse gap(R15).

3 The Detection of Rice Processing Accuracy

3.1 Preparation of the Samples

We selected the Wan Chang Rice which was produced in Jilin Province as the sam-
ples for the rules research of detection accuracy of the rice. Three rice samples were
weight, each 200g. First, the experimental husker was used to shell the paddy into
brown rice; then, the brown rice was milled by the milling machine, and collected the
rice samples with different precision. As the milling process, the longer you milled,
the more brown rice to be grinded, and the different precision you could get. We set
three different milling time as 30s, 60s, 90s to milling the paddy, and get three differ-
ent brown rice as S1, S2, S3. At the same time, we put the Supermarket Wan Chang
rice as S4 for the detection accuracy for rice processing test.

3.2 The Acquisition of Rice Image

In order to obtain rice samples images, we designed a vision inspection system for
rice precision.

1 11
10
4 12
2
9

8
7
5
3 6

Fig. 2. Rice precision machine vision inspection system. 1.hopper 2.V-groove 3.electric motors
4.drop tank 5.count sensor 6.conveyor 7.Ring light source 8.shot 9.stereomicroscope 10.ccd
camera 11.image acquisition card 12.computer software.

When detecting, put the rice samples into the hopper, then the V-groove vibrated
after the motor driven and made the rice samples fall into the V-groove and ranked to
move forward, when the rice grain in V-groove fallen into the drop tank it would
accelerate the decline. The transmission worked when the count sensor fallen on the
198 P. Wan and C. Long

conveyor belt, and the count sensor put the information into the computer; When the
rice grains through the camera lens, the corn grain shape detection software collected
all the images and sent these images to the computer for detection.
This paper used a microscope to MOTIC stereomicroscope; camera produced in
Japan SONY DXC-390P 3 CCD Color camera; image acquisition card produced by
the Canadian CronosPlus image acquisition card; conveyor belt for the light blue
canvas belt; circular fluorescent light tubes with 5W; major rice-shaped detection
software written using Visual C + +6.0.

3.3 Rice Images Process

The operation process of the obtained rice images was shown in Figure 3.

Rice image acquisition

Graying image

Threshold segmentation
Save
the
Noise Cancellation
rice
images
Image contour extraction

Seed filling

Segment rice image from the background

Gray processing of rice object image

Gray-gradient co-occurrence matrix extraction

Fig. 3. Rice image preprocess procedure

4 Results and Discussion

4.1 The Extraction for the Rice Samples of Different Precision Texture Feature

From the 4 different rice samples, each sample was selected 300 full grain rice, to get
1200 different images, and preprocess those images to get the original image of rice
with different precision.
 An Inspection Method of Rice Milling Degree Based on Machine Vision 199

(1) (2)

(3) (4)

Fig. 4. The original image of rice samples of different precision. (1) Rice sample S1; (2) Rice
sample S2; (3) Rice sample S3; (4) Rice sample S4.

From the images, the rice of different precision, its surface texture patterns signifi-
cantly different. There-fore, we could use the gray-gradient co-occurrence matrix to
test the precision of rice. Preprocess to the original image of the rice samples, we get
gray-gradient co-occurrence matrix of the rice image, then use the image to collect the
texture data, each sample get 300 sets of data.

Table 1. The parameter mean of the rice samples texture

Number of rice samples

Texture parameters
S1 S2 S3 S4
R1 0.2398 0.2407 0.2411 0.2346
R2 6.4022 6.1596 6.0700 6.0915
R3 0.3990 0.3947 0.3876 0.3509
R4 0.8339 0.8434 0.8484 0.7790
R5 0.3365 0.3371 0.3323 0.2813
R6 10.6028 11.0306 11.0789 11.1660
R7 1.6924 1.6712 1.6668 1.7152
R8 4.1985 4.2574 4.1795 3.9872
R9 2.2332 2.1884 2.1677 2.1366
R10 0.0582 0.0406 0.0474 0.0369
R11 1.3577 1.3289 1.3317 1.4491
R12 0.5907 0.5714 0.5643 0.6856
R13 1.8796 1.8288 1.8238 2.0411
R14 103.5886 112.5006 112.7364 112.1271
R15 0.0219 0.0210 0.0210 0.0207
Category values 1 2 3 4
200 P. Wan and C. Long

200 sets of data were selected from each texture feature data of rice samples as the
test samples, and the other 100 sets data as the testing samples. 1,2,3,4 were used as
the numerical classification number of rice samples of S1, S2, S3, and S4.

4.2 Detection by Stepwise Discriminant Analysis of Rice Processing Accuracy

Discriminant analysis[8] is based on the known samples to build a discriminant

function group, To make the Makes the minimum rate of wrongful convictions in the
identification of the sample classification. Analysis variables by the contribution
of independent variable, and Introduction and removing variables one by one, until no
new significant effects of independent variables could be neither introduced, nor
no significant effect of the independent variables are removed from the equation
so far.
Adopt the discriminant analysis of group F by the smallest value than the maxi-
mum choice of variables. Select when the F value is greater than 7.68 will join the
variable into the discriminant function and when the F value is less than 1.355 will
remove the variable from the discriminant function as the criterion, Using SPSS
software testing 800 samples to analyze the data set of texture features, Calculation
the Fisher discri-minant function which can be used for identification and classifica-
tion for unknown samples, Fisher discriminant function is available as Table 2 shows
the coefficient.

Table 2. The coefficients of the Fisher discriminant function

Classification
Texture parameters
S1 S2 S3 S4
R1 26456.25 26448.55 26467.79 26506.75
R3 526.18 517.53 514.82 519.44
R5 -425.70 -420.82 -420.89 -423.64
R6 11.07 11.20 11.32 11.37
R7 1173.44 1174.01 1176.92 1179.87
R8 3.27 2.95 2.67 2.63
R9 -269.99 -270.05 -270.69 -271.51
R11 520.78 517.03 517.03 522.35
R12 1260.50 1259.41 1259.93 1264.28
R13 -425.09 -423.56 -424.55 -428.64
constant -3965.38 -3960.24 -3965.50 -3980.36

We can see from table 3, F satisfy the stepwise discriminant analysis into the dis-
criminant function value greater than 7.68 and F value is less than 1.355 , when the
variables for the discriminant function to remove a small gradient strengths(R1), rep-
resentation of uneven gray(R3), energy(R5), mean of gray(R6), mean of gradient(R7),
MES of gray(R8), MES of gradient(R10), gray entropy(R11), gradient entropy (R12),
gray entropy(R13) 10 texture parameters, etc.. Other variables did not meet the crite-
ria for variable tick was removed from discriminant function.
 An Inspection Method of Rice Milling Degree Based on Machine Vision 201

According to Table 3, construction of Fisher discriminant function groups were as

follows:
Q1 = 26456.25 R1 + 526.18 R3 425.70 R5 + 11.07 R6
+ 1173.44 R7 + 3.27 R8 269.99 R9 + 520.78R11 (1)
+ 1260.50 R12 425.09 R13 3965.38
Q2 = 26448.55 R1 + 517.53 R3 420.82 R5 + 11.20 R6
+ 1174.01R7 + 2.95 R8 270.05R9 + 517.03R11 (2)
+ 1259.41R12 423.56 R13 3960.24
Q3 = 26467.79 R1 + 514.82 R3 420.89 R5 + 11.32 R6
+ 1176.92 R7 + 2.67 R8 270.69 R9 + 517.03R11 (3)
+ 1259.93R12 424.55 R13 3965.50
Q4 = 26506.75 R1 + 519.44 R3 423.64 R5 + 11.37 R6
+ 1179.87 R7 + 2.63R8 271.51R9 + 522.35 R11 ( 4)
+ 1264.28R12 428.64 R13 3980.36
Formula(1), (2), (3), (4) form fisher discriminant function group, the discriminant
function groups were used in the category test for the precision of the unknown rice
samples, put the data of the rice texture characteristics into the 4 discriminant func-
tion, and get the 4 discriminant function value, which one got the largest discriminant
function value it is the most precision one.
According to 4 different rice precision test sample images, use gray-gradient co-
occurrence matrix to collect texture parameters of rice and use Fisher discriminant
function to test classification accuracy of the precision of rice sample, accuracy as
shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Classification of the test samples of rice processing precision

the forecast of rice sample precision

samples total
S1 S2 S3 S4
S1 93 7 0 0 100
S2 3 95 2 0 100
S3 0 5 92 3 100
S4 0 0 4 96 100
correct rate/%
average correct rate/%
93.00 95.00
94.00%
92.00 96.00

Prompt: The data underlined detect the correct samples of rice grains.

From the table 3, using Fisher discriminant function to test the 4 different precision
of rice samples, for class S1, the accuracy of detection for rice samples was 93.00%,
and 95.00% for class S2, 92.00% for class S3, the class S4 get the highest accuracy of
96.00%. The average accuracy rate of the 4 different precision process is 94.00%.
202 P. Wan and C. Long

5 Conclusions
This paper designed a vision inspection system for rice precision testing to get the
image of rice sample, and the texture feature parameters of the different precision rice
samples were collected by using gray-gradient co-occurrence matrix, and then con-
structed Fisher discriminant groups to detect the rice precision. The results show that
400 rice samples of 4 different process precision can reach the average correct to
94.00%; The accuracy of rice samples for processing 30S (the S1 class) was 93.00%,
for processing 60S (the S2 class) was 95.00%, for processing 90S (the S3 class) was
92.00%, the milled rice (the S4 class) could get the highest rate of 96.00%. So, this
method can be used to detect the rice process precision.

References
1. Huang, X., Fang, R., Wu, S.: Progress in research of detection method for degree of rice
milling. Journal of JiangSu University of science and technology 9(3), 69 (1998)
2. Tian, Q.: Application of the computer image processing technique in discerning the degree
of rice whiteness. Cereal and Feed Industry (10), 1011 (1997)
3. Xu, L., Qian, M., Fang, R.: Image process technique to cognize the external qualities and
mil-ling degree of rice. Transactions of the chinese society of agricultural Engineer-
ing 12(3), 176179 (1996)
4. Zhang, H., Meng, Y., Zhou, Z.: Compounds, quantitative analyzing rice milling degree
based on digital image technology. Journal of the Chinese Cereals and Oils Associa-
tion 21(4), 187190 (2006)
5. Li, B.: Study of image texture analysis and classification method. Fudan University,
Shanghai (2007)
6. Sheng, W., Liu, J.: Image texture analysis methods and recent advances. Radio Engine-
ering 28(5), 813 (1998)
7. Hong, J.: Gray level-gradient co-occurrence matrix texture snalysis method. Acta Auto-
matica Sinica 10(1), 2225 (1984)
8. Zhong, C., Guo, Q.: Fisher discrimination method and its application. Journal of South-
west Jiaotong University 43(1), 136141 (2008)
 An Intelligent Retrieval Platform for Distributional
Agriculture Science and Technology Data

Xiaorong Yang1,2, Wensheng Wang1,2,

Qingtian Zeng3, and Nengfu Xie1,2
1
Agriculture Information Institute, Chinese Academy of Agriculture sciences,
Beijing, P.R. China
2
Key Laboratory of Digital Agricultural Early-warning Technology (2006-2010),
Ministry of Agriculture, The Peoples Republic of China
3
Shandong Science and Technology University,
Shandong Province, P.R. China

Abstract. In the agricultural domain, the variety of data used by organizations is

increasing rapidly. Also, there is an increasing demand for accessing these data.
Now, the problem of the digital divide causes serious problems in manipulating
the distributed information. Based on this condition, this paper presents the in-
telligent retrieval architecture of distributional agriculture science and technol-
ogy data which focuses on research of the integration support technology, the
concept extending retrial technology based on agricultural ontology and the
personalization retrieval technique based on the user model. In the experiment,
the intelligent data application platform provided by the paper proves that the
architecture is effective.

Keywords: Agriculture science and technology data, Data integration, Agri-

culture ontology, Intelligent retrieval.

1 Introduction

With the development of computer and network technology, the amount of data which
are collected, saved, processed and transmitted has grown rapidly. Many sharing and
serving platforms of agriculture science and technology information are constructed by
different departments throughout the country. But these platforms lack a unified plan
and management in the important implementation techniques and storage technology.
The heterogeneity and dynamic distribution become basic features of these systems at
present. Particularly the heterogeneity in semantics results in data sharing difficulty. An
intelligent data application platform should be constructed to make full use of different
distributed heterogeneous data resources. The platform can provide a public and uni-
fied data access interface of different distributed data sources for users. Users neednt
consider the problem of data extracting and data combining. So the unified and
high-efficiency access of data can be achieved.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 203209, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
204 X. Yang et al.

2 The Architecture of the Intelligent Retrieval Platform of

Distributional Agriculture Science and Technology Data

2.1 The Logical Architecture of the Intelligent Retrieval Platform of

Distributional Agriculture Science and Technology Data

A traditional retrieval system of distributional agriculture science and technology data

includes distributional data integration module, data category module and data retrieval
module. To improve retrieval intelligence and satisfy users individualized need, the
intelligent retrieval module and personalization service module are designed based on
the traditional retrieval architecture of distributional agriculture science and technology
data. The intelligent retrieval module uses domain ontology to support the information
retrieval based on different languages, synonyms and related information resources.
The personalization service module can record and mine users historical data to dis-
covery users interest. It can recommend information according to users interest. Fig 1
shows the logical architecture of the intelligent retrieval platform of distributional
agriculture science and technology data.

Fig. 1. Intelligent Retrieval Logical Architecture of Distributional Agriculture Science and

Technology Data
 An Intelligent Retrieval Platform for Distributional Agriculture Science 205

2.2 The Function Architecture of the Intelligent Retrieval Platform of

Distributional Agriculture Science and Technology Data

According to the logical architecture the detailed function architecture of the intelligent
retrieval platform of distributional agriculture science and technology data (Fig 2) is
designed. The function architecture includes the management and retrieval of data
sources layer, the central metadata mapping and intelligent retrieval layer and the
system interface layer.
The management and retrieval of data sources layer consists of the node metadata
management module and the web retrieval module. The node metadata management
module manages bottom database sources and the web retrieval module can accept
query parameters from upper layer, access database and return retrieval results.
The central metadata mapping and intelligent retrieval layer consists of the intelli-
gent retrieval module, the central metadata mapping database and the central metadata
manager. The intelligent retrieval module can accept query parameters from system
interface. According to the central metadata mapping table it can find corresponding
data source and submit this query parameters to corresponding web retrieval module.
The central metadata manager can manage metadata and mapping relation between
metadata and data sources.
The system interface layer provides classification retrieval and keywords retrieval
for users. The platform completes semantic extension for query condition which a user
inputs and submits them to the bottom web retrieval module.

Fig. 2. Detailed Function Architecture of the Intelligent Retrieval Platform of Distributional

Agriculture Science and Technology Data
206 X. Yang et al.

3 The Key Technology about Intelligent Retrieval of Distributional

Agriculture Science and Technology Data

3.1 The Integration Supporting Technology of Distributional Agriculture

Science and Technology Data

Integration and category are main function of the integration of distributional agricul-
ture science and technology data. This study adopts middleware technology to solve the
integration of distributed heterogeneous data. A middle layer is developed between
users and distributional agriculture science and technology data sources. It can provide
a unified data access interface for distributed heterogeneous data sources. It also de-
fines classification standards for data resources. Then the information is classified and
displayed to users (Song Lan et al. 2010). Fig 3 shows the logical architecture of In-
tegration and category of distributional agriculture science and technology data. Be-
cause node administrators know more about node database, this study adopts metadata
technique to descript resources. Metadata of bottom resources are described by node
administrators. The middle layer uses the metadata to manage different node data
sources. It administers collectively the metadata of different node database and sets up
a unified metadata mapping table. So all heterogeneous database can be operated as a

Fig. 3. Logical Architecture of Integration and Category of Distributional Agriculture Science

and Technology Data
 An Intelligent Retrieval Platform for Distributional Agriculture Science 207

simple database. The unified metadata mapping table can organize and access hetero-
geneous network information resources (Li Jianhui. 2007) (Song Xiaoyu et al. 2008).
User layer establishes query performance according to the information classification to
submit it to the data integration layer. And the data integration layer searches the
classification mapping table and metadata mapping table and locate the corresponding
data source. This study presents own metadata standard according to database structure
based on Dublin metadata standard.

3.2 The Concept Expansion Retrieval Technology Based on Domain Ontology

Domain ontology technology is adopted to standardize retrieval keywords in order to

reach united comprehension to information between human and human or Machine.
The concept-based retrieval technology can improve retrieval efficiency and speed.
This study adopts description logic to establish domain ontology model and analyses
the reasons of the heterogeneity among information systems from the angle of ontol-
ogy. The semantic integration framework of the heterogeneous systems is established
based on ontology mapping. Domain ontology can be set up in two methods (Cao
Yukun et al. 2010). Semantic extension keywords set and some metadata set of node
data sources inputted by node administrators are main domain ontology keywords. And
the domain keywords extracted from the specialized websites are ancillary sources.
This study constructs ontology by using the graphical interfaces of the ontology edit
tool Protg. According to ontology rules, node administrators extend the keywords in
the semantic dictionary from four properties of synonym, abbreviation, English lan-
guage and Chinese pinyin. Thus a unified semantic dictionary is set up in the center
database and becomes more and more abundant (Song Lan et al. 2009). It can improve
the recall ratio of information retrieval. Then the center administrators delete repetitive
and ambiguous words. The precision ratio of the platform can be implemented (Chen
Lihua. 2010).
By semantic analysis of ontology concept and retrieval keywords, retrieval asso-
ciation and expansion are completed step by step. This technology supports synonym
retrieval, information retrieval of different languages and recommendation of related
information resources. For example, if a user inputs the keyword crop, Chinese and
English information about crop can be searched and information about rice and wheat
can be searched.

3.3 The Personalized Recommending Technology Based on User Model

User interest model is set up according to users explicit demand and implicit demand.
It maintains uses history behavior information and personal information. It provides
different comprehension of same keywords from different users in depth and scope.
User feedback process based on users' opinions makes retrieval service more accurate
and friendly. User interest model can analyse a users behavior and record and mine
users hidden interest. Because the users interest changes, user interest model
self-studies continuously to improve itself (Fei Hongxiao et al. 2009). The platform sets
higher priority to the information which are often accessed by the user. user interest
model can forecast a users interest and demand to implement personal information
208 X. Yang et al.

retrieval and recommending. Firstly, this study implements the dynamic sort of in-
formation resources according to a users interest. When a user accesses some infor-
mation resources, the system records his behavior and analyses his interest in classified
information resources. When the user retrieves information again, the data resources
which are often accessed by him will be displayed ahead. Secondly, the system can
customize personal fields of database. The fields can be defined as the language and
words needed by a user in order to satisfy his usage pattern. Finally, the system can
record information accessed by a user. The user can operate the accessed records and
define if they are useful to him. By calculating the probability of the accessed infor-
mation, the users interest in information resources of some sort can be gotten.

4 Application Case
To evaluate the intelligent retrieval platform for distributional agriculture science and
technology data, the platform is applied in the management of Tibet science and
technology information resource. In Tibet, all kinds of information resources are saved
in different database and websites. These systems dont communicate each other be-
cause of the independence in the design and deployment. By applying the intelligent
retrieval technology, the platform integrates, maintains and shares the distributional
agriculture science and technology data in Tibet. The platform provides a unified data
access interface for distributed heterogeneous data sources. Through the interface users
access the needed information conveniently and neednt consider the problem of data
extracting and data combining. Not only the information which meets the inputted
keywords can be searched, but also the information about the synonym, English lan-
guage and related information of the inputted keywords can be found. And the infor-
mation are displayed according to users interest priority. The retrieval intelligence and
individualized service of the platform satisfy users demand.

5 Conclusion
To integrate and share distributional heterogeneous agriculture science and technology
data, this study designs and implements the intelligent retrieval platform for distribu-
tional agriculture science and technology data. This paper introduces the logic and
function architecture of the platform and the integration supporting technology of
distributional agriculture science and technology data, the concept expansion retrieval
technology based on domain ontology and the personalized recommending technology
based on user model. Finally, as an application case, the platform has been applied to
manage Tibet science and technology information resource to verify the performance
of the management platform.

Acknowledgements
The work is supported by the Academy of Science and Technology for Development
fund project intelligent search-based Tibet science & technology information resource
 An Intelligent Retrieval Platform for Distributional Agriculture Science 209

sharing technology, the National Science and Technology Major Project of the Min-
istry of Science and Technology of China (Grant No. 2009ZX03001-019-01), and the
special fund project for Basic Science Research Business Fee, AII (No. 2010-J-07).

References
1. Cao, Y., Ding, M.: Discovering Model of Semantic Web Service Based on Ontology.
Computer Systems & Applications 19(4), 98102 (2010)
2. Chen, L.: Comment on Latent Semantic Analysis of Retrieval Precision Rate Factors Based
on the Impact of Natural Language. Journal of Modern Information 3(03), 2631 (2010)
3. Song, L., Lei, L., Wang, H.: A Study of Intelligent Semantic Information Processing System
Based on Ontology. Journal of East China Jiaotong University 26(05), 3134 (2009)
4. Wang, X.: Semantic-based Query in Heterogeneous Information Integration Environment.,
Doctor Degree Dissertation of Huazhong University of Science & Technology (2006)
5. Li, J.: Key Problems Research on Metadata Oriented to Scientific Data Sharing. Doctor
Degree Dissertation of the Chinese Academy of Science (2007)
6. Song, X., Wang, Y.: Data Integration and Integration Application. The Chinese Publishing
Press of Water Conservancy and Hydroelectric Power (2008)
7. Hongxiao, F., Siming, T., Wenxing, L., Qinxiu, L., Xin, D.: Web User Clustering Based on
Interest. Computer Systems & Applications 19(4), 6265 (2010)
 Analysis of Factors Influencing the Off-Farm
Employment Based on the Method of PLS

Ying Huang and Yizong Xu

School of Economics and Management, Beijing Forestry University

Beijing, 100083, P.R. China
huangying_1029@163.com

Abstract. With the widening income gap between the urban and rural areas,
off-farm employment has undergone rapid development. The essay aims at ana-
lyzing the factors influencing the off-farm employment according to the statis-
tics collected from Changle City in Fujian Province using the method of Partial
Least-squares (PLS). Since current statistical methods such as the least squares,
Logistics and the principle component analysis can not avoid the existence of
the problems such as multiple correlation, single dependent variable and poorly
explanatory information. However, these problems can be smoothed away by
implementing the method of PLS. The results show that training experience of
the rural labor force, education level, vocational skills, and health status
are main factors influencing the off-farm employment while working area only
has a slight impact. Some correspondent solutions and advice are available
according to the analysis.

Keywords: Off-farm Employment, Partial Least-Squares (PLS), Fujian.

1 Introduction

Large number of rural population, low per capita arable land, late start industry, low
level of urbanization and the existence of urban-rural dual structure, are all basic con-
ditions of current China. This condition has resulted in the oversupply of rural labor
force for a long time. With the widening income gap between the urban and rural ar-
eas, the margin income of the agricultural labor is undergoing a further decrease.
Quantities of rural labor migrate to the metropolis, which contributes greatly to the
development of the off-farm employment. According to the figures from the National
Bureau of Statistics, in the year 2008, the average wage income of the rural residents
has reached to 1854 per capita. The increment of the wage income accounts for 41.5%
of the whole years total incremental net income. Based on the statistics, the increase
of the wage income from the migrate workers contributes significantly to the family
economy [1].
In the existing literature on rural off-farm employment of labor force, the current
theory suffers several weaknesses: (1) studies pay more attention to income growth

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 210218, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
Analysis of Factors Influencing the Off-Farm Employment Based on the Method of PLS 211

factors of the off-farm employment rather than job stability, which is an important
indicator of the off-farm employment situation [2]. (2) The variables, which impact
off-farm employment in the rural labor force, still have multiple correlations. Imple-
menting the simple least square method, the logistic [3] method and the principle
component analysis method can hardly smooth away the limitation derived from the
multiple correlation. The disadvantage of the multiple correlation lies in variables,
which consist quantities of the duplicated information, thus, exaggerating the status of
the feature in the analysis system [4]. (3) simply using the principle components analy-
sis [5] can prevent us from interpretive understanding of the dependent variables,
which may result in poor explanation based on the analysis of the independent
variables.
PLS is widely used in establishing the statistic correlation between the independent
variables and the dependent variables. In the modeling process, PLS regression analy-
sis aggregates the advantages of principal component analysis, canonical correlation
analysis and multiple linear regression method. When processing the independent
variables which have multiple correlations, PLS could do better in modeling [6]. PLS
makes component t1 of the independent variables and component u1 of the dependent
variables contain the mutant information from the data sheet as much as possible. At
the same time, t1 and u1 can achieve the greatest degree of correlation, which means t1
and u1 have great explanatory power [7].

2 Sources and the Sample Characterization

2.1 Figures

The data used in the essay are all from the survey of Wenwusha, Fujian. The survey is
conducted by an academic group. The sample size is 20, which is randomly collected
and analyzed in the line with the fundamental principles of the statistics. Being one of
the largest provinces which have great labor export, Fujian has a large number of the
migrate workers leaving their homes for off-farm work every year. In the year 1978,
the 1st industry account for 75.1% of population of employment structure of Fujian
Province. However, in the year 2007, the percentage has decreased to 32.7%. The
gaps between the 1st and the 2nd industry, or the 3rd industry widened at first, then
shortened afterwards [8]. The trend has manifested that the decrease of the agricul-
tural labor force make the proportion of the off-farm employment in the rural area
increase.

2.2 Sample Characterization

This paper selects income, position, job stability as the indicators of evaluating the
off-farm employment situation of rural labor force. The analysis involves 5 aspects:
working areas, training experiences, education level, vocational skills and health
status, which are all used in investigating the impact on the off-farm employment of
the rural area.
212 Y. Huang and Y. Xu

Table 1. Variable

Abbr
The Name of the Variables
.
Income(RMB/year) Y1
Dependent Position(1=the most senior managers;2=the junior managers;
Y2
variables 3=the preliminary managers;4=general staff)
Job Stability(The average frequency of job changing per year) Y3
Education level(0=illiterate; 1=primary; 2=junior; 3=senior
X1
high/secondary ; 4=undergraduate/specialist ; 5=graduate)
Health Status(1=good;2=median;3=poor) X2
Working Area(1=village; 2=town but non-village; 3=county
Independent
but non-town; 4=province but non-town; 5=outer province; X3
variables
6=foreign country)
Vocational
X4
Skills(0=none;1=preliminary;2=median;3=advanced)
Training Experience(1=participated;0=never participated) X5

1) rural labor force is the main form of off-farm employment

According to the survey, migrant workers in the region accounts for a larger propor-
tion of 65%. Among the migrant workers, 25% of the rural labor force has chosen to
work in other provinces, 20% are the county workers and 10% are the town workers.
The forms of the migrant workers are predominant agricultural work, waging in spare
time, waging or doing business oriented work, off-farm work, etc.

YLOODJH

  WRZQEXWQRQYLOODJH

FRXQW\EXWQRQWRZQ

SURYLQFHEXWQRQWRZQ

  RXWHUSURYLQFH

IRUHLJQFRXQWU\

Fig. 1. Working area

2) Low education level of the rural labor force

In this region, the education situation of the rural labor force is not optimistic. The
proportion of the rural labor force with education higher than the secondary level is
only 5%. Few of the workers have postgraduate diploma or above. The workers with
high school or secondary level of education account for the most, which is 30%, in
this region. The number of workers dropping out of school after compulsory educa-
tion is up to 20%. Only-primary school diploma holders account for 20% in the off-
farm labor force of the rural area. Illiterate workers account for approximately 15%.
The figures demonstrate that the rural labor force is generally in low quality, which
posits impediment for their growth in the future.
Analysis of Factors Influencing the Off-Farm Employment Based on the Method of PLS 213

graduate0

undergraduate/specialist 0.05

senior high/secondary 0.3

junior 0.2

primary 0.25

illiterate 0.15

0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35

Fig. 2. The hierarchy of the vocational skills

3 The Analysis of PLS Regression

The basic idea of the PLS regression modeling is extracting t1 and u1 from the inde-
pendent variables X(i) and dependent variables Y(i) respectively. The t1 and the u1
should contain the mutant information as much as possible from the variable sheet,
that is. On the other way, it is required that the component t1 has the greatest explana-
tory power to u1. Based on the idea of the canonical correlation analysis, t1 and u1
should reach the maximum degree of the correlation, that is. Accordingly, in the PLS
regression, the covariance between t1 and u1 should reach to the maximum value, that
is:

Cov(t1, u1) = Var (t1)Var (u1)r (t1, u1) max (1)

3.1 Accuracy Analysis Based on the PLS Regression

In order to evaluate the predictive ability of the fitting equation, first, we should cal-
culate the cross validation. For all of the dependent variables Y, the cross validation
of component t is defined as:

SPRESS , hk
Qh2 = 1 (2)
SSS , h 1
In the equation, represents the predictive error of the sum of squares, represents the
sum of squares. When

Qh2 (1 0.95) 2 = 0.0975 (3)

the marginal contribution of th is significant.

214 Y. Huang and Y. Xu

Fig. 3. Accuracy analysis

According to the Fig. 3, RdX represents the explanatory power of t h to X and RdY
represents the explanatory power of t h to Y. Q2 represents the cross validation.
Based on the analysis, if a simply extracted validating component t1 can explain
39.7% of the dependent variable in the variables set Y and the information utilization
rate of the X variables set reaches 54.7%, introducing new principal component t1 will
significantly improve predictive capability of the model.

3.2 The Analysis of the Correlation of the Dependent Variables and

Independent Variables
First, Fig. 4 demonstrates the values of the t1/ u1. In this Figure, t1 is the first PLS com-
ponent of the explanatory variable group; u1 is the PLS component of the explained
variable group. t1 and u1 are in the clear line form, which mean, the two group of the
variables have a strong correlation. It is legitimate to grant the model validation.

Fig. 4. Values of t1/u1

3.3 The Effect When Using Independent Variables to Explain the Dependent
Variables
The effect that each independent variable X explains the dependent variable of the set
Y can be evaluated by the important variable projection index VIP. When VIP>1, it
Analysis of Factors Influencing the Off-Farm Employment Based on the Method of PLS 215

shows that X has far more important effect on explaining the variable Y. Learning
from Table 2, we can know that health status(X2), education level (X1), vocational
skills(X4), training experience(X5) are all significant factors influencing the off-farm
employment of the rural area. However, the working area(X3) is inferior in influencing
the off-farm employment of the rural area. Recently, government has paid more atten-
tion to the labor force of the rural area. With the development of the Rural Labor
Force Training Sunshine Project, the situations such as low level of education of the
migrate workers, lacking necessary vocational skills have been ameliorated to some
extent, making them more competitive in the process of the urbanization.

Table 2. Values of VIP

Var ID (Primary) M1.VIP[1]

X2 1.16181
X5 1.14651
X1 1.03079
X4 1.00695
X3 0.509152

3.4 The Discovery of the Specific Points

Generally speaking, since sample points which contribute excessively to the principle
components can produce deviation when analyzing, we are trying to avoid the exis-
tence of such sample points. Therefore, we can measure the cumulative contribution
rate that sample point i have to the components t1, t2tn.

1 m t hi2
Ti 2 =
n 1 h=1 sh2
(4)

SIMCA-P software use the Tracy statistics

n 2 ( n m) 2
Ti ~ F (m, n m) (5)
m(n 2 1)
In the equation, n represents the number of the sample points, m represents the num-
ber of components used in the regression equation. When

n 2 ( n m)
Ti 2 F0.05 (m, n m) (6)
m(n 2 1)
it can be confirmed that on the 95% test level, sample point i makes excessive contri-
bution to the components t1, t2tn. Point i can be defined as the specific point,
which can result in deviation when analyzing. According to the Fig. 5, we can see that
all the points are in the circumference of the ellipse. No specific point exists.
216 Y. Huang and Y. Xu

Fig. 5. T2ellipse

3.5 Quality of the Data Reconstruction

When using the components t1, t2tn to establish the PLS regression model, be-
cause of omitting some original information, the difference of the fitted value and the
actual value is too large, which makes it difficult to reconstruct the fitting equation.
Under this scenario, we can measure the reconstruction quality of the sample points.
According to this method, the distance of the sample points in the X space is:

eij2 n
si = DModX i = (7)
pm n m 1
In this equation, eij2 represents the square of the difference of the fitted value and the
actual value of the sample points. n presents the number of the sample. p represents
the number of the independent variables. M represents the number of the components
in the regression equation. The average distance of the model in the set of sample
points is defined as:
1 n 2
sX = si
n i =1
(8)

The standard distance is:

si
( DModX , N ) i = (9)
sX

3.6 The Predictive Result of the Model

Demonstrated from the Fig. 6, all the values of distance vary from 0 to 2, which mean
the reconstruction quality of the sample points is uniform.
Analysis of Factors Influencing the Off-Farm Employment Based on the Method of PLS 217

Fig. 6. The standard distance of the sample points

4 Suggestions and Solutions

According to the study, the labor force training, education, vocational skills, and
health status are main factors influencing the off-farm employment while working
area only has a slight impact.
In order to solve the problems mentioned above, the government should increase
the training of the rural labor force and the training should focus on improving the
professional skills of rural labor force. In order to improve the quality of the rural
labor force, we should as well strengthen the rural education, implement variety of
effective education forms and continue promoting the Rural Labor Force Training
Sunshine Project. Only thus can we truly ameliorate the situation of the off-farm
employment in the rural area.

References
1. Du, Y., Piao, Z.: Labor migration income and poverty. Chinas Rural Observation (5), 29
(2003)
2. Ren, G., Xue, S.: Training and employment income growth of Chinese agricultural mecha-
nization. Impact Study (06) (2009)
3. Xin, L., Jiang, H.: Rural labor non-farm payrolls factors analysis_ Based on a rural labor
force of 1006 Sichuan. Agricultural technology economy (06) 2009
4. Wang, H.: partial least-square regression method and its application. Defense Industry
Press, Beijing (1999)
218 Y. Huang and Y. Xu

5. Chen, X., Huang, J.: The factors affecting the migrant workers principal component analy-
sis (18) (2009)
6. Ren, R., Wang, H.: Multivariate statistical data analysis. - theory, method and examples, p.
149. Defense Industry Press, Beijing (2009)
7. Jiang, Y.: Fujian industry structure and employment structure of correlation analysis.
Technology (9) (2009)
8. Wang, H., Wu, B., Meng, J.: Partial Least-squares regression of linear and nonlinear
method. Defense Industry Press, Beijing (2006)
 Analysis of Income Difference among Rural
Residents in China

Yan Xue, Yeping Zhu, and Shijuan Li

Laboratory of Digital Agricultural Early-warning Technology of Ministry of

Agriculture of China, Institute of Agricultural Information, CAAS,
100081 Beijing, China
{Xueyan,Zhuyp}mail.caas.net.cn

Abstract. This paper studies and analyzes the income difference among Chi-
nese rural residents from 1997 to 2008 through absolute difference indices and
relative difference indices. It comes to the conclusion that the absolute income
difference among rural residents in China has been increasing year by year,
while the relative difference remains around the average level and tends to in-
crease in fluctuations in recent years. The paper also discusses the results and
proposes corresponding countermeasures.

Keywords: Income Difference, Rural Residents, Analysis.

1 Introduction
Since the reform and opening up, Chinas economy has maintained a momentum of
rapid development. But the income of residents, especially those in rural areas, has
not increased along with the economy, causing a big gap between productivity and
consumption level, which inevitably hampers the sustainable economic development.
Therefore, to keep residents income growth in line with economic development has
both social and economic significance. As China is a large agricultural country, rural
residents income growth is especially important, which is also the starting point of
this study.

2 Measurement of Income Difference

The selection of method and index system for measuring residents income difference
is directly related to the accuracy and rationality of the results. Currently, there are two
kinds of basic indices for studying income difference: one is absolute difference meas-
urement, e.g. standard deviation, weighted standard deviation and average deviation;
the other is relative difference measurement, e.g. extreme value deviation, variation
coefficient, Gini coefficient, Lorenz curve and Theil index. Generally these indices can
reflect the overall difference and changes of residents income. The paper analyzes the
income difference among Chinese rural residents in recent years through standard
deviation, weighted standard deviation, average deviation, Gini coefficient and Theil
index respectively.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 219226, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
220 Y. Xue, Y. Zhu, and S. Li

2.1 Standard Deviation (S)

Standard deviation reflects the deviation between the regional index and the corre-
sponding arithmetic mean. The greater standard deviation, the greater absolute differ-
ence in residents per capita income across regions. The formula is:

n 2
( y jy )
j (1)
S =
N

Where S is standard deviation; yj is per capita income of rural residents in j region;

y is average per capita income of rural residents in different regions; and n is the
number of regions. Standard deviation is an intuitive, simple and clear index that is
relatively easy to calculate. But as an arithmetic mean based on regional index devia-
tion, it can not fully reflect the scale difference across different regions.

2.2 Weighted Standard Deviation (Sw)

Weighted standard deviation is also an easy and effective measurement tool for ana-
lyzing regional income difference.
n
pj
Sw = (y y) * p
j
j
2
(2)

Where yj is the income of rural residents in j region; y is the average per capita in-
come of rural resident in all regions; Pj is the population of j region; P is the popula-
tion of all regions; and n is the number of regions. The greater Sw value, the greater
absolute difference. Compared with standard deviation, weighted standard deviation
is obviously much more resistant to the disturbance of region-division method and
more stable when it comes to multi-angle analysis of the regional difference.

2.3 Deviation (D)

Average deviation is based on the relationship between income distribution and

equivalence distribution. It is equal to the expected deviation between the overall
income level and the average income level. The greater average deviation, the greater
difference between income distribution and equivalence distribution, and vise versa.
The formula is:
n
yjy
j (3)
D =
n
Where D is average deviation; yj is per capita income of rural residents in j region; y
is average per capita income of rural residents in different regions; and n is the
number of regions.
 Analysis of Income Difference among Rural Residents in China 221

2.4 Gini Coefficient (G)

Gini coefficient is commonly used to measure inequality of income, consumption or

any other things. It calculates the inequality index based on the Lorenz Curve. A prac-
tical way is to use a formula deducted by triangle method, i.e. rank income in increas-
ing order and divide the total population into n income groups (no need to divide into
equal parts by proportion). Assume the population of the ith group account for Pi of
total population, and the income account for Ii (i=1, 2, , n) of total income, then the
cumulative proportion of population from 1st to ith group Mi=P1+ +Pi, and the
cumulative proportion of income Qi=I1++Ii. The formula of Gini Coefficient is:
n1
G = ( MiQi Mi+1Qi )i (4)
i =1
If the Gini coefficient is smaller than 0.2, the society is quite equal in income distribu-
tion. Values between 0.2 and 0.3 indicate a high equality; between 0.3 and 0.4,
moderate inequality; between 0.4 and 0.5, a high inequality; and greater than 0.6, an
absolute inequality.

2.5 Theil Index (T)

An index to measure income difference between individuals or regions. The smaller

value, the less disequilibrium. A major advantage to measure inequality by the Theil
index is to measure the contributions of intra-group and inter-group difference to the
total difference. But note that the calculation is complicated, and the income differ-
ence represented by Theil index is largely impacted by the sample size. These shall be
taken into consideration in calculating income difference with the Theil index. The
total level of income difference of regions represented by the Theil index is the
weighted total of the logarithm of income share against population share of each
region, the weight being the income share. The formula is:

n Y
T = Yi log i
i =1 Pi (5)

Where T is the Theil index, n is the number of regions, Yi is the income share of the
ith region, and Pi is the population share of the ith region.

3 Empirical Analysis

The online version of the volume will be available in LNCS Online. Members of
institutes subscribing to the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series have access to
all the pdfs of all the online publications. Non-subscribers can only read as far as the
222 Y. Xue, Y. Zhu, and S. Li

abstracts. If they try to go beyond this point, they are automatically asked, whether
they would like to order the pdf, and are given instructions as to how to do so.

3.1 Data Source

The data in this paper are sourced from China Statistical Yearbook 1997-2008, and
basic data including population and rural residents per capita net income are selected
according to the measurement indices.

3.2 Analysis of Absolute Difference

According to results in Table 1, we can observe changes in absolute difference of

Chinese rural residents per capita net income, as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1 shows
intuitively that the absolute difference increases year by year during 1997 and 2008,
and the change trend of the three indices are exactly the same. Standard deviation for
instance, increases slowly from 910.82 of 1997 to 1252.36 of 2003, and rapidly from
1341.89 of 2004 to 2150.52 of 2008, showing distinct phase characteristics.

Table 1. Standard deviation, weighted standard deviation and average deviation of Chinese
rural residentsper capita net income from 1997 to 2008

Years Example Standard Deviation Weighted

Average
(S) Standard Deviation
Deviation (D)
(Sw)
1997 910.82 752.44 677.49
1998 928.97 762.43 700.71
1999 958.36 792.01 728.78
2000 1024.03 859.91 779.98
2001 1096.05 903.21 837.18
2002 1179.81 967.12 897.31
2003 1252.36 1045.74 952.59
2004 1341.89 1124.25 1018.11
2005 1575.31 1304.54 1178.57
2006 1758.56 1451.91 1311.22
2007 1940.00 1593.22 1437.33
2008 2150.52 1757.13 1586.86

Naturally, from a statistical view, the calculation of standard deviation and other
indices are impacted by changes of mean value, i.e. the increase of Chinese rural
residents per capita net income can be summarized in part as the improvement of
overall income per capita. Figure 2 shows that the increase of standard deviation,
weighted standard deviation and average deviation of Chinese rural residents annual
per capita net income is consistent with the rising trend of overall net income per
capita. It confirms that the rise of net income per capita contributes to the increase of
 Analysis of Income Difference among Rural Residents in China 223

absolute indices of rural residents annual net income per capita. Accordingly, there
must be certain error if standard deviation and other indices are used to study the
income difference. Therefore, to eliminate the influence of this factor, relative differ-
ence indices shall be combined with absolute differences for further analysis.

2500

2000
Standard Deviation
1500 (S)
Weighted Standard
1000 Deviation (Sw)
Average Deviation
500 (D)

0

1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Fig. 1. Changes in absolute difference of Chinese rural residents per capita net income from
1997 to 2008

5000
4500 Standard Deviation
4000 (S)
3500
Weighted Standard
3000
Deviation (Sw)
2500
2000 Average Deviation
1500 (D)
1000 average per capita
500 income
0
7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 9 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
9 9 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Fig. 2. Comparison of standard deviation, weighted standard deviation, average deviation with
per capita net income of rural residents

3.3 Analysis of Relative Difference

From Table 1, Figure 3 and 4, we can see that from 1997 to 2004, the relative differ-
ence of Chinese rural residents per capita net income evolved as follows:
First, Gini coefficient changed insignificantly from 0.401 in 1997 to 0.4097 in
2008, while obvious fluctuation appeared from 1998 to 2002 as decrease after
224 Y. Xue, Y. Zhu, and S. Li

increase. During the 12 years from 1997 to 2008, Gini coefficient was always around
0.41, which shows that the income gap is relatively reasonable or a little large, and the
gap tended to widen especially from 2006 to 2008.
Second, the Theil index slightly slipped from 0.3477 in 1997 to 0.3339 in 2008. It
is not difficult to find out that the Theil index also fluctuates during the 12 years. In
general, however, the disequilibrium of rural residents per capita net income appears
to be at average level or slightly decreasing.

Table 2. Gini coefficient and Theil index of Chinese rural residents per capita net income from
1997 to 2008

Years Gini coefficient (G) Theil index (T)

1997 0.4010 0.3477
1998 0.4026 0.3511
1999 0.4061 0.3513
2000 0.4109 0.3441
2001 0.4072 0.3564
2002 0.3995 0.3629
2003 0.3924 0.3668
2004 0.3966 0.3538
2005 0.3954 0.3564
2006 0.4005 0.3582
2007 0.4055 0.3449
2008 0.4097 0.3339

Gini coefficient (G)

0.415
0.41
0.405
0.4
0.395
0.39
0.385
0.38
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Fig. 3. Changes in Gini coefficient of Chinese rural residents per capita net income from 1997
to 2008
 Analysis of Income Difference among Rural Residents in China 225

Theil index (T)

0.37
0.36
0.35
0.34
0.33
0.32
0.31
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Fig. 4. Changes in Theil index of Chinese rural residents per capita net income from 1997 to
2008

4 Discussion and Proposal

According to the above analysis, the absolute difference indices of Chinese rural resi-
dents income over the 12 years from 1997 to 2008 are enlarging year by year, with
obvious phase characteristics; the relative difference indices appear to be at average
level in general, but the Gini coefficient tends to increase in fluctuations in recent
years. Therefore, the rural residents income gap is widening in China. Appropriate
income gap can stimulate competition and break the absolute equalitarianism to pro-
mote economic development. However, as the gap is significantly widening, if we
dont take corresponding measures, the trend will continue for a long term to cause
excessive disparity in income, which will easily influence the social stability and
hamper the economic development. Therefore, we should fully understand how rural
residents income gap may influence social economy to correctly handle the relations
between efficiency and impartiality. Instead of placing our hope on the natural evolu-
tion of economy, we shall consciously and actively adjust and improve development
policies for different regions to control the current rural residents income gap in a
certain range, and allow the existing gap to promote instead of hampering the eco-
nomic development. To this end, we put forward the following proposals:
First, establish corresponding policies and measures to support agricultural devel-
opment, increase funds to support agriculture, invest more in basic education, support
rural infrastructure construction and social undertaking development, identify scien-
tific rural industrial development strategy, and promote industrialization and urbani-
zation in rural areas.
Second, increase rural residents income, while narrowing their education gap and
improving their quality. For low-income areas in particular, we shall encourage intel-
lectual work and investment through macro control while actively improving farmers
income level so as to increase the income of professional technicians and managers,
prevent loss of talents and resources, and ensure the development potential of low-
226 Y. Xue, Y. Zhu, and S. Li

income areas. Meanwhile, we shall offer preferential policies to attract the transfer of
labor, technology and fund to the backward areas.
Third, regulate distribution principle, crack down illegal earnings and adjust tax
system. We shall adjust and improve income distribution system, protect legitimate
earnings and adopt differentiated support policies for different areas to reduce farm-
ers burden.
Fourth, another way to increase rural residents income is to ensure equal oppor-
tunity to earn income. The government should ensure social members have a basic
and equal start when they enter the society, i.e. each individual in the society should
have equal fundamental rights including the equal right to existence, employment,
education and relocation, etc.

References
1. Tao, Y.H.: Study on Regional Difference of Rural Resident Income and Its Influencing Fac-
tor. Doctoral Dissertation (2008)
2. Sun, J., Huang, H.B.: Application of Theil Index in the Analysis of Income Gap in East,
Middle and West Areas. Market Modernization 500, 51 (2007)
3. Huang, T.Y., Wang, J.G.: Choice of Measurement Index System for Resident Income Gap.
Contemporary Economic Research 9, 4247 (2000)
4. Shang, Y.H.: Reason and Countermeasure Proposal for the Increase of National Gini Coef-
ficient. Theoretical Exploration 2, 8486 (2007)
 Analysis of Secretary Proteins in the Genome
of the Plant Pathogenic Fungus
Botrytis Cinerea

Zhang Yue, Yang Jing, Liu Lin, Su Yuan, Xu Ling,

Zhu Youyong, and Li Chengyun*

Key Laboratory of Agro-biodiversity and Pest Management of the Education Ministry of China,
Yunnan Agricultural University, Kunming, 650201, China
li.chengyun@gmail.com

Abstract. The signal peptides prediction algorithm SignalP v3.0, subcellular

protein location prediction algorithm TargetP.v1.1, potential GPI-anchor sites
prediction algorithm big-PI predictor, trans-membrane domains prediction al-
gorithm TMHMM v2.0 and bioinformatics algorithm MEME were used to
analyze 16446 protein sequences of Botrytis cinerea. The results showed that
there were 579 deduced secretary proteins. Among these proteins, the minimum
and maximum of open read frame were 102 bp and 4848 bps respectively and
mean score was 1271 bps. The signal peptides length was concentrated to 16~39
amino acids and the average length was 21. 122 of these proteins contain the
highly conserved host-targeting-motif RxLx within 100 residues adjacent to the
signal peptide cleavage site. According to PEDNAT and COG of GenBank da-
tabase, this motifs functions include metabolism modification and cell secretion
etc. We blast those putative secretary proteins with RxLx motif in GenBenk and
found 47.54% of them have highly conserved homologues in other species,
among them 74.1% have putative protein domains. This means these proteins
may be more stable or earlier origin. We suppose these proteins are candidate
participating in the pathogenesis of Botrytis cinerea but we still need more ex-
perimental evidence to confirm their definite functions.

Keywords: Botrytis cinerea; signal peptide; secretary protein;

host-targeting-motif.

Botrytis cinerea belongs to Deuteromycotina and is a widespread phytopathogenic

fungus causing disease in a substantial number of economically important crops [1]. It
causes Gray-mold rot or Botrytis blight and affects most vegetable and fruit crops, as
well as a large number of shrubs, trees, flowers, and weeds. It also has a beneficial role
in the production of rare dessert wines. The genome sequence information of Botrytis
cinerea was released in 2005 and was helpful for us to understand this ascomycete's
complex developmental life cycle, Pathogenesis mechanisms and interactions with its
different host plants.

*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 227237, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
228 Y. Zhang et al.

Protein is the basic function element of living organism. Many pathogenic microbes
could secrete kinds of proteins into the host cell to facilitate its infection process [2]. So
analysis of secreted proteins in the pathogens genome will be helpful to reveal its
pathogenesis mechanisms. The secreted proteins used to be synthesized by ribosome
and need a transport process to secrete outside the cells. There are two mechanisms for
peptides transportation. The fist is cotranslational transfer. In this way, synthesized
partial signal peptide combined to endoplasmic reticulum and the secreted proteins
were synthesized meanwhile entered the endoplasmic reticulum, after moderated by
endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi complex they were secreted outside. The second is
posttranslational translocation. By this mechanism the complete proteins were synthe-
sized and then were transported for modifying with the help of leader peptide [3]. In
both mechanisms, the signal peptide has played the fundamental role. The signal pep-
tide was usually composed by 10 to 60 amino acids. It contained a hydrophobic region
(H-region) which was constituted by 6 to 15 amino-acid residues in the center and
hydrophilic N terminal and C terminal at the both sides [4]. According to Gunter
Blobels signal peptide hypothesis, secretary proteins destiny was decided by its signal
peptide and this peptide will be cut off when the protein arrive its destination. So we
can decide whether a protein is a secretary protein by analysis of its signal peptide of N
terminal [5]. Several software had been developed to indentify the signal peptide in the
protein. Lee used SignalP(v2.0) analyzed 47 secretary protein and 47 other proteins of
Candida albicans, it shows that the putative results of this software is credible [6].
The interactions between pathogens and their hosts is a hot spot for scientific re-
search recently. How the secretary proteins entered the plant cells and play their func-
tion is still not clear now. Bacterias type III secretary system have been illustrated by
many researchers, but the pathway of the eukaryotic pathogens secretary proteins is
still unclear [7, 8]. There is a report revealed that during the process of Plasmodium
Falciparum infected erythrocyte, most of secretary proteins which will be injected into
erythrocyte contain an RxLxE/D/Q motif at 60 amino-acid residues downstream the
cutting site of the signal peptide [9]. Souvik Bhattacharjee also indicated that RxLx
motif also existed in hundreds of pathogenic secretary proteins of Phytophthora in-
festans which play the same function as RxLxE/D/Q motifs of Plasmodium Falcipa-
rum. Plasmodium Falciparum and Phytophthora infestans are far related and infect
animal and plant respectively; they should have different pathogenic process and
mechanism, so RxLx motif may be a conserved signal recognition motif of eukaryotic
pathogen [10]. In this study, we try to make use of the genome data to indicate how
many secretary proteins contained by Botrytis cinerea and whether RxLx motif exist in
this saprophytic fungis secretary proteins and play pathogenic function.

1 Materials and Methods

The sequence data of Botrytis cinerea was downloaded from the database of
BROAD institute Botrytis cinerea strain B05.10. It totally contained 16446 putative
 Analysis of Secretary Proteins in the Genome of the Plant Pathogenic Fungus 229

proteins in the database (http://www.broad.mit.edu/annotation/genome/botrytis_cinerea/

Home.html), by the use of signal putative software SignalP (http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/
services/SignalP/) [11], subcellular organelle located software TargetP (http: //www.cbs.
dtu.dk/services/TargetP1.1) [12, 13], anchoring protein analysis software big-PIPredicto
(http://mendel.imp.ac.at/sat/gpi/gpi_server) [14] and transmembrane helix analysis soft-
ware TMHMMServer (http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/TMHMM) [15], we selected
those proteins with signal peptide (satisfied L=-918.235-123.455*(Mean.S.score)+
1983.44*(HMM scores) and L>0) [6], secreted outside the cells not to other subcellular
organelle, not anchoring protein and didnt contain transmembrane helix as secretary
proteins. Then we use MEME(Multiple Expectation Maximization for Motif Elicitaion)
[16] to test whether these putative secretary proteins contain RxLx motif and whether
there exist conserved amino-acid residue at the two sides of this motif. Then the graph
was produced by software LOGO [17] according to the result of MEME. We also com-

pared the sequence of these putative secretary proteins with RxLx motif to PEDNAT

database http://pedant.gsf.de/index.jsp and searched them in the COG database from
GeBank http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/COG/old/xognitor.html to find and categorized

the putative functions of these proteins. At last, we blast these sequence in the GeBank
(BLASTP 2.2.17 (Jun-24-2007) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ try to find the homo-
logues of these proteins and conjectured their functions.

2 Results and Analysis

As figure 1 showed, we get 868 proteins contained the signal peptide in the Botrytis
cinereas genome, among them 579 proteins which account for 3.52% of the Botrytis
cinereas genes were predicted to be secretary proteins by the method have been
mentioned.

16446 hypothetical proteins

After signalpv3.0: N-terminal signal peptide prediction 868 proteins)

After TargetP1.1: Protein location analysis (837 secreted proteins)

After TMHMMServer2.0: Transmembrane domains analysis (607 proteins)

After Big-PI Predictor: GPI-anchor proteins analysis (579 proteins)

Fig. 1. Analysis flow chart of Botrytis cinerea secretary proteins

230 Y. Zhang et al.

Fig. 2. The ORF length distribution of 284 secretary proteins in Botrytis cinerea

Fig. 3. The signal peptide length distribution of 284 secretary proteins in Botrytis cinerea
 Analysis of Secretary Proteins in the Genome of the Plant Pathogenic Fungus 231

Fig. 4. Logo shows the conservation of the RxLx motif from predicted Botrytis cinerea secretary
proteins
The motifs are highlighted in board letters in the table. Abbreviations for amino acid residues:
A, Ala; C, Cys; D, Asp; E, Glu;F, Phe; G, Gly; H, His; I, Ile; K, Lys; L, Leu; M, Met; N, Asn;
P,Pro; Q, Gln; R, Arg; S, Ser; T, Thr; V, Val; W, Trp; Y, Tyr.

Fig. 5. Functional categorization of putative secretary proteins containing RxLx motif which
have function descriptions in COG database

The average length of the predicted secretary proteins of Botrytis cinerea is 1271bp;
the longest one and the shortest one are 4848bp and 102bp respectively. From figure 2,
we can find that the most of them are 500-2000bp, which account for 72.19% of all the
genes. The average length of these secretary proteins peptide is 21 amino-acid
232 Y. Zhang et al.

residues, the longest one is 39 and the shortest one is 16. The figure 3 showed the length
distribution of these proteins peptide. 540 of them are 17-25 amino-acid residues
which account for 93.3% of all and proteins with 19 amino-acid residues come up to
109 proteins (18.8%).
We analyzed the all these putative secretary proteins by MEME software and found
that there are 122 proteins (21% of total) contain RxLx motif within the 100 amino-acid
residues downstream of the cutting site of signal peptide. The report had showed that
Plasmodium Falciparums pathogenic secretary proteins had conserved E, D or Q
fowled the RxLx motif while Phytophthora infestans didnt. But from the figure 4, we
can found that there more A, G, L and S appeared at the downstream and upstream of
the RxLx motif in Botrytis cinerea. A, G and L are all nonpolar amino acid and S is
polar neutral amino acid. The most conserved amino-acid residue followed the RxLx
motif is D. This is just the same as Plasmodium Falciparum.
Then we categorized the putative functions of these proteins by COG of GenBank
(figure 5). There are only 26 (21.3%) proteins found in COG and by categorized into
11 different kinds of functions. Most of them are related to amino-acid metabolism
(23.08%). For further predicted the functions of our putative secretary proteins, we
compared them in the PEDANT database but only 6 of them have the specific
function description (Table 1). The most of them are related to cell metabolism and
some of them also appeared in the Phytophthora infestanss pathogenic secretary
proteins.

Table 1. The functional description of secretary proteins containing the RxLx motif in Botrytis
cinerea

Gene name start end Functional description

BC1G_15580 29028 29981 may act as a sorting receptor in the delivery of vacuolar hydrolases, partial
BC1G_05799 27623 28429 peptidylprolyl isomerase
BC1G_12776 79340 77335 tripeptidyl peptidase
BC1G_04994 285638 283980 hypothetical protein similar to alpha-L-arabinofuranosidase
BC1G_06540 150762 152263 hypothetical protein similar to aspartic proteinase precursor
BC1G_03579 412126 410768 hypothetical protein similar to aspartyl protease

Then we blast all these proteins in the GenBank and found that 58 proteins have

high conserved homologues (E-value 110-20 and identities 40%) in other species
(accounted for 47.54% of all predicted proteins) and most of them have putative
conserved protein domains (Table 2). Then we selected 7 the most conserved
(have more than 50 homologues) proteins and marked out the location of their RxLx
motif and protein domains (Figure 6). We can see that in 6 proteins, the motif
appeared within the first 10 amino-acid residues of the C terminals of their protein
domains.
 Analysis of Secretary Proteins in the Genome of the Plant Pathogenic Fungus 233

Table 2. The blast results of putative secretary proteins include RxLx motif

No. of the  No. of

number of
Gene name species Pathogenic Conserved protein domain
homologs
containing species
homolog

BC1G_00639 5 2 1 Tannase
BC1G_00978 2 1 1 Pro-kumamolisin
BC1G_01009 9 5 4 N
BC1G_01027 18 10 7 Peptidase_S10
BC1G_01073 4 2 1 Pro-kumamolisin
BC1G_01628 6 6 4 Peroxidase
BC1G_01874 7 6 3 Glycine-rich protein domain

BC1G_02021 19 11 8 GMC oxidoreductase; choline dehydrogenase

BC1G_02163 30 24 14 Cerato-platanin
BC1G_02492 2 2 2 N
BC1G_02944 1 1 1 Pro-kumamolisin
BC1G_03275 14 13 8 N
BC1G_03557 24 22 9 N
BC1G_03560 4 4 2 N
BC1G_03579 28 22 7 Asp, Eukaryotic aspartyl protease
BC1G_04705 7 6 3 Peroxidase
BC1G_04994 26 18 9 Alpha-L-arabinofuranosidase B
BC1G_05488 4 4 2 N
BC1G_05765 7 4 3 Pro-kumamolisin

BC1G_05799 58 39 8 FKBP-type peptidyl-prolyl cis-trans isomerase

BC1G_05885 5 4 3 N

BC1G_06035 100 43 19 Glycosyl hydrolase family 7; Fungal cellulose binding domain

BC1G_06328 6 6 4 Bacterial alpha-L-rhamnosidase

BC1G_06540 14 13 11 Asp, Eukaryotic aspartyl protease
BC1G_07149 24 18 11 Peptidase_S10
BC1G_07160 8 8 6 Phospholipase C
BC1G_07483 3 3 2 Esterase_lipase
BC1G_07899 2 1 0 Cutinase
BC1G_08048 5 4 3 Amidase
BC1G_08735 27 21 12 Cerato-platanin

Glycosyl hydrolase family 15; The family 20

BC1G_08755 50 21 7
carbohydrate-binding module (CBM20)

BC1G_09129 13 13 10 DnaJ domain

BC1G_09495 2 2 2 Tannase
BC1G_09611 5 5 4 DadA, Glycine/D-amino acid oxidases

BC1G_10333 4 4 1 Rossmann-fold NAD(P)(+)-binding proteins

BC1G_10397 10 10 6 N
BC1G_10482 2 2 1 N
BC1G_10768 12 8 5 Intradiol_dioxygense_like domain
BC1G_11019 8 8 5 Salicylate hydroxylase
234 Y. Zhang et al.

Table 2. (continued)
BC1G_11134 9 9 6 Survival protein SurE

BC1G_12138 8 6 3 Alpha-L-arabinofuranosidase C-terminus

BC1G_12157 58 29 15 Arginase family

BC1G_12171 11 7 4 N

BC1G_12200 18 14 5 Peptidase family M20/M25/M40; Acetylornithine deacetylase

BC1G_12456 9 7 6 Glyco_hydrolase_16
BC1G_12525 4 3 3 Peroxidase
BC1G_12619 2 2 2 N
BC1G_12776 3 2 2 Pro-kumamolisin
BC1G_12932 25 7 2 Tannase
BC1G_13158 2 2 1 N
BC1G_13581 10 6 6 N
BC1G_13855 7 6 3 BglC, Endoglucanase
BC1G_14244 86 62 13 N
BC1G_14398 15 12 8 DadA, Glycine/D-amino acid oxidases
BC1G_14702 100 36 11 Glycosyl hydrolase family 7
BC1G_15580 9 9 6 N

BC1G_15641 5 3 1 tol-pal system beta propeller repeat protein TolB

BC1G_16238 8 6 3 BglC, Endoglucanase

Fig. 6. The location of RxLx motif and putative protein domain of 7 proteins which contain over
50 homologs in other species
 Analysis of Secretary Proteins in the Genome of the Plant Pathogenic Fungus 235

3 Discussion

By application of software of bioinformatics analysis, we found 579 putative secretary

proteins and 122 (21%) of them contained Host-Targeting-motif RxLx within the 100
amino-acid residues downstream of their cutting sites in the genome of Botrytis cine-
rea. The length of most of these proteins and their signal peptide are moderate. RxLx
motif spread in the secretary proteins of this kind of saprophytic fungi indicate they
maybe play functions in this funguss pathogenic secretary pathways. But we still need
experiment evidence to conform this hypothesis.
By compared these proteins contain RxLx motif in the PEDANT database and COG
of GenBank, we seldom found the definite description to them. For those proteins with
description in COG, most of them are related to cell metabolism and cellular process.
Interestingly, among these proteins, BC1G_06540 is described as an aspartic pro-
teinase precursor. It is had already been revealed that Botrytis cinerea could secreted
aspartic proteinase into its host cell during its pathogenic process [18]. Researchers also
found that the a pathogens infected the plant, it must break through the plant cells
physical outline such as cell wall as well as changed the inner environment of host cells
to fit themselves. In this process, their secretions must play the most important roles
[19]. Considered other 5 RxLx motif containing proteins with definite descriptions in
PEDANT database are all enzymes involved in the cell metabolism and the categori-
zation with most proteins by COG is related to amino-acid metabolism, we supposed
that maybe Botrytis cinerea need secreted proteinase into the plant cells in its patho-
genic process.
Blast these RxLx motif containing proteins in the GenBank, we find that 47.54% of
them have high conserved homologues in other species and most have the conserved
protein domains. This indicates these proteins with RxLx motif are conserved during
the evolution process or early originated in the history. Most of the homologues con-
tained in fungi but still some appeared in higher eukaryotes. Among them,
BC1G_14702, BC1G_14244, BC1G_05799 and BC1G_06035 contained huge number
of homologues distributed in so many different kinds of plants and animals. This in-
dicated that maybe these genes played the irreplaceable role in organisms as well as
Botrytis cinerea. BC1G_05799 had been depicted as peptidylprolyl isomerase in both
COG and PEDANT database. This kind of protein interconverts the cis and trans
isomers of peptide bonds with the amino acid proline and involved in many cellular
process. The 6 of 7 RxLx motifs in the highest conserved putative secretary proteins are
all located at the N terminal of their protein domains. Interestingly, the description of
protein domains contained by these 7 proteins indicated they all maybe involved in the
secretion process even in the pathogenic process. Cerato-platanin had been reported as
a kind of phytotoxic protein which was secreted by Ceratocystis fimbriata f.sp. platani
[20]. FKBP_C is related to protein synthesis and locate of plant plasmids [21].
Glyco_hydro_7 is a kind of glycosyl hydrolase which was secreted to destroy cellulose
in the plant cell [22]. SpeB have been reported as a kind of virulent effectors secreted
by Group A Streptococcal [23]. GPI8 is related to the synthesis of phosphatidylinositol
anchor protein which could anchor it to the cell surface [24]. So these proteins may play
236 Y. Zhang et al.

their functions in the Botrytis cinereas secretion pathway and contributed to its
pathogenic process.
Most of pathogenic proteins reported now are secretary proteins. In this article we
predicted 579 secretary proteins and 122 of them contain Host-Targeting-motif RxLx
which could be treated as candidate pathogenic proteins of Botrytis cinerea. Although
we still need experiment to prove whether these proteins contributed to pathogeneses,
find these candidate proteins will accelerate our understandings of pathogenic mecha-
nism of Botrytis cinerea. Many software used to analyze the protein had been proved
effective and it is conveniently for us to understand the information lied in the genome
by the help of them.

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 Analysis of the Heat Transfer Performance of
Vapor-Condenser during Vacuum Cooling

Gailian. Li, Tingxiang Jin*, and Chunxia Hu

School of Mechanical & Electricity engineering, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry,

5 Dong Feng Road, Zhengzhou 450002, Henan Province, P.R. China
Tel.: +86-371-63556785
txjin@126.com

Abstract. The heat transfer performance of vapor-condenser has been studied

under different temperature of cold trap and different thickness of the frost layer
in this paper. The relationship between dimensionless number Nu and Kn is
obtained. The results show that the capturing efficiency of cold trap increases
with the decrease of the surface temperature of vapor-condenser. The frost ac-
cumulated on the surface of vapor-condenser can cause the overall heat transfer
coefficient decrease, which has a negative effect on heat transfer of vapor-
condenser. Kn has an effect on the heat transfer of vapor-condenser during
vacuum cooling.

Keywords: Heat transfer performance; Vapor-condenser; Cold trap; Vacuum

cooling.

1 Introduction
Vacuum cooling is a rapid evaporative cooling method. Vacuum cooling has been
successfully used to cool vegetables and flowers since the 1950s [1]. In the recent
years, for the safety of foods, a rapid cooling treatment after cooking process should
be used to minimize the growth of surviving organisms. Compared with the conven-
tional cooling methods, vacuum cooling has many advantages. Therefore, many re-
searches have highlighted the applications of vacuum cooling for the cooked meats
[2-4]. In addition, heat and mass transfer characteristics during vacuum cooling have
been investigated. Predictive models can provide much valuable information for the
cooling process of large cooked meat joints under broad experimental conditions
within a short time. Wang and Sun have developed a mathematical model for describ-
ing the vacuum cooling process of the large cooked meat joints [5-7].
A vacuum cooler is a machine to maintain the defined vacuum pressure in a sealed
chamber, where the boiling of the water in the cooked meats occurs to produce the
cooling effect. Theoretically, only the speed of vacuum pump is high enough to pro-
duce the defined vacuum pressure in the vacuum chamber. However, at a low
pressure, the volume ratio of steam and water is very large. For example, when the
pressure is 1073 Pa, the corresponding saturation temperature is 8 , the specific
*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 238249, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
Analysis of the Heat Transfer Performance of Vapor-Condenser during Vacuum Cooling 239

Nomenclature Pr Prandtl number;

Q0 Cold load of vapor-condenser, W Nu Nusselt number;
Rv Gas constant for water vapor, J mol 1
K 1
Kn Knudsen number;

hvs Sublimation heat of ice, J kg 1

T The Kelvin temperature, K Greeks
m Mass flux, kg s 1 ; Thickness, m
v Specific volume, m 3 kg 1
; Density kg m 3

P Pressure, Pa The ratio of specific heat;
D Gas constant, J mol 1
K 1
Thermal conductivity, J m 1 K 1 s 1
t Time, s ; Stefans constant, 5.7 10 8 W m 2 K 4 ;
A Area, m 2 Emissivity;
d Diameter, m ; Mean free path of free molecular, m;
Heat transfer coefficient W m 2
K 1
Subscripts
ho , hi Enthalpy J kg 1
fr Frost layer
C p Specific heat at constant pressure, J kg K 1 1
v Vapor
t Time, s ; i Inlet;
Ft Thermal accommodation factor; o Outlet;
F Tangential momentum accommodation factor c Coolant;

3
volume is 120.851 m kg . If the entire vapor is evacuated only through the vacuum
pump, the speed of vacuum pump should be very large, many vacuum pumps are
required in the vacuum cooler, which is obviously unsuitable. In order to remove the
large amount of water vapor and keep the cooling cycle within a reasonable length of
time, the vapor-condenser is used to economically and practically handle the large
volume of water vapor by condensing the vapor back to water and then draining it
through the drain valve. The vacuum pump and the vapor-condenser in the vacuum
cooling system are used to remove the water vapor evaporated from the cooked
meats. Generally, the temperature of the vapor-condenser is about 30 ~-50
during vacuum cooling. The large temperature difference exits between the surface of
vapor-condenser and the water vapor in the vacuum chamber. Consequently, the wa-
ter vapor will become the frost at the surface of vapor-condenser. The frost formation

on the cold surface below 0 acts not only as a thermal insulator between the surface
and the water vapor, but also significantly reduces the heat transfer performance of
vapor-condenser, which can result in the decrease of the capability of capturing water
vapor in the vapor-condenser. In order to improve the capturing efficiency of the
vapor-condenser, the evaporation temperature of refrigerant in the vacuum cooler
must be lowered. However, the lower evaporation temperature will add the cost of
vacuum cooler and energy consumption. Therefore, it is very important to investigate
the heat transfer performance of vapor-condenser for designing and optimizing the
vacuum cooling system. The phase change heat transfer theory under vacuum pres-
sure is hardly studied. Hong and Leena [8] have modeled the frost characteristics
under atmosphere pressure. In the current study, the heat transfer performance of
vapor-condenser in the vacuum cooler is investigated. Moreover, the factors of affect-
ing the heat transfer performance of vapor-condenser are also analyzed.
240 G. Li, T. Jin, and C. Hu

2 Experimental Apparatus
The laboratory-scale vacuum cooler as shown in Fig. 1 was built by Shanghai Pudong
Freezing Dryer Instruments Co. Ltd. (Shanghai, China). Vacuum cooler has four basic
components: a vacuum chamber, a vacuum pump, a vapor-condenser and a refrigera-
tion system. The vapor-condenser is an evaporator in the refrigeration system and a
condenser capturing water vapor evaporated from the cooked meats during vacuum
cooling. The cooling coil of vapor-condenser is set up in a stainless cylindrical steel,
which is enclosed with 30 mm thickness polyurethane foam to prevent heat transfer.
The stainless cylindrical steel with vapor-condenser is defined as cold trap. The water
vapor is evaporated from the cooked meats during vacuum cooling. The vapor-
condenser and vacuum pump removes the water vapor and air to reduce the pressure
in the vacuum chamber. Because of the large temperature difference between the cold
trap and the water vapor, the large amount of water vapor can enter into the cold trap.
One part of water vapor is condensed into water by liquefaction, and the other part of
water vapor become frost on the surface of vapor-condenser by solidification.

1-bleeding valve; 2-weight sensor; 3-sample; 4-thermal couple; 5-pressure sensor; 6-vacuum
chamber; 7-electronic balance; 8-compute; 9-temperature controller; 10-coolant outlet; 11-
coolant inlet; 12-cold trap; 13-vacuum pump; 14-pressure controller; 15-I-7018P module

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the vacuum cooler system

A set of T-type copper-constantan thermocouples with an accuracy of 0.1 are

used to record the temperature of the cold trap. The mass flux of coolant is measured
through supersonic flowmeter (UFLO2000P, USA). The vacuum pressure is measured
through the pressure transducer (CPCA-130Z) with an accuracy of 0.5 Pa, the range
of pressure transducer is 10 Pa~10 Kpa. The mass of the sample and water are meas-
ured through the electric balance (JA12002, made in China). Thermal conductivity of
Analysis of the Heat Transfer Performance of Vapor-Condenser during Vacuum Cooling 241

frost layer is measured by an unsteady state method using a line heat thermal conduc-
tivity probe, based on the design of Sweat as described by Scully [13, 14]. The thick-
ness of frost layer is directly determined by a micrometer having a 0.1mm resolution.

3 Theoretical Analysis of Heat Transfer in Cold Trap

3.1 The Formation Mechanism of the Frost on the Surface of Vapor-Condenser
Fig. 2 shows the formation process of frost. The sensible heat is transferred from the
water vapor in the cold trap to the frost surface by the temperature difference driving

Sensible heat transfer

Latent heat transfer

Frost surface

Heat transfer
by conduction Phase
change
Water vapor
Frost layer diffusion

Vapor- condenser
surface

Fig. 2. The formation process of the frost

Fig. 3. Ice crystal shape (1) Plate-like forms: (a) plate, (b) simple sectored plate, (c) dendritic
sectored plate, (d) fern-like stellar dendrite; (2) Column-like forms: (e) needle crystal, (f) hol-
low column, or sheath-like crystal
242 G. Li, T. Jin, and C. Hu

force between the water vapor and the frost surface. Some of the transferred moisture
deposits on the frost layer, causing the frost layer to grow. The remainder diffuses
into the frost layer. The heat of sublimation caused by the phase change of the added
frost layer is transferred through the frost layer. The latent heat and sensible heat
transferred from the water vapor are then transferred through the frost layer by con-
duction. The water vapor diffusing into the frost layer changes phase within the frost
layer. The frost density increases as a result of this process.
The frost layer is a porous medium composed of ice crystal and air. The ice crystal
has different shapes during the formation of the frost layer. Ice crystal shapes are
classified into main forms: plate-like forms and column-like forms. The microscopic
structure of ice crystal is shown as in Fig. 3 [9].
During the formation of the frost, the mass flux through water vapor diffusing into
the frost layer can be calculated by the Clapeyron-Clausius equation. The expression
is as follows [10]:
Q0
m& fr =
f 0.5
fr RT (vv vice ) 1 + r
2

ice
fr
(1)
hvs +
f
Dv [hvs Pv (vv vice )]1 r
ice
Where Q0 is the refrigeration load of vapor-condenser;
hvs is the sublimation heat of ice;
R is the gas constant;
T fr is the surface temperature of the frost layer;
vv and vice are respectively specific volume of water vapor and ice;
f r and ice are respectively density of frost layer and ice;

Pv is the partial pressure of water vapor;

Dv is the diffusivity of water vapor;
fr is the thermal conductivity of the frost layer, the expression is as follows
[11]:
fr = 0.02422 + 7.214 10 4 fr + 1.1797 10 6 fr 2 (2)

The density of frost can change during the formation of frost. f r can be expressed
as:
d f r r d d f r
m& f r
=
(3)
dt 2r 4 dt dr
Analysis of the Heat Transfer Performance of Vapor-Condenser during Vacuum Cooling 243

3.2 Heat Transfer in Cold Trap

The temperature of cold trap is about 30 ~ 60 . The water vapor evaporated
from the cooked meats will become the frost at the surface of vapor-condenser in the
cold trap. The frost layer at the surface of vapor-condenser gets thicker and thicker
with the increment of time. The frost layer is a porous structure composed of ice crys-
tal and air pores. Moreover, the porous structure contains a low thermal conductivity,
which reduces the thermal conductivity of the frost layer. Finally, the frost layer re-
sults in a significant heat transfer resistance from the water vapor to the surface of
vapor-condenser in the cold trap. The relationship between the heat flux and the
thickness of the frost layer can be expressed:
T
q = f r (4)

Where fr is the thermal conductivity of the frost layer; is the thickness of the
frost layer.
Heat transfer coefficient, k is an important index to evaluate the heat transfer per-
formance. Heat transfer coefficient of cold trap is measured by the qusai-stable
method in this experiment. The total heat transfer coefficient is expressed as follows:
Q0
k= (5)
A Tm
Where A is the total area of heat transfer; the logarithmic temperature difference,
Tm , can be expressed as:
Ti To
Tm =
T Te (6)
ln i
To Te
Where Te is the evaporation temperature.
On the other hand, the total heat transfer coefficient is also theoretically determined
by:
1
k= (7)
1 v + fr + 1 c d1 d 2
Where v is the heat transfer coefficient of vapor in cold trap; c the heat transfer
coefficient of coolant in coil of vapor-condenser; d1 and d 2 are respectively inner
and outer diameters.
The refrigeration load of vapor-condenser, Q0 , in Eq. (1) and Eq. (5) can be calcu-
lated by the enthalpy difference of refrigerant between inlet and outlet.
244 G. Li, T. Jin, and C. Hu

Q0 = m& c (ho hi ) (8)

Where m & c is the mass flux of refrigerant; ho , hi is respectively the enthalpy of re-
frigerant in outlet and inlet.
Q0 is also calculated through heat transfer of gas in cold trap. The expression can
be given by:

Tml
( )
T

Q0 = v A(T T fr ) + A T T fr + m& f r C pf r dT + C p v dT + hvs

4 4
(9)
T
fr Tml
Where C pf r , C p v is the specific heat of the frost and water vapor; T is the gas
temperature in cold trap; Tml is the sublimation temperature.
The vacuum pump and vapor-condenser can cause the reduction of pressure in cold
trap. When the gases in cold trap are at low pressure, the slip flow occurs. The relative
importance of effects due to the rarefaction of a gas in cold trap can be indicated by
Knudsen number ( Kn ), a ration of the magnitude of the mean free molecular path
( ) in the gas to the characteristic dimension ( L ) in the flow field. When the slip
flow occurs in the cold trap, the gas adjacent to the surface no longer reaches the
velocity or temperature of the surface. The gas at the surface of the frost has a tangen-
tial velocity and it slips along the surface. The temperature of the gas at the surface of
the frost is finitely different from the surface temperature of the frost layer, and there
is a jump in temperature between the surface of the frost layer and the adjacent gas.
The energy and momentum equations in cylindrical coordinates can be written as
[12]:

T 1 T
u = r (10)
x C p r r r

P 1 u
= r (11)
x r r r
The slip velocity as a function of the velocity gradient near the wall of cold trap can
be expressed as:

F 2 u
u r =r0 = (12)
F r r = r0
The temperature jump in slip flow at the wall of cold trap can be written as:

Ft 2 2 T
Tv Tw = (13)
Ft + 1 Pr r r = r0
Analysis of the Heat Transfer Performance of Vapor-Condenser during Vacuum Cooling 245

Where is mean free path of water vapor; F is the tangential momentum accom-
modation factor; Ft is the thermal accommodation factor; is the ratio of specific
heat; Pr is the Prandtl number; r0 is the radius of cold trap.
The Nusselt number can be given from Eq. (10) and (11):
48
Nu =
2 Ft 2 1
2
36 Kn 6 Kn (14)
11 + + 24
1 + 6 Kn 1 + 6 Kn Ft + 1 Pr r0

4 Result and Discussion

4.1 The Influence of the Frost Layer on Heat Transfer in Cold Trap

Fig. 4 shows the experimental data for the thermal conductivity of the frost. The time
ranges, for which the data were taken, are given on Fig. 4. When the experimental

temperature of cold trap is 45 , the average thermal conductivity of the frost layer
1 1
during vacuum cooling is 0.1072 W m K . It can be also found from Fig. 4 that
the thermal conductivity of the frost layer increases with the increment of time. This
is because the density and the thickness of the frost layer depend on the temperature
of the frost and the time. The lower temperature, the more water vapor in cold trap
becomes the frost on the surface of vapor-condenser and diffuses into the frost layer,
which can increase the density and the thickness of the frost layer. The relationship
between the thermal conductivity of the frost layer and the density of the frost layer
has been shown in Eq. (2).

Fig. 4. Thermal conductivity of the frost layer

246 G. Li, T. Jin, and C. Hu

Fig. 5 shows the heat transfer coefficient in different thickness of the frost layer.
When the thickness of the frost layer is 1 mm, the heat transfer coefficient is about 4.4
W m 2 K 1 . The heat transfer coefficient is 3.3 W m 2 K 1 at 5 mm thickness
of the frost layer. Which means that the heat transfer resistance increases when the
frost layer gets thick. The results show that the experimental data match with Eq. (7).

Fig. 5. The influence of thickness of the frost layer on the heat transfer coefficient

4.2 The Influence of Temperature of Cold Trap on the Capturing Efficiency

The capturing efficiency of cold trap can be defined as follows:

M pw
= 100% (15)
M tw
Where M pw is the total captured practical amount of the frost by solidify and water
by condensation in cold trap; M tw is the captured theoretical amount of the frost by
solidify and water by condensation in cold trap.
Fig. 6 shows the capturing efficiency of cold trap in different temperature of cold
trap. It can be found that the lower temperature of cold trap is, the higher the captur-
ing efficiency of cold trap is. When the temperature of cold trap is about -55 , the
capturing efficiency of cold trap is above 90%. However, if the temperature of cold

trap decreases to -40 , the capturing efficiency of cold trap is about 20%. Therefore,
the temperature of cold trap should be very low so that the cold trap can capture more
water vapor. On the other hand, if the temperature of cold trap is too low, some water
vapors become the frost on the surface of vapor-condenser and on the wall of cold
Analysis of the Heat Transfer Performance of Vapor-Condenser during Vacuum Cooling 247

trap, the thick frost layer has the low thermal conductivity. Which increases the heat
transfer resistance between the surface of vapor-condenser and the water vapor. With
the increment of thickness and density of the frost layer, the heat transfer resistance
between the surface of vapor-condenser and the water vapor increases, the tempera-
ture of cold trap become high so that the capturing efficiency of cold trap gets more
and more low.

Fig. 6. The influence of temperature of cold trap on the capture efficiency

Fig. 7. The relationship between Nu and Kn

248 G. Li, T. Jin, and C. Hu

4.3 The Influence of Vacuum Pressure on Heat Transfer in Cold Trap

It is assumed that the gas in cold trap is diatomic. The ratio of specific heat of dia-
tomic ( ) is 1.4. The relationship between Nu and Kn can be given in Eq. (14).
Fig. 7 gives the variation between Nu and Kn in the different thermal accommoda-
tion factor. Kn is correlated with the vacuum pressure. It can be found that Nu
decreases when the vacuum pressure in cold trap decreases. This is because convec-
tion heat can reduce at low vacuum pressure. Nu at the high thermal accommodation
factor (1.0) is higher than that at the low thermal accommodation factor (0.8). The
variation of Nu is opposite to the variation of Kn .

5 Conclusion
The heat transfer performance of vapor-condenser has been studied in different tem-
perature of cold trap and different thickness of the frost layer in this paper. The lower
the temperature of cold trap is, the more water vapor is captured. At the same time,
because of the low temperature in cold trap, water vapor become frost at the surface
of vapor-condenser and on the wall of cold trap. The frost layer is a porous medium
composed of ice crystal and air. The low thermal conductivity of the frost layer has a
negative effect on heat transfer of vapor-condenser. When the accumulated frost at the
surface of vapor-condenser becomes thick, the capturing efficiency of cold trap will
decrease. In addition, the relationship between dimensionless number Nu and Kn is
obtained, the variation of Nu is opposite to the variation of Kn .

Acknowledgements
Funding for this research was provided by Henan Provincial Department of Education
(P. R. China).

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 Analysis on Dynamic Characteristics of Landscape
Patterns in Hailer and around Areas

Hongbin Zhang1,2,3, Guixia Yang1,2,3, Qing Huang2,3, Gang Li1,2,3,

*
Baorui Chen1,2,3, and Xiaoping Xin1,2,3,
1
Hulunber Grassland Ecosystem Observation and Research Station, Beijing 100081, China
2
Key Laboratory of Resource Remote Sensing and Digital Agriculture,
Ministry of Agriculture, Beijing 100081, China
3
Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science Insititute of Agricultural Resource and
Regional Planning, No.12 Zhongguancun South St., Haidian District, Beijing 100081, China
Tel.:+86-10-82109622-138
xinxp@sina.com, hbzhang@caas.net.cn

Abstract. This paper analyzed the spatial-temporal dynamic changes of land-

scape patterns in Hailer and around areas. Firstly, landscape patterns types of
research area were divided into water, sand, farmland, city and grassland based
on remote sensing images of 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2001 and field investigation.
Then the grassland was classified into higher coverage grassland, high coverage
grassland, medium coverage grassland and low coverage grassland by Normal-
ized Difference Vegetation Index. Finally, the spatial-temporal dynamic
changes of above-mentioned eight kinds of landscape patterns were analyzed
using landscape ecology principle. The results indicated that human activities
intensified significant from 1986 to 2001in research area. The area of grassland
landscape decreased quickly, and the fragmentation extent intensified. The
dominant landscape in research area changed from higher-high coverage grass-
land to medium-low coverage grassland. The expansion of sand landscape is
obvious in periphery of road, city and farmland. The grassland vegetation
degenerated seriously. Fragmentation of city landscape lightened, and city land-
scape patches tended to decrease and centralized. Economy development pat-
tern of research area is in a stage that is transforming from extensive pattern to
intensive urbanization pattern.

Keywords: Landscape patterns, Hulunbuir, Spatial-Temporal Dynamic.

1 Introduction

Landscape spatial patterns are strongly connected with dynamic procession (Wu Jian-
guo et al., 2001; Nagendra H et al., 2006). Biologic factors, abiotic factors and human
factors drive landscape patterns spatial-temporal evolution together and restrict
development direction of ecological process. Analysis on landscape patterns spatial-
temporal evolution can open out driving mechanism and development trend of
*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 250260, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
Analysis on Dynamic Characteristics of Landscape Patterns in Hailer and Around Areas 251

ecological process (Su Y et al., 2005; Wu R et al., 2002; Huang Qing et al., 2007; He
Chunyang et al., 2001; Zhang Yili, et al., 2006). In the study of grassland degenera-
tion, analysis on the landscape patterns spatial-temporal evolution makes for under-
standing relations between landscape pattern and grassland degeneration process and
provides scientific foundations on grassland ecological system management and re-
covery(Wang Hui et al., 2006; Wamg Mulan et al., 2007; Wamg Mulan et al., 2007).
So many experts and scholars devote themselves to studying landscape patterns spa-
tial-temporal evolution in grassland deterioration process. But most of them focus on
highly degraded grasslands. Their natural habitats are not good and they are very easy
to be disturbed by outside environment (Li Yuechen et al., 2006; Cao Chengyou et al.,
2006; Tao Weiguo et al., 2007; Chen quangong et al., 2007; Chen Quangong et al.,
1998; Wang Qian et al., 2007; Li Jianpinget al., 2006; Wu Yunna et al., 2000; Liu
Xuelu et al., 2000; Zhang Tao et al., 2007;). So almost nobody studies meadow steppe
grassland and their ecology recovery functions are very good.
Hulunbuir grassland is one of the grasslands which are conserved most completed
(Pan Xueqing et al., 1992). It has unique location features and typical ecological sys-
tem features and advanced pasture animal husbandry production and management
methods. At the same time, it is an important husbandry manufacturing base in north-
ern China fescue grassland (Lo Bo et al., 1997; Lu Xinshi et al., 2002). But since the
1980s, under pressures of economy development and accretion of population, area of
farmland and towns has been increasing rapidly in Hulunbuir grassland and degenera-
tion tendency is still very serious. Vegetation productivity has fallen significantly.
Sand expands promptly. Landscape spatial pattern changes violently. Especially Ha-
laer area and surrounding area are typical representing regions in which human ac-
tions influence most strongly (Liu Dongxie et al., 2007; Komatsu Y et al., 2005; Zhao
Huiying et al., 2007; Zhang Deping et al., 2007; Ma Yuling et al., 2004; Nie Haogang
et al., 2005). So association study on intra-regional landscape spatial pattern has im-
portant academic value and useful efforts in Hulunbuir grassland ecological system
management and recovery (Ren Jizhou et al., 1998).

2 Material and Method

2.1 Survey Region Overview

Hulunbuir grassland is located in the west of Daxinanling and from east to west dis-
tributed regularity. It spans forest steppe, meadow steppe and steppe. It is one of po-
tential grass yield and optimal herbaceous regions in Inner Mongolia grassland. We
selected central region of Hulunbuir grassland as survey region including Hailer, Old
Barag Banner, parts of Evenk Autonomous Banner and the whole area is
3160.82km2. In survey region, hydrothermal condition is very good and it belongs to
temperate continental climate. Hailer River and Yimin River mixes here. There are
abundant water resource and 110 days frost free period. Mean annual temperature is -

2 .The soil is mainly chernozem. The area of farmland is very large. Main land
252 H. Zhang et al.

types include city, farmland, grassland, sand and water. It has convinent transporta-
tion and rich economies. It also is population accumulation area in Hulunbuir grass-
land. Especially Hailer is political, economical and cultural centre and main resources
collection and distribution point of Hulunbuir. It also is the point of human action
maximum intensity region in Hulunbuir grassland.

2.2 Remote Sensing Data Analysis

The selected Data is three terms 1/4 view LandSat-5 TM data and one term 1/4 view
LandSat-7 ETM data from earth station of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Table 1. The parameters of remote sensing data

Number Orbit Imaging Satellite Average

Time Cloud
1 123/25 1986.8.6 LandSat5 <10%
2 123/25 1991.8.4 LandSat5 <10%
3 123/25 1996.7.16 LandSat5 <10%
4 123/25 2001.7.22 LandSat7 <10%

Because the above data belongs to primary production, we must use Erdas Image
software to adjust images and registration error is controlled in 0.5 pixel. At the same
time, we transferred projection to Albers Equal Area projection (the first and second
normal latitude and central meridian are: 25, 47, 105).

Fig. 1. The distribution map of the research Fig. 2. The distribution map of the research
area landscapes, 1986 area landscapes, 1991
Analysis on Dynamic Characteristics of Landscape Patterns in Hailer and Around Areas 253

Fig. 3. The distribution map of the research Fig. 4. The distribution map of the research
area landscapes, 1996 area landscapes, 2001

Based on secular field study in survey region and combined with supervised classi-
fication methods, we used Erdas Image software to interpret the images and divided
to water, sand, farmland, city, higher coverage grassland, high coverage grassland,
medium coverage grassland and low coverage grassland. And the grassland was clas-
sified by Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (Tian Qingjiu et al., 1998).NDVI

,( ,
vegetation indexes of higher coverage grassland, high coverage grassland, medium

( ,( , , ,
coverage grassland and low coverage grassland are separately 0,0.25) 0.25,0.5)
0.5,0.75) 075,1). At last, ArcGIS was used to make 1986 1991 1996 2001
landscape pattern distribution maps and the results as shown in the figure 1-4.

2.3 Selection of Landscape Indicators

Landscape indicators can highly condense landscape pattern information and reflect
structure making up and spatial configuration features. According to features of sur-
vey region, landscape indicators selected not only patch area, patch quantity such
basic parameters, but also landscape area proportion, patch density and the largest
patch index.

1. Proportion of landscape area: Patches area of a type landscape accounts for the
whole area, and it indicates incidence of this type patches in landscape. The formula
is
254 H. Zhang et al.

a j=1
ij

PLAND%= (100)
A
a ij : the area of j patch in i landscape; A: whole area.
2. Patch Density: ratio of patches quantity to area in a type landscape and it indicates
different type landscape patches fragmentation degree and the whole landscape frag-
mentation degree. The formula is
Ni
PD = (1000000)
A
A: whole area; N i : patches quantity in i type landscape unit: each/ km2
3. Large patch indicator: ratio of the largest patch area to whole landscape area and it
indicates species richness and diversity. The formula is
max(a i )
LPI%= (100)
A
A: whole area; max (a i ) : the largest patch area in ith type landscape.

2.4 Land Utilization Conversion Ratio Calculation

Ub Ua
Use land utilization conversion ratio formula K = 100% to calculate season
U aT
year dynamic fluctuation velocity between types of landscape in survey region. In
above formula, K is a sort of land utilization type dynamical degree in T timeslot;
U b and U a are separately a sort of land utilization type quantity in childhood studies
and final stage. T is the length of study period and the unit is year to express annual
percentage change of a sort land utilization type.

3 Results Analysis

3.1 Land Utilization Conversion Ratio Calculation

, , ,
According to 1986 1991 1996 2001 landscape type distribution maps, Fragstats
was used to extract landscape indices and the results as shown in table 2.
From landscape area changes in table 2, area of every type landscape has wider
fluctuation. Compared with 1986, landscapes of city, sand, farmland, low coverage
grassland and medium coverage grassland expanded quickly and the expanded areas
, , ,
separately are 29.46 75.77, 51.8 725.42 1354.78 km2. At the same time, land-
scapes of water, high coverage grassland tended to reduce and the reduced areas sepa-
, ,
rately are 24.57 1876.85 335.81km2. In the mass, the whole area reduced
132.46km2.
Analysis on Dynamic Characteristics of Landscape Patterns in Hailer and Around Areas 255

From landscape fragmentation features, compared with 1986, in 2001 patches quan-
tity increased 54.99%, the largest patch area reduced 58.24% and patches density
increased 55%. The landscape fragmentation degree increased significantly. But land-
scape species richness and diversity decreased significantly. Especially grassland
landscape fluctuated intensely and weakness species increased in grassland commu-
nity. A mount of poisonous plants started to emerge. The leading landscapes changed
from higher and high coverage grasslands to medium and low coverage grasslands.

Table 2. Landscape index of research area, 1986,1991,1996,2001

Low High Higher

Moderate Research
Year Landscape Index City Sand Farmland Water Vegetation Vegetation Vegetation
Vegetation Cover Area
Cover Cover Cover
CA(KM 2 ) 42.08 65.23 440.51 83 0.86 25.43 2164.2 342.32 3163.63
1
PLAND(%) 1.33 2.06 13.92 2.62 0.03 0.80 68.41 10.82 100
9
8 NP() 50 1187 42 2131 174 3308 5379 7136 19407
6 LPI(%) 0.33 1.07 5.02 0.60 0 0.05 32.72 4.89 32.72
PD( /KM 2 ) 0.02 0.38 0.0133 0.68 0.06 1.05 1.70 2.26 6.16

CA(KM ) 2
65.11 86.24 398.98 120.54 0.6 10.35 1546.05 935.76 3163.63
1
9 PLAND(%) 2.06 2.73 12.61 3.81 0.02 0.33 48.87 29.58 100
9 NP() 38 2130 42 2940 91 11597 9922 1324 28084
1 LPI(%) 0.77 0.32 5.22 2.21 0 0.01 20.92 5.23 20.92
PD( /KM 2 ) 0.01 0.67 0.01 0.93 0.03 3.67 3.14 0.42 8.88

CA(KM 2 ) 70.79 86.33 483.81 66.83 0.59 18.60 2081.86 354.82 3163.63
1
9 PLAND(%) 2.24 2.73 15.29 2.11 0.02 0.59 65.81 11.22 100
9 NP() 29 3587 36 1210 69 3098 4700 6363 19092
6 LPI(%) 1.10 0.52 6.48 0.59 0 0.04 31.52 4.83 31.52
PD( /KM 2 ) 0.01 1.13 0.01 0.38 0.02 0.98 1.49 2.01 6.03

CA(KM 2 ) 71.54 141 492.31 58.43 726.28 1380.21 287.35 6.51 3163.63
2
0 PLAND(%) 2.26 4.46 15.56 1.85 22.96 43.63 9.08 0.21 100
0 NP() 34 5847 57 1367 9114 9054 4078 527 30078
1 LPI(%) 1.22 1.03 6.28 0.57 11.48 13.66 4.26 0.03 13.66
PD( /KM 2 ) 0.01 1.85 0.02 0.43 2.88 2.86 1.29 0.17 9.51

Note: CA (Class Area):The sum of the areas of all patches of the corresponding patch type.
NP(Number of Patches):The number of patches of the corresponding patch type.

3.2 Landscape Type Area Percent Conversion

According to landscape type areas in different period in survey region in table 2, took
advantage of land utilization percent conversion formula to calculate annual land
utilization percent conversion (table 3).
From annual land utilization percent conversion in table 3, from 1986 to 2001, in
the fifteen years areas of city, sand, farmland, low coverage grassland and medium
coverage grassland expanded quickly, especially low and medium coverage grass-
lands. On the other hand, areas of water, higher and high coverage grasslands reduced
significantly. On the whole, the grassland degeneration trend was very obvious. Espe-
cially from 1996 to 2001, medium and low coverage grasslands expanded dramati-
cally and annual expanded areas account to 14 to 245 times. On the other hand, areas
of high and higher coverage grasslands deduced obviously but sand expanded
quickly. Grassland vegetation condition deteriorated sharply.
256 H. Zhang et al.

Table 3. The rate of dynamic changes of landscape types area in survey region. Unit: %.

Type of Land K1986 1991 K19911996 K19962001 K19862001

City 10.95 1.74 0.21 4.67
Sand 6.44 0.02 12.67 7.74
Farmland -1.89 4.25 0.35 0.78
Water 9.05 -8.91 -2.51 -1.97
Low Vegetation
-6.05 -0.33 24599.66 5623.41
Cover
Moderate
-11.86 15.94 1464.10 355.17
Vegetation Cover
High Vegetation
-5.71 6.93 -17.24 -5.78
Cover
Higher Vegetation
34.67 -12.42 -19.63 -6.54
Cover

3.3 Landscape Type Spatial Transformation

According to 1986 and 2001 landscape type distribution maps in survey region, Ar-
cGIS software was used to extract land utilization transformation matrix (table 4).

Table 4. Transformation matrix of landscape types in research area, 1986-2001 Unit: km2

landscape
type
Low Moderate High Higher
Farm 1986
City Sand Water Vegetation Vegetation Vegetation Vegetation
land year
Cover Cover Cover Cover
landscape
type
City 36.98 0.47 0.07 0.24 2.40 1.78 0.10 0.00 42.04
Sand 0.66 52.17 0.06 0.19 9.01 3.15 0.02 0.00 65.27
Farmland 1.35 1.39 340.44 0.03 19.81 74.63 2.70 0.00 440.34
Water 0.14 2.07 0.24 42.82 3.87 15.75 17.87 0.23 83.00
Low 0.01 0.03 0.00 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.00 0.00 0.26
Vegetation
Cover
Moderate
Vegetation 0.93 5.17 0.73 1.30 9.28 6.19 0.45 0.00 24.05
Cover
High
Vegetation 30.40 78.75 140.38 9.22 673.5 1118.59 114.22 0.46 2165.53
Cover
Higher
Vegetation 1.06 1.00 10.16 4.55 8.06 160.19 151.98 5.83 342.81
Cover
2001 year 71.53 141.04 492.08 58.42 726.00 1380.36 287.35 6.51 3163.29
Analysis on Dynamic Characteristics of Landscape Patterns in Hailer and Around Areas 257

From landscape type spatial transformation situation in table 4, from 1986 to 2001, in
the fifteen years, landscape spatial transformation was obviously and tended to re-
duce. There were 32.4 km2 grassland landscape transformed to city accounting for
45.3% of 2001s city landscape, 84.95 km2 grassland landscape transformed to sand
accounting for 60.23% of 2001s sand landscape, 151.27 km2 grassland landscape
transformed to farmland accounting for 30.74% of 2001s farmland landscape. Be-
sides there are 45.45% water landscape transformed to different coverage grasslands
and 2.49% transformed to sand landscape.
Every grassland landscape type transformed dramatically. There was 673.5 km2
higher coverage grassland changed to low coverage grassland accounting for 92.77%
of 2001s low coverage grassland. And there were 1118.59km2 higher coverage
grassland and 160.19 km2 high coverage grassland transformed to medium coverage
grassland separately accounting for 81.04% and 11.60% of 2001s medium coverage
grassland. There was 151.98 km2 high coverage grassland transformed to higher
coverage grassland accounting for 52.89% of 2001s higher coverage grassland. On
the whole, grassland vegetation degenerated seriously.

3.4 Single Landscape Type Analysis

The city landscape area was expanding in the fifteen years and expanded 4.67% every
year. The occupied area was mainly grassland and farmland. Especially after Hulunbuir
city began to take out reform of economic system from 1988, city construction made
great development to make city area expand quickly. From 1986 to 1991 annual city
area expanded 10.95%. Besides, city landscape patches quantity and density tended to
decline, but the largest patch index tended to increase obviously. Overall city landscape
fragment degree declined. This condition matched very well with the actual situation
that degree of urbanization had enhanced in the past 15 years in survey region.
In the past 15 years, annual farmland landscape increased 0.78% and occupied area
mainly was different coverage grasslands landscape. Because strict returning culti-
vated land measures were taken out after broad scale land clearing from 1980 to 1986
to make farmland landscape area decreased in 1991 compared with 1986. But with the
price of food crop rising, under driving of economic interest, land clearing began to
ride again in survey region. Patches quantity, density and the largest patch index of
farmland landscape tended to increase after 1991 to indicate that farmland landscape
tended to expand on the whole, especially the southeastern area in 2001.
Compared with 1986, the other years water landscape tended to decrease except
1991. In a mass, water landscape area decreased 1.97% in the past 15 years. The de-
creased water landscape mainly changed to different coverage grassland landscapes.
Besides, patches quantity, density and the largest patch index of water landscape were
inclined to decrease to indicate natural habitats of grassland vegetation were inclined
to deterioration.
Sand landscape area increased 7.74% annually and the occupied land was mainly
higher coverage grassland accounting for 88.60% of the whole occupied area to
indicate that desertification was most serious in the regions with better vegetation
condition which was significantly related to human actions. In the 15 years, patches
quantity, density of sand landscape increased obviously. Patches quantity and density
increased 4 times in 2001 compared with 1986 especially patches quantity in sides of
river channel and surrounding of city areas increased obviously. The largest patch
258 H. Zhang et al.

index decreased to indicate sand landscape fragment degree strengthened. That is

because people ignored to protect unsandy grassland vegetation when they super-
vises serious sandy region.
The grassland vegetation degenerated seriously in 2001. The first 7 months accumu-

lated rainfalls separately are 88.2 185.7 282.9 134mm in 1986 1991 1996
2001 in survey region and 1996s rainfall is the best. But according to monitoring
result of NDVI vegetation index, 1991s vegetation condition is the best and 2001s is
the worst and 1986s and 1996s are almost the same. That mainly is because ever
since a long time ago, the population and grazing capacity have increased too quickly
and grassland utilization intensity continued to increase to make community struc-
ture occur to serious retrogressive succession and grassland lose their own ecology
self-recovery function. So although the first 7 months rainfall in 2001 substantially
exceeded 1986s, a short term better outside condition can not help vegetation to re-
covery quickly.

4 Conclusions and Discussion

4.1 Meadow Steppe Self Ecology Recovery Function Is Limited

Grassland ecology system has definite patent ecology recovery function. Because of
better natural conditions, meadow steppe has the strongest recovery function in all
types of grasslands. But there are also conditions in exertion of any patent ecology
recovery function. Extravagant utilization can make community structure and soil
environment occur retrogressive succession and destroy material base where exertion
ecology recovery patent function develop the role. Even the recovery function will be
lost and grassland makes for continued degeneration. Especially Hulunbuir grassland
which has a long collecting grass and barn feeding history, this utilization patterns
destroyed completeness of seed resources base and conflicted exertion of self ecology
recovery function.

4.2 Jamming Is the Key Factor in Grassland Vegetation Degeneration

In the past 15 years, natural factors influencing grassland vegetation had not degener-
ated dramatically. On the contrary, compared with 1986, accumulated rainfalls of the
other three years first 7 months were far above 1986s meanly. But in the past 15
years, in survey region, population, stock capacity and utilization intensity had in-
creased remarkably; jamming such as land clearing, road repairing, coal digging, oil
extraction, crude drugs digging had become quick degeneration accelerator of vegeta-
tion condition. All of the jamming led grassland area continued to reduce and vegeta-
tion to degenerate especially sand landscape in surroundings of roads, cities and farm-
lands expanded remarkably. So jamming of human actions was the key factor to lead
grassland ecology system deterioration.

4.3 The Urbanization Level Increased and Economy Development Pattern

Changed from Extensive Pattern to Intensive Urbanization Pattern

In the past 15 years, city landscape area increased remarkably. Fragmentation of city
landscape lightened, and city landscape patches tended to decrease and centralized
Analysis on Dynamic Characteristics of Landscape Patterns in Hailer and Around Areas 259

than ever especially Hailer region. Although city landscape area increased to occupy a
mass of surrounding quality grassland, economy development pattern changed from
extensive pattern to intensive pattern to enhance city server function and admit to
absorb more surplus manpower in other pasturing area. Especially infrastructure in
recreation industry was improved and employment opportunities were increased and
economy development pressure faced by grassland landscape was relieved on the
whole. It is the only way leading to realizing ecology environment improvement and
economy continued development.

Acknowledgements
This work is supported by Special Fund Project for Basic Science Research Business
Fee, Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of
Agricultural Sciences and The National Science & Technology Program (Grant No.
2006BAC08B0404, 2007BAC03A10) and Project 863 of China: (Grant no. 2007AA
10Z230) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No: 30770327)
and Commonweal Industry Scientific Research Special Funds Project (GYHY
200906029-2).

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 Application and Demonstration of Digital Maize
Planting and Management System

Shijuan Li and Yeping Zhu

Laboratory of Digital Agricultural Early-warning Technology of Ministry of Agriculture of

China; Institute of Agricultural Information, CAAS,
100081 Beijing, China
{lishijuan,zhuyp}@mail.caas.net.cn

Abstract. Cooperating with Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Administrative

Bureau of Dingxing County, Hebei province, we applied the agricultural infor-
mation software of Digital Maize Planting and Management System to guide
local maize production. This system can direct the maize production during the
whole course including digital simulation and design of maize production,
planting plan before sowing, optimal water and nitrogen operation, nitrogen
pollution warning, economic benefits analysis and so on. This study tries to es-
tablish the foundation for information and digitalization of maize production
and management.

Keywords: Maize; Digital management; Demonstration.

1 Introduction
Agricultural information technology is to collect, store, transmit, handle, analyze and
utilize the natural, economic and social information in the course of agricultural pro-
duction, management and decision-making [1]. Taking full advantage of agricultural
information technology is an important and powerful measure to promote China agri-
cultural modernization, and is the developing focus of the world agriculture. Now
although the dazzling achievements have been acquired in China, the research on
agricultural information is weaker and slower than developed countries [2]. The
consciousness of agricultural informalization is not enough, and the information
knowledge cant be spread better.
As the important content of agricultural information technology, crop simulation
model has been becoming the core of agricultural production management and re-
source optimization management, and the basis of precision agriculture. After 50
years evolvement crop simulation model becomes more mature and possesses of more
mechanism. America, Holand, England and Australia developed many crop models,
some of which had been used in agriculture successfully such as DSSAT, SUCROS,
EPIC, and RZWQM [3-5]. China started to study crop simulation model since 1980s.
After introducing, analyzing and improving foreign crop models, researchers devel-
oped a lot of application systems [6-8].
Despite of the fast development of crop simulation model in foreign countries, only
a few models can be applied to production successfully. At present its main function

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 261266, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
262 S. Li and Y. Zhu

is to forecast yield. The rapid evolution and maturity of the technologies of GIS, RS,
GPS, grid, computer provide better foundation and wider development prospect for
the regional application of crop simulation model [9-12]. Relying on the task of Key
Technology Study on Crop Production Management and Application, combining
with Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Administrative Bureau of Dingxing County,
Hebei province, we studied the application and demonstration of maize production
management system [13,14]. This system instructs maize production from sowing
to development phases to harvest. It realizes the digital management for maize
production, and will establish foundation for digital agriculture-based agricultural
informalization and digitalization.

2 Brief Introduction of System

Based on the past studies, we collected related literatures and agronomic expert in-
formation in a large scale, then designed maize cooperative models in accordance
with the relationship among crop, environment and management, then combined the
models with corresponding database and repository, and constituted Digital Maize
Planting and Management System by using technologies of system engineering the-
ory, software engineering theory, computer and model simulation. Therefore, this
software system based on simulation model serves for maize production management
and scientific experiment.
The system simulates maize production process and yield of different varieties un-
der different location with one day as time step. It has the following functions: 1) It
simulates yield and yield components, main quality formation, dynamic change of soil
water and N, water and N uptake and utilization by maize, N leaching, and shows the
simulation results with form and chart directly. 2) It gives anticipative target yield and
quality, variety choose, sowing date and density determination, fertilizer and water
management according to users requirement and biological environment of decision
location. Based on simulation model, system analyzes maize variety, water and nutri-
tion status, weather resource and offers assistant decision-making, such as the sugges-
tions on optimal variety, sowing date and density, the amount and time of irrigation
and fertilizer. 3) Maize 3D visualization shows maize growth vividly, and it is the real
reflect of simulation results from model.
System application covers the whole production process. Before sowing it makes
digital simulation and design for maize production, and provides the planting scheme
such as optimal sowing date and cultivar. In the course of production, it can provide
the reasonable water and N fertilizer application rate, and present warning for N fertil-
izer pollution. After harvest the production benefit analysis can be done. The user can
consult the massive information about maize production and view the 3-dimension
growth process visually at any time.

3 System Optimality and Simplification

This universal system can be used to most areas which grow food crops. Hebei
province is a vital demonstration base for us. When we communicated with the
 Application and Demonstration of Digital Maize Planting and Management System 263

technicians working in Dingxing county, they considered the system was too profes-
sional to satisfy the demand of plentiful and complicated parameters. They dont
know the special meaning of some parameters at all. According to the demand of
demonstration region, we redesigned the model framework to improve the practica-
bility and maneuverability under the premise of retaining the model precision to the
full. Fig. 1 showed the part of system interfaces. Data collection and analysis which
drive the model are another important question, and model calibration and validation
need a great deal of observed data. But theres no agricultural experiment on demon-
stration station before, so the lack of data accumulation prevents the simulation
model application.
On the basis of enough demand investigation and local production analysis, we
collected, sorted out and analyzed information required by model system such as the
meteorology material (daily maximum temperature, daily minimum temperature,
solar radiation, precipitation), soil property, variety characteristic (name, yield, spike
number, kernel number, kernel weight and management).
In order to reduce the experimental cost, we collected the data which were useful
for model calibration from the other tasks conducted on demonstration station. For
example, the partial data of local formula fertilization experiment can be used to mod-
ify and check parameters of maize simulation model in order to get the variety charac-
teristic parameters. At the same time, for the necessary data which cant be acquired
directly, we arranged the detailed experiment to get managed by special technician.
According to above data the database of six characteristic parameters for local com-
mon varieties was constructed with the identification program. With the work of the
staffs engaging in computer, agronomy and the local extension department, system
localization was done and the Digital Maize Planting and Management System for
demonstration region was built and applied in practice. The relative validation items
were set such as growth stages, yield, grain quality, irrigation, fertilizer application.
The simulated and observed data were compared again and again until the model
system can make prediction and decision accurately. Then the large-scale extension
and application were carried out.

Fig. 1. System interface

264 S. Li and Y. Zhu

4 Application Case in Dingxing County, Hebei Province

4.1 Design of Experiment

2.7 hectares located in Hebei Changli Technological Zone were chosen as demonstra-
tion area to test the optimal irrigation and fertilization function of model system. This
module provides the corresponding management after running the model according to
the given irrigation and fertilization indexes. The former index means the ratio of
practical transpiration to potential transpiration. The latter means the ratio of N de-
mand to N supply. We presumed all of these two indexes were 0.5, i. e. in the simula-
tion process system recorded once irrigation or fertilization if only the index was less
than 0.5.
The selected field with homogeneous property possessed 1.1% organic matter, 94
kg/mg alkaline hydrolysis nitrogen, 32 kg/mg available P content, 147 kg/mg avail-
able k content. One convenient weather station named Weatherhawk made in Amer-
ica collected the real-time meteorology data for instance daily maximum temperature,
daily minimum temperature, precipitation and solar radiation which are the drive
factors of model system.
Half of the area was taken as regulation field which was managed in terms of local
measures, i. e. all of the 600kg/ha fertilizer was applied as base manure; maize was
irrigated at jointing stage and tasselling stage respectively. The other half was used to
demonstrate the model system, i. e. maize was irrigated or fertilized according to the
recommendation measures offered by system. Maize production process was simu-
lated at three stages of before sowing, jointing and tasselling. Before sowing maize
yield and the rate and time of irrigation and fertilization were simulated on the basis
of the basic data about perennial meteorology, soil property and variety characteristic.
At jointing stage maize yield and the amendatory irrigation and fertilization applica-
tion were provided on the basis of the basic data of the real weather material between
sowing and jointing, perennial meteorology after jointing, soil property and variety
characteristic. At tasselling stage the simulation was done again by using the real
meteorology data between sowing and tasselling. The first simulation result meant
450 kg/ha and 300 kg/ha N fertilizer would be applied as base manure and top-
dressing in jointing stage respectively; irrigation of 90mm in jointing stage and 70mm
in tasselling stage would be needed. The second recommended management was that
225 kg/ha N fertilizer should be applied as top-dressing in jointing stage and no irri-
gation. The third recommended result indicated there were no need for fertilizer and
irrigation.
The local conventional irrigation management is irrigating maize twice in jointing
and tasselling stages. The precipitation was enough for maize growth in 2009, so
above two stages needed no irrigation. For demonstration field the simulation result
before sowing indicated the demand of irrigation in jointing stage, yet the second
predicting result showed theres no need for irrigation. Here we adopted the latter
simulation result because it was based on partial practical meteorology data. There-
fore in this study there was no irrigation whether for regulation field or for demonstra-
tion field.
The other materials and production manner were same for these two treatments.
The maize with variety of Sanbei 21 and density of 57 000 plants per hectare was
 Application and Demonstration of Digital Maize Planting and Management System 265

sowed in 18th June, 2009, and was harvested in 10th October, 2009. The fertilizer used
was special manure for formula fertilization (N:P:K=26:10:6).

4.2 Yield Comparison

Every treatment had been harvested individually. Then the yield and kernel weight
were measured. We chose 20 spikes to account the kernel number per spike stochasti-
cally. The fertilizer applied in jointing stage acts on maize growth mainly from joint-
ing to tasselling, which is the key period to decide kernel number. Below table
showed the kernel number was increased distinctly and the kernel weight was a little
improved in demonstration field compared with conventional field. Using this soft-
ware to guide maize production indicated that adding N fertilizer 75 kg/ha resulted in
a 768 kg/ha yield increase, and had significant enhancement on economic benefit.

Table 1. Yield and yield components for conventional field and demonstration field

Spike number kernel number 100 kernel Yield

per ha per spike weight(g) (kg/ha)
conventional field 57 000 434.3 33.4 7110.0
demonstration field 57 000 459.2 35.0 7878.0

5 Conclusion
The agricultural software based on simulation model of Digital Maize Planting and
Management System was well-done in theory. This system can instruct maize produc-
tion from sowing to development phases to harvest. In order to verify and perfect it
we applied it in maize production management process in Dingxing county, Hebei
province. The system predicted that the maize growth needed more N fertilizer than
conventional N management. The results indicated that adding N fertilizer 75 kg/ha
resulted in a 768 kg/ha yield increase, and had significant enhancement on economic
benefit.
The performances of currency and universality for model system can be explained
difficultly because of the small demonstration area and only one-year experiment
result. So we intend to enlarge the extension region and increase the demonstration
content to promote the application of crop simulation model.
Acknowledgments. This research is kindly supported by Special Fund of Basic Sci-
entific Research and Operation Foundation for Commonweal Scientific Research
Institutes and Beijing Nova program.

References
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3. Hoogenboom, G., Wilkens, P.W., Thornton, P.K., et al.: Decision support system for agro-
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national Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 9699. CSREA Press, Las Vegas (2009)
 Implement of Fuzzy Control for Greenhouse Irrigation

Wenttao Ren1, Quanli Xiang1, Yi Yang2, Hongguang Cui1, and Lili Dai1
1
College of Engineering, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang, 11086, China
2
Shenyang Liaowuyi E-TEC Co., Shenyang, 110044, China
renwentao1958@yahoo.cn, xiangquanli1020@163.com, tianya@163.com,
cuihongguang7763@163.com, dadailili@163.com

Abstract. By adopting the fuzzy control theory, a greenhouse irrigation auto-

matic control system has been designed with the characteristic of accurate of
the nonlinear, time-variability, long time delay and the characteristic of accurate
mathematic model being hard to establish. Through some basic experiments,
the basic domain of input and output of the fuzzy controller were ascertained.
Time variables that were used to control the each connect duration of electro-
magnetic relay. Fuzzy control can be realized by MSP430F133 MCU control
system with usage of the time variable. By the action of fuzzy control, proto-
type field experimental results showed that first-order inertial character per-
formed by the system with the constant 3540s, which was no overshoot. With
simple structure, low price and high reliability, the accuracy of the system
meets irrigation technical requirements of crops in greenhouse.

Keywords: fuzzy control, MSP430F133, time constant, subsurface drip

irrigation.

1 Introduction
In cold, arid and semiarid regions of northeast, greenhouses product mainly in winter,
so saving energy and water sources become important. Because of that, subsurface
drip irrigation technology is popular[1]. But using manual to control irrigation is dif-
ficult to make an accurate irrigation amount and time, and it also could consume labor
time, which restraint the development of this technology sufficiently. Because of drip
irrigation worked under ground surface with little effect on temperature and humidity
in greenhouse, signal-factor control is possible. With factors of nonlinear and uncer-
tain characteristics in greenhouse, it difficult to build an exact mathematic model to
control with modern control theory accurately. As a way of computer control, fuzzy
control based on human thinking, can describe complicated changing process with
simple words, and without mathematic model of system[2]. In recent years, Mao
Hanping, Ding Weimin and so on[3-6] have introduced fuzzy control technology in
greenhouse environment control system gradually, however, these still on the experi-
mental stages. In order to further save water source and labour cost, this paper builds
fuzzy controller use MATLAB, and designs a water-saving control system with the
MSP430 MCU as control core. The system can set different upper and lower limits
for irrigation according to water requirement regulation of crops in greenhouse.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 267274, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
268 W. Ren et al.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Overall Design of Irrigation Control System

Base on the environmental characteristics of greenhouse, this paper put forward the
way of distributed control, consisting of upper computer and lower computers that
were distributed around different position of greenhouses (As shown in Fig.1). Using
RS-485 bus for multicomputer communication between upper computer and lower
computers, using PC as upper computer and using Level Two Controller as lower
computers. Level Two Controllers can transmit the acquired humidity data to the
upper computer by serial communication of RS-485. At the same time, they also ac-
cept the set value by upper computer and execute the order. The lower computers also
can control by themselves. The combination of lower computers control and PC con-
trol intently make easy operation. Others controllers wont be influented if single one
was wrong.

Fig. 1. Overall design scheme of control system

2.2 Design of Fuzzy Controllers

Principle of fuzzy control system as shown in Fig.2. Fuzzy control system is mainly
composed of fuzzy controller, actuator, controlled objects, sensor and A/D convert-
ing. According to the intent of designing, solenoid valve controlled by relay as actua-
tor, soil as controlled object, soil moisture sensor based on FDR principle as the sen-
sor were chose. The soil moisture sensor can detect soil volumetric water content
which is the most common indicator of irrigation. Duration of voltage level of delay
could be chose as output of fuzzy controller. So, it didnt need D/A converting. There-
fore, a fuzzy controller for the fuzzy control system should be disigned. This paper
used fuzzy control toolbox of MATLAB to design fuzzy controller.
 Implement of Fuzzy Control for Greenhouse Irrigation 269

(1) Structure design

Structure design means setting linguistic variables of input and output. The soil
moisture deviation (e) and its changing rate (ec) had been chosen as input variables,
and the each connect duration of relay (u) had been chosen as output variables.

Fuzzy controller Control

roles

Setting
value(r) e E
+ Fuzzy U u
ec Fuzzines EC Defuzzification Actuator
- reasoning
f

The controlled
objects

A/D converting Sensor Current

value(y)

Fig. 2. Principle of fuzzy control system

(2) Fuzziness of precise variables

In fuzzy control system, it defines the actual ranges of input and output variables as
their base domains. The base domains of e, ec and u can be got, which are respec-
tively [0, 15%], [0, 2%] and [0, 120s] after repeated tests. Data in these domains were
positive because speed of evaporation less than that of irrigation in the process of
irrigation.
Base domains should be discreted as fuzzy subsets domains. e, ec and u were dis-
creted six stalls where fuzzy subsets domains and fuzzy subsets are respectively [0, 6]
and {ZO,PS,PM,PB}. The output languages were respectively no-irrigation, short
time-irrigation, moderate-irrigation and long time-irrigation.
The quantization factor and scale factor are introduced in order to discrete vari-
ables of base domains into fuzzy subsets domains. The quantization factor is defined
as the ratio of discreted stall to maximum of input in base domains. The scale factor is
defined as the ratio of output in base domains to discreted stall. So, the quantization
factors of e and ec can be calculated, which are respectively 40 and 300, and the scale
factor of u is 20.
(3)Assigning value to linguistic variables
Fuzzy subsets of domains of linguistic variables can be described by their member-
ship functions ((x)).The range of (x)is [0, 1]. Membership means the proportion of
value of fuzzy domains to each element of fuzzy subsets. (x) should be established
by practical experience. This paper adopted triangle for shape of (x). The member-
ship functions shape of linguistic variables of e (E), linguistic variables of ec (EC)
270 W. Ren et al.

ZO PS PM PB ZO PS PM PB
 

[
[

 

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 0.667 2.667 4 5 6
eec u
Fig. 3. Membership function of E and EC Fig. 4. Membership function of U

and linguistic variables of u (U) had been shown in Fig.3 and Fig.4, where U is ani-
somerous. Points where value of membership is 1 are respectively 0, 0.667, 2.667, 6.
Therefore, fuzzy controller can deduce small linguistic values if the deviation be-
tween the detecting value and the setting value of soil moisture is small. So the con-
trol role of certainty of outputs is weaker, that is to say the each connect duration of
relay is short; on the other hand, the each connect duration of relay is long if the de-
viation is big. This method can correct the deviation rapidly. Membership function
assignment of E, EC and U as shown in Table 1 and Table 2.

Table 1. Membership function assigment of E and EC

(x) E EC
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
ZO 1 0.5 0 0 0 0 0
PS 0 0.5 1 0.5 0 0 0
PM 0 0 0 0.5 1 0.5 0
PB 0 0 0 0 0 0.5 1

Table 2. Membership function assigment of U

U
(x)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
ZO 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
PS 0 0.7 0.2 0 0 0 0
PM 0 0.2 0.7 0.8 0.4 0.2 0
PB 0 0 0 0.1 0.5 0.7 1

(4) Compilation of fuzzy control rules

Fuzzy control rules adopted the sentences of if E isand EC is, then U is.
Rusults as shown in Table 3.
 Implement of Fuzzy Control for Greenhouse Irrigation 271

Table 3. Fuzzy control rules

E
U
ZO PS PM PB
ZO ZO PB PB PB
PS ZO PM PB PB
EC
PM ZO PS PM PM
PB ZO PS PS PM

(5)Making lookup table of fuzzy control by MATLAB

In order to realize the action of fuzzy control and decrease amount of control value
calculating, fuzzy control toolbox of MATLAB was adopted to make lookup table of
fuzzy control, and fuzzy values were transmitted into accurate value using the method
of weighted average. The data in this table can be used to control irrigation time.
According to the above steps, we can get the lookup table of fuzzy control could be
acquired as shown in Table 4.

Table 4. Lookup table of fuzzy control

E
GR
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
0 0 4 5 5 5 5 5
1 0 3 4 4 5 5 5
2 0 3 3 4 5 5 5
EC 3 0 3 3 3 4 4 4
4 0 1 1 3 3 3 3
5 0 1 1 3 3 3 3
6 0 1 1 1 1 3 3

2.3 The Realization of Methods of Fuzzy Control by MCU

The lookup table could be saved in MCU as a two dimensional array for invoking by
MCU in real time. In this paper, we write programs by data of lookup table in order to
decrease the frequency of MCU.
The functions of MCU(MSP430F133) control system are setting upper and lower
limits of irrigation and controlling relay on or off and communicating with upper
computer. The current value of soil moisture could be obtained by soil moisture sen-
sor and A/D converting. The e and ec were got by comparing the current value with
setting value. Then these values were transmitted into fuzzy linguistic variables, and
decisions were made according to table 3. As a result, the best result of the each con-
nect duration of relay was appeared by different combinations of e and ec.
272 W. Ren et al.

The function of fuzzy control

subprogram is carrying out once
irrigation time during the process of
irrigation according to the signal
detected by soil moisture sensor. In
Table 4, the value of GR means time
of once irrigation. The relation be-
tween once on-time duration of
relay(T) and GR in process of irriga-
tion as shown by formula (1)
GR .
T = sampling time = (1)
6
Sampling time is 120s, so time frame
of each connect duration of relay in
process of irrigation have 0s, 20s,
40s, 60s, 80s and 100s. Flowchart of Fig. 5. Flowchart of fuzzy control subprogram
fuzzy control subprogram as shown
in Fig 5.

3 Results and Discussion

In order to verify the effect of fuzzy control during irrigation, we the test of soil hu-
midity variation curve under different irrigation upper limit value and same incre-
mental have been executed. The result as shown in Fig.6.
The results of four times experiments showed that the irrigation system shows up
the characteristic of first-order inertial. Transfer function of this system is:
1
(s) = . (2)
Ts + 1
According to response characteristics of first-order inertial system, the elapsed time
that the output value is 63.2% of setting value is the time constant of the systems
transfer function (T). Using SPSS, the irrigation time were got corresponded by the
four curves, which were T1=52min, T2=54min, T3=60min, T4=70min when the incre-
mental is 1.896%.
We can calculate that the soil infiltration speed reduce gradually when soil water
content is close to field capacity on the condition of neglecting influence of outside
factor. Therefore, the corresponding time content increases gradually on the condition
of same incremental. But the time content decreases gradually and is tending a con-
stant when the soil water content far from the field capacity. This proves that the
action of fuzzy control subdued changes in time content vary with changes of the
capacity of absorbing water of soil in certain degree. So, average of T1, T2, T3 and T4
can be used as time content of this irrigation system.
T1 + T2 + T3 + T4
T= 60 = 3540s . (3)
4
 Implement of Fuzzy Control for Greenhouse Irrigation 273

Intermental of soil
water content/%

2
Upper limit:25%

Upper limit:28%

1 Upper limit:31%

Upper limit:34%

0
0 30 60 90 120 150 180
Time/min
Fig. 6. Soil humidity variation curve under different irrigation upper limits value and same
incremental

Substitutes the transfer function of system with T:

1
(s) = . (4)
3540 s + 1
The following are calculation for indicators of dynamic performance of the system.
Delay time: td=0.69T=2443s ; (5)

Rising time: tr=2.207T=7813s ; (6)

Regulating time: ts=3T=10620s . (7)

4 Conclusions

Using the fuzzy control toolbox of MATLAB, the data that were used to control irri-
gation time were obtained, and achieved the precise irrigation. By means of the way
of MCU control, it can keep the soil water content in upper limit and lower limit and
achieved the automatic irrigation. So, this method can save water resource and labour
cost efficiently. Under the action of fuzzy control, the irrigation control system per-
formanced the character of first-order inertial system with the time content was 3540s.
The control precision met basic requirements of crop irrigation for greenhouse in the
range of allowable error without overshoot.
274 W. Ren et al.

References
1. Zhang, Y., Hang, Y., Zhang, H.: The Development and Application for Sectional Type
Subirrigation Tip in Greenhouse. Chinese Journal of Soil Science 35(1), 1215 (2004)
2. Dang, J., Zhao, S., Wang, Y.: Fuzzy Control Technology. Chinese Railway, Beijing (2007)
3. Zhong, Y., Yang, J., Deng, J.: Multivariable Fuzzy Control of Temperature and Humidity
in a Greenhouse. Transaction of the Chinese Society for Agricultural Machinery 32(3),
7578 (2001)
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house Environment. Transaction of the Chinese Society for Agricultural Machinery 31(6),
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162168 (2009)
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action of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering 18(2), 7275 (2002)
7. Hu, D.: FLASH Type and 16bits MCU with Ultralow Power Consumption of MSP430
Series. Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing (2001)
8. Hu, D.: C programs designing and development for MSP430 MCU. Beijing University of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing (2002)
9. Qiao, X., Shen, Z., Chen, Q.: Design and Realization of General Computer Monitoring and
Controlling System for Environment of Agricultural Facilities. Transactions of the
CSAE 16(3), 7780 (2000)
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trol Viaelectronic line-Shafting. IEEE Trans. Ind. Application 37(1), 247254 (2001)
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 Application of Background Information Database in
Drought Monitoring of Guangxi in 2010

Xin Yang1,2,, Weiping Lu1,2, Chaohui Wu1,2, Yuhong Li1,2,

and Shiquan Zhong1,2
1
Remote Sensing Application and Test Base of National Satellite Meteorology Centre,
Nanning, China, 530022
2
GuangXi Institute of Meteorology, Nanning, China 530022
GuangXi Institute of Meteorology, Nanning, 530022, P.R. China
Tel.: +86-771-5875207; Fax: +86-771-5865594
yangxinzhuanyong@sina.com

Abstract. In this paper, use Nanning city as an example to show application of

Background information database in drought monitoring. A near-real time
drought monitoring approach is developed using Terra-Moderate Resolution
Imaging Spectoradiometer (MODIS) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index
(NDVI) and Land Surface Temperature (LST) products. The approach is called
Vegetation Temperature Condition Index (VTCI), which integrates land surface
reflectance and thermal properties. VTCI is defined as the ratio of LST differ-
ences among pixels with a specific NDVI value in a sufficiently large study
area; The ground-measured precipitation data from a study area covering Nan-
ning in Guangxi , CHINA, are used to validate the drought monitoring ap-
proach. Taking the result of drought monitoring in background information of
Nanning city ,the area of farmland drought of Mild drought Moderate droughts
Severe drought were 223607.2 Ha ,310596.9 Ha and 513.2 Ha.

Keywords: Background Information Database, Drought Monitoring, MODIS,

Guangxi.

1 Introduction
Drought is a normal, recurrent feature of climate. It occurs almost everywhere,
although its features vary from region to region. Drought is one of the major envi-
ronmental disasters in China, whereas in recent years it have happened in mid and
southern of china seriously, so it is very important to detect and monitor drought peri-
odically at large scale for decision making. Droughts can be assessed with many kinds
of indices but it is extremely difficult to quantitatively monitor and predict. Remote
sensing is able to supply us with an update on crop condition over a large geographic
area using a series of coarse resolution satellites and this technology has become
the important means of drought monitoring. In the past decades, many methods
using remote sensing information to monitor drought, such as Normalized difference

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 275281, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
276 X. Yang et al.

vegetation index (NDVI), Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), Temperature Condition

Index (TCI) and others. These indices have been developed and successfully used for
monitoring drought and have the advantage in monitoring spatial and temporal varia-
tion of drought at regional, continental, and even at global scales due to their large
and frequent coverage. At present, remote sensing methods for drought monitoring
are mainly classified into four categories: Vegetation Index-based, Temperature-
based, Vegetation and Temperature-based, and Cloud-based. The representative
indicies include Vegetation Supply Water Index (VSWI), Temperature/Vegetation
Dryness Index (TVDI); Apparent Thermal Inertia Index (ATI), and Cloud Parameters
Index (CPI). MODIS data is calibrated on orbit and it uses the complicated
re-correcting technology to locate when it scans. Because of high-quality and
effective monitoring, MODIS has become a widely used data source in drought moni-
toring. In this study, the vegetation temperature condition index(VTCI)model based
on NDVILST feature space was applied to validating a series of drought disaster
which occurred in Guangxi Province during the spring in 2010, and use Nanning city
as an example to show application of Background information database in drought
monitoring.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Study Area

Nanning is the capital of Guangxi autonomous region in southern China. Nanning is

located in the southern part of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, 160 km from
the border with Vietnam. It has an area of 22,293 square kilometers. The city is lo-
cated on the north bank of the Yong River, the chief southern tributary of the Xi
River, and lies some 30 km below the confluence of the Yu and the Zuo rivers. The
Yong River (which later becomes the Yu River) affords a good route to Guangzhou
and is navigable by shallow-draft junks and motor launches, even though it is ob-
structed by rapids and sandbanks. Nanning is situated in a hilly basin with elevations
between 70 and 500 m above sea-level. Average temperature is 21.7C. It is often
windy or breezy and very rainy, with more than 1300 mm of precipitation annually. It
is also frost-free for all but 3 or 4 days a year and never snows.

2.2 Data Acquisition

In this study, MODIS images April, 8 in 2010 were required. According to remote
sensing image interpretation target mark and image spectral characteristics, found
remote sensing interpretation model of the background information of forest, shrub
and grass, agricultural land, surface water, towns, roads from TM and ETM data
from 1988 to 2008, using supervision, unsupervised, maximum classification of natu-
ral law to retrieve background information from simple to complex interpretation of
each classification. Meanwhile, using human-computer interaction to refine the re-
sults. The output shp format data Vector file of disaggregated data edited in the GIS
system, and get the background information on various types of remote sensing data
each time(Fig. 1), then to map the agricultural land of Nanning City(Fig.2).
 Application of Background Information Database in Drought Monitoring 277

Fig. 1. The flow chart of background information of remote sensing classification

Fig. 2. Background information classes of Nanning City

2.3 Data Processing

Land surface temperature derived from brightness temperatures and NDVI from
MODIS data are used to calculate VTCI .The temporal-spatial distribution of drought
of 2010 in Nanning City in Guangxi was made by using the VTCI(Fig.3). Taking the
result of drought monitoring in background information of Nanning city ,the distribu-
tion of arable land drought is made(Fig.4).
278 X. Yang et al.

Fig. 3. Temporal-spatial distribution of drought of 2010 of Nanning City

Fig. 4. Distribution of arable land drought

3 Discussion and Conclusion

The result of drought monitoring in background information of Nanning city
shows that the area of arable land drought of Mild drought Moderate droughts
Severe drought were 223607.2 Ha, 310596.9 Ha and 513.2Ha(Table 1).
The following conclusions can be reached on the basis of above analysis: Taking
the result of drought monitoring in background information can provide more detailed
 Application of Background Information Database in Drought Monitoring 279

Table 1. the area of arable land drought results(Ha)

Slightly drought Moderate drought Intense drought

Binyang County 22957.2 52453.1 6.0
Heng County 34354.5 67289.3 501.4
Longan County 17494.1 35137.4 0
Mashan County 23562.7 5611.5 0
Nanning area 66210.9 43871.8 0
Shanglin 31747.1 10546.8 0
Wuming County 27280.7 95687.0 5.8

surveillance. The background information can provide services to support decision-

making for government departments. Based on the above study and analysis, some
conclusions can be drawn as follows:
1. It is an effective way to use background information in drought monitoring to pro-
vide more detailed surveillance.
2. The information of drought monitoring can support disaster assessment for
government.

Acknowledgments
This research was supported by National 11th Five-Year Plan major scientific and
National Key Technologies R&D Program (2008BAD08B01) and Scientific Research
and Technological Development projects of Guangxin Province (0816006-8),
Sincerely thanks are also due to Guangxi Climate center and National Satellite
Meteorology Center for providing the data for this study.

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surface moisture status. Journal of Applied Meteorology 32(3), 548557 (1993)
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temporal analysis of the physiological state of a semi-arid forest with respect to drought
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vegetation indices for drought monitoring in the Northwest of Iran. Journal of Arid Envi-
ronments 72(6), 10861096 (2008)
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280 X. Yang et al.

7. Marshall, G., Zhou, X.: Drought detection in semiarid regions using remote sensing of
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and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 2004), September 2004, vol. 3, pp. 15551558
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 Application of Background Information Database in Drought Monitoring 281

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Application of Fuzzy Clustering Analysis in Classification
of Soil in Qinghai and Heilongjiang of China

Ping Han1,2, Jihua Wang1,2, Zhihong Ma1,2, Anxiang Lu1,2,

Miao Gao1,2, and Ligang Pan1,2,
1
Beijing Research Center for Agrifood Testing and Farmland Monitoring,
Beijing 100097, P.R. China
2
National Engineering Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture,
Beijing 100097, P.R. China
Tel.: +86 -10-51503405; Fax: +86-10-51503406
hanp@nercita.org.cn

Abstract. Soil classification systems organize soil variability into useful

groupings that can be identified by field investigation and documented in soil
survey, and form the basis for the exchange and extension of soil science research
and soil resources management. Fuzzy clustering analysis may be used whenever
a composite classification of soil incorporates multiple parameters. In this paper,
seventy-seven topsoil samples were collected from Qinghai and Heilongjiang of
China, and the element contents of topsoil were detected by wavelength disper-
sive X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. In fuzzy clustering analysis, all data were
standardized, and then a fuzzy similarity matrix was established and the fuzzy
relation was stabilized. The results showed that topsoil samples of Qinghai and
Heilongjiang were completely grouped into two clusters according to their dis-
tricts, when given a suitable threshold = 0.7580. This work supplied the quan-
tification classification method of alpine soil (Qinghai) and unsaturation siallitic
soil (Heilongjiang).

Keywords: fuzzy clustering analysis, soil classification, elements.

1 Introduction

Soils are the complicated natural bodies and soil system acts as a component for various
ecological functions. Soil classification is the process of grouping soil individuals into
more or less homogeneous groups with respect to defined objectives [1], thereby
highlighting the essential differences in soil properties and functions between classes
[2]. Soil classification systems organize soil variability into useful groupings that can
be identified by field investigation and documented in soil survey activities to promote
effective resource management and technology transfer [3]. Clustering is useful and

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 282289, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Application of Fuzzy Clustering Analysis in Classification of Soil 283

plays a key role in searching for structures in data. Each of these structures is called a
cluster or class [4]. Cluster analysis is developed in taxonomy and its principal aim is to
partition multivariate observations into a number of meaningful multivariate homo-
geneous groups [5]. Fuzzy clustering analysis method is based on the fuzzy set theory
[6] and is one of the most important methods of unsupervised learning and has sig-
nificant advantages over traditional clustering [7]. Feng Lixiao et al(1992)[8] selected
active acid, substitution acid, hydrolysis acid, active aluminum, cation exchange ca-
pacity (CEC) and degree of base saturation as the parameters of soil fuzzy clustering
analysis to distinguish yellow brown soil and yellow cinnamon soil. Wu Kening et al
(1994) [9] studied fuzzy clustering analysis method in soils of transition regions of
northern Subtropics in China. The results implicated that fuzzy clustering analysis was
in accordance with pedogenesis classification and diagnostic classification. For the
development of precision agriculture, fuzzy cluster classification performed to deline-
ate management zones [10, 11].
This article explores the method of soil classification which applied fuzzy clustering
analysis. we selected the element contents, especially metal element contents as the soil
parameters to do fuzzy clustering analysis and discussed the relationship between
element concentration and soil pedogenesis. This would extend soil science and supply
classification method for soils which have different soil form processes.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Samples

Seventy-seven topsoil samples (0-20cm) were collected from Qinghai and Heilongji-
ang provinces of China. In these samples, thirty-nine topsoil samples belonged to
Qinghai, which were located between longitudes 93.652E and 95.768E and latitudes
36.387N and 36.793N with an area of about 0.084 km2, and, thirty-eight samples
belonged to Heilongjiang, which were located between longitudes 131.570E and
133.304E and latitudes 46.399N and 47.605N with an area of about 0.031 km2. At
each sampling site, 5 sub-samples were taken from the 4 vertexes and the center of a
square block (10m10m) and mixed thoroughly to select 0.5 kg soil as the representa-
tive sample of site. All samples came from farmland.

2.2 Soil Samples Preparation and Measurements

The samples were air-dried, ground, passed 250mm nylon sieve. Four grams of soil
powder were pressed into pellet at 10 tones using a manual hydraulic press (pellet
diameter = 32 mm). The concentrations of Cu, Pb, Zn, Cr, Ni, Fe, Mn, Rb, Sr, V, MgO,
CaO, Na2O, F, S, Cl, Ce, Ba, Co, Ga, Zr, La, Al2O3, TiO2 and As in soil pellets were
analyzed by wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (TW2404,
PHILIPS Company).
284 P. Han et al.

2.3 Fuzzy Clustering Analysis

, ,
All data except content value of Mn, xij were standardized by formula (a). i and j rep-
resented soil sample ID (1, 2, 77) and soil parameters ID (1, 2, 24).

xi j x j
x 'ij = (a )
sj
Note: In formula (a), x 'i j was standardization value.

77

xj =
1 77
xij (h) s =
j
(x1
ij x j ) 2 (i)
77 1
77 1
According to the standardization data, the relation r 'ik between ith and kth objects of
classification was calculated by formula (b). Then, the similar matrix R ' was estab-
lished and described as equation (c).
The fuzzy similar matrix R was established via the rik which was set by the relation
r 'i k on the interval [0, 1] by ordering rik =0.5+0.5 r 'i k and was described as equation
(d). The fuzzy similar matrix R was not a stabilized one. That is, it met the reflexivity
[12] and symmetry [13], but not transitivity [13, 14]. The fuzzy similar matrix R will
have to be changed into the fuzzy equivalent matrix via self-squared method when
clustering [15]. We transformed R into R* using formula (e): rij= (rik rjk)=( R)ij R
(e). If R* = Rk =R2K (f), then the R* had become a stabilized fuzzy relation. In this case
the R* was stable at R4 = R8. And R* was described as equation (g).

n r '1,1 r '1,2 ... ... r '1,77

x x
i j kj
r '2,1 r '2,2 ... ... r '2,77
r 'ik = j
(b) R' = : : : : : (c)

n n

x x
j =1
2
ij
j =1
2
ij
: : : : :
r'
77,1 r '77,2 ... ... r '77,77

r1,1 r1,2 ... ... r1,77 r*1,1 r*1,2 ... ... r*1,77
* * *
r2,1 r2,2 ... ... r2,77 r 2,1 r 2,2 ... ... r 2,77
R= : : : : : (d ) R* = : : : : : (g)

: : : : : : : : : :
r r77,2 ... ... r77,77 r* * *
77,1 77,1 r 77,2 ... ... r 77,77
 Application of Fuzzy Clustering Analysis in Classification of Soil 285

The R* value embodied the similarity and classification probability of all soil samples.
If the value was 0, then the two soil samples did not have similarity as different clas-
sifications. If the value was 1, then the two soil samples had very similarity as the same
classification. If the value was on the interval [0, 1], then the value indicated the pro-
bility that the two soil samples could be classified into the same clusters. was set as
probility threshold. If was greater than r*ij, then r*ij was on the order of 1. If was less
than r*ij, then r*ij was on the order of 0. We assigned a value from 1 to 0 to , reduced
the value gradually, and according to the same value, divided some soil samples into
same class as r*ij which was 1 or 0. The algorithms repeated the above steps at different
value until no soil samples were divided into the same class.

2.4 Data Analysis

All data were analyzed by Office Excel 2003, SPSS 18.0, and MATLAB 7.0.

3 Results and Discussion

3.1 T-Test of the Data

Table 1 showed the statistical results of the 25 metal concentrations in the topsoil of
Qinghai and Heilongjiang. All data were analyzed by independent samples t-test
analysis in SPSS 18.0 software. T-values of metal contents as soil parameters showed
significant differences or very significant differences except Mn between Qinghai and
Heilongjiang.

Table 1. Data analysis results of elements in topsoil of Qinghai and Heilongjiang a

Parameters b Sampling sites c N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean t

HLJ 38 22.31 3.95 0.64
Cu 4.332
QH 39 17.80 5.09 0.81
HLJ 38 22.09 3.52 0.57
Pb 7.318

QH 39 13.59 6.31 1.01

HLJ 38 61.81 15.77 2.56
Zn 2.316
QH 39 54.82 9.97 1.60
HLJ 38 63.61 9.42 1.53
Cr 5.594
QH 39 52.17 8.51 1.36
HLJ 38 47.19 7.61 1.24
Ni 2.476

QH 39 43.77 3.85 0.62

HLJ 38 3.32 0.78 0.13
Fe 2.163

QH 39 3.04 0.19 0.03

HLJ 38 102.10 10.13 1.64
Rb 14.980

QH 39 60.77 13.84 2.22

286 P. Han et al.

Table 1. (continued)

HLJ 38 177.58 34.55 5.61

Sr -4.772
QH 39 216.10 36.23 5.80
HLJ 38 86.11 10.97 1.78
V 10.135

QH 39 62.05 9.84 1.58

HLJ 38 1.21 0.43 0.07
MgO -17.268

QH 39 3.05 0.50 0.08

HLJ 38 1.89 1.30 0.21
CaO -30.037

QH 39 9.44 0.86 0.14

HLJ 38 1.27 0.20 0.03
Na2O -9.243

QH 39 1.65 0.15 0.02

HLJ 38 435.39 134.00 21.74
F -11.441
QH 39 742.31 98.18 15.72
HLJ 38 402.11 141.35 22.93
S -5.076

QH 39 811.10 482.37 77.24

HLJ 38 580.23 276.38 44.84
Mn -0.719
QH 39 612.82 41.74 6.68
HLJ 38 65.49 19.64 3.19
Cl -4.946

QH 39 923.28 1082.80 173.39

HLJ 38 82.10 16.99 2.76
Ce 8.194

QH 39 52.89 14.20 2.27

HLJ 38 631.13 36.12 5.86
Ba 27.985

QH 39 445.21 19.56 3.13

HLJ 38 12.23 2.63 0.43
Co 4.332

QH 39 9.97 1.86 0.30

Ga HLJ 38 17.95 2.75 0.45 6.751

QH 39 13.67 2.81 0.45

HLJ 38 260.29 39.24 6.37
Zr 12.713

QH 39 166.28 23.50 3.76

HLJ 38 39.82 18.01 2.92
La 4.005

QH 39 25.86 11.87 1.90

HLJ 38 13.54 1.24 0.20
Al2O3 9.195

QH 39 11.36 0.78 0.12

HLJ 38 0.84 0.027 0.004
TiO2 42.026

QH 39 0.59 0.025 0.004

HLJ 38 9.16 2.59 0.42
As -4.369
QH 39 11.65 2.41 0.39

b

Independent samples T-test analysis were used. p 0.05, p 0.01;
The concentration units of Fe, MgO, CaO, Na2O, Al2O3, TiO2 were percentage, others were
mg/kg;
c
HLJ and QH represented Heilongjiang and Qinghai respectively.
 Application of Fuzzy Clustering Analysis in Classification of Soil 287

3.2 Fuzzy Clustering

The fuzzy clustering graphic was made by MATLAB7.0 soft (Fig.1).

Fig. 1. The fuzzy clustering graphic

Note: Soil samples ID from 1-38 represent the soil of Heilongjiang, and soil sample ID from
39-77 represent the soil of Qinghai.

The fuzzy clustering graphic showed that the topsoil samples of Qinghai and
Heilongjiang were completely grouped into two clusters according to their districts
when given probility threshold = 0.7580. According to the soil order of China, the soil
of Qinghai and Heilongjiang belonged to alpine soil and un-saturation siallitic soil
respectively [16]. So alpine soil and unsaturation silallitic soil could be divided into two
classes based on their metal content. The topsoil samples of Qinghai and Heilongjiang
were regarded as the same class when given probility threshold = 0.6492. It implied
that topsoil of Qinghai and Heilongjiang had 64.9% similarity based on their 24 species
of metal concentration. When given probility threshold = 0.7580 and = 0.8532, the
topsoil soil samples of Heilongjiang and the topsoil soil samples of Qinghai were di-
vided into the same class respectively. The results showed that similarity of the 39
topsoil samples of Qinghai was greater than the 38 topsoil samples of Heilongjiang,
that is, with respect to total homogeneity based on 24 species of metal concentration,
Qinghai was better than Heilongjiang. Maybe this result was related to the topsoil
sample sites. All topsoil samples of Qinghai were collected from the Golmud region, as
well as, the topsoil samples of Heilongjiang were collected from the Tongjiang region
and the Shuangyashan region. On the other hand, this difference could come from soil
pedogenesis of the two districts.
288 P. Han et al.

4 Conclusions

The metal element content of soil can be used for qualitative classification. For this
purpose, the 77 soil samples from Qinghai and Heilongjiang of China have been
analyzed to determine their Cu, Pb, Zn, Cr, Ni, Fe, Mn, Rb, Sr, V, MgO, CaO, Na2O, F,
S, Cl, Ce, Ba, Co, Ga, Zr, La, Al2O3, TiO2 and As contents. T-test analysis was con-
ducted on all soil metal element concentration. By way of T-test results, all metal
element contents except Mn were used as parameters in the fuzzy clustering analysis.
Fuzzy classification algorithms of the soil samples based on the 24 element concen-
trations allowed for an objective interpretation of their similarities and differences. The
results show that this fuzzy clustering method can be applied in qualitative classifica-
tion of the soil of Qinghai and Heilongjiang. This method helps develop the qualitative
classification of soil, extend soil science, and is propitious to farmland management.

Acknowledgments

The financial support of National High Technology Research and Development Pro-
gram 863 (2010AA10Z403) , (2007AA10Z202), and Beijing Municipal Science and
Technology Commission Program (Z09090501040901). Thanks are due to Heilong-
jiang Academy of Agricultural Science and Golmud Bureau of Agriculture and Animal
Husbandry of Qinghai Province for collecting topsoil samples.

References

[1] Cline, M.G.: Basic principles of soils classification. Soil Science 67(2), 8291 (1949)
[2] Rossiter, D.G.: Classification of urban and industrial soils in the word reference base for
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[9] Wu, K.N., Kang, C.: Fuzzy cluster analysis of soils in transition regions of northern Sub-
tropics in China. Tropical and Subtropical Soil Science 3(3), 163168 (1994)
[10] Moral, F.J., Terr, J.M., Marques da Silva, J.R.: Delineation of management zones using
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tical techniques. Soil and Tillage Research 106, 335343 (2010)
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[11] Li, Y., Shi, Z., Wu, C.F., Li, H.Y., Li, F.: Determination of potential management zones
from soil electrical conductivity, yield and crop data. Journal of Zhejiang University:
Science B 9(1), 6876 (2008)
[12] Zadeh, L.A.: Similarity relations and fuzzy orderings. Information science 3, 177206
(1971)
[13] Zimmerman, H.J.: Fuzzy set theory and its applications. Kluwer Nijhoff Publishing,
Norwell (1985)
[14] Kung, H.T., Ying, L.G., Liu, Y.C.: Fuzzy clustering analysis in environmental impact
assessment- a complement tool to environmental quality index. Environment Monitoring
and Assessment 28, 114 (1993)
[15] Wang, S.L., Wang, X.Z.: A fuzzy comprehensive clustering method. In: Alhajj, R., Gao,
H., Li, X., Li, J., Zaane, O.R. (eds.) ADMA 2007. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4632, pp. 488499.
Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
[16] Wei, F.S., Chen, J.S., Wu, Y.Y., Zheng, C.J.: Study on soil environmental background
values of China. Environmental Science 12(4), 1219 (1991)
 Application of Molecular Imprinting Technique in
Organophosphorus Pesticides Detection

Liu Zhao1,2, Hua Ping1,2, Ling Xiang1,2, Ping Han1,2,

Jihua Wang1,2, and Ligang Pan1,2,
1
Beijing Research Center for Agrifood Testing and Farmland Monitoring,
100097 Beijing, China
2
Beijing Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture, 100097 Beijing, China
Tel.: +86 10 51503031; Fax: +86 10 51503406
{Liu.Zhao,Hua.Ping,Ling.Xiang,Ping.Han,
Jihua.Wang,Ligang.Pan,zhaoliu}@nercita.org.cn,
panlg@nercita.org.cn

Abstract. Molecular imprinting technique offers a means of producing practical

materials that are able to recognize a certain molecule in terms of shape, size
and chemical functionality. In order to obtain a highly selective recognition of
organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs), we synthesized molecularly imprinted
polymers (MIPs) using pirimiphos-methyl as the template, methacrylic acid as
the monomer and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate as the crosslinker. After po-
lymerization, molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction (MISPE) was used
for the selective preconcentration of OPPs. The preparation methods and syn-
thesis conditions of MIPs were discussed, and the specificity of MIPs and
nonimprinted polymers were investigated. The results showed that MIPs enable
the selective extraction of pirimiphos-methyl successfully from water sample,
and demonstrated the potential of MISPE for selective and cost-effective
sample pretreatment.

Keywords: Molecularly imprinted polymers, Solid phase extraction, Organo-

phosphorus pesticides.

1 Introduction
Organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs) have often been employed in farmland cultiva-
tion over the last several decades and are still continuously used in modern agricul-
tural systems[1]. These OPPs exhibit acute or chronic toxicity to human, environment
and the biota thus emphasizing the need for efficient analytical procedures to monitor
potential risks. Most OPPs are easily analyzed by GC and HPLC. Generally, the trace
analysis needs a pretreatment step in order to reduce the matrix interference and en-
rich the analyte. This is often performed by solid-phase extraction (SPE)[2-4].
Molecular imprinting is a versatile technique that creates molecular assemblies
of desired chemical structures and properties[5]. During last decade, molecularly

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 290295, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Application of Molecular Imprinting Technique in OPPs Detection 291

imprinted polymers (MIPs) have demonstrated a great potential as selective sorbents

and have been widely used for the clean-up of samples in SPE processes[6-8], namely
molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction (MISPE). The ongoing research has
proven that MIPs can be efficiently used in this field[9-10].
In this article, we reported the synthesized method of acrylic-based MIPs following
the non-covalent approach and the selective use of MISPE technique for the analysis
of organophosphorus pesticides.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Materials

Pirimiphos-methyl (99.7%), methylnitrophos (99.2%) and malathion (97.2%) were

purchased from J K Scientific (Beijing, China). Methacrylic acid (MAA) and
ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) were purchased from Sigma. The initiator
2,2-azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) was purchased from Shanghai Chemical Plant
(Shanghai, China). All solvents of analytical grade were purchased from Beijing
Chemical Reagent (Beijing, China). All syntheses were carried out using distilled-
deionized water (18.2 M.cm, PALL system). All solutions were filtered through a
0.45m membrane from Millipore before use.

2.2 Polymer Preparation

The template pirimiphos-methyl (0.305g, 1mM) and functional monomer MAA

(0.344g, 4mM) were dissolved in 5.6mL dichloromethane in a 40-mL glass tube with
slightly shaking for 6h. To this solution, cross-linker EGDMA (3.964g, 20mM) and
AIBN (40mg, 0.24mM) were added in steps. Then, the mixture was deoxygenated
with nitrogen for 15min, followed by degasification under vacuum for 5min and
sealed. The polymerization was carried out by heating the mixture in a 60 water
bath for 36h. The obtained polymer was ground to fine powders and sieved to obtain
60-70m particles. These particles were extracted in a Soxhlet for 24h with methanol-
acetic acid (9:1, v/v) until no residue of template was found in the rinses.
The corresponding non-imprinted polymers (NIPs) for comparison experiments
were prepared in the same manner but without addition of template.

2.3 MISPE Protocol

Two hundred milligrams of the cleaned-up MIPs (or NIPs) were put into a 10mL vial
and incubated with methanol, standing at ambient temperature with occasional shak-
ing for 24h. Then the slurry was transferred into a 3mL polypropylene SPE cartridge
and stood for 30min. After that, polyethylene frit was carefully put onto the polymer
to stabilize the sorbents. MIPs of the size 60-70m proved to be an acceptable
compromise between homogeneity and permeability of SPE cartridge. Prior to use,
the MIPs (or NIPs) SPE-cartridges were conditioned by washing with 10mL metha-
nol-acetic acid (9:1, v/v) and 2mL methanol, followed by 2mL water. For the MISPE
process, standard solution (a mixture of pirimiphos-methyl, methylnitrophos and
292 L. Zhao et al.

malathion, 1g/mL) and a spiked water sample were loaded onto the MISPE
cartridges at a flow rate of 0.4mL/min respectively. And then the SPE cartridges were
washed with 2mL dichloromethane/acetonitrile (95:5, v/v) and eluted with 2mL di-
chloromethane/methanol (90:10, v/v) by steps. The eluate was immediately dried
under a stream of nitrogen, and the residue was dissolved in 1mL dichloromethane for
GC-MS analysis.

2.4 GC-MS Assay

The assay was conducted by Shimadzu GC-MS QP2010 Plus. The analyses were
carried out on a gas chromatograph fitted with a HP-5 MS capillary column (30
m0.25mm id; 0.25m film thickness). Analytical gas chromatography conditions

were as follows: injector temperature 230 ; oven temperature held at 120 for 5

min, then programmed to increase from 120 to 150 at a rate of 5 /min and held
for 7min; carrier gas, helium at a flow rate of 1mL/min; Mass spectrometer condi-
tions: ionization mode with EI, electron energy 70eV, ion source temperature 230 ,

interface temperature 220 . Instrument operation and data processing was done
through the LabSolutions (version 2.50) software.

3 Results and Discussion

3.1 Synthesis of Polymer

The choice of polymerisation solvent is the key point of the adduct formation and the
promotion of the imprinting efficiency[11]. Dichloromethane is one of the most
widely used solvents, since it satisfactorily dissolves all the reaction components and
does not suppresses hydrogen bonding. We speculate that the use of dichloromethane
can enhance the unspecific binding of analyte to the crosslinker. In addition, the
nature of the crosslinker is another key factor of the polymer specificity[12]. The
reactivity of the crosslinker should be similar to that of the functional monomer. And
the mole ratios of crosslinker to functional monomer are also important[13]. Gener-
ally, hydrogen bonding is dependent on both distance and direction between mono-
mers and templates. EGDMA as the shortest crosslinker led to the highest selectivity
in the polymer[14].

3.2 Specificity of Polymer

One merit of MISPE is that the polymer sorbents have good selectivity for the tem-
plate molecule. To evaluate the specificity of this kind of SPE materials, the
molecular recognition properties of three different OPPs (pirimiphos-methyl,
methylnitrophos, malathion) was investigated. A total of 1.0mL of a mixture of
1g/mL of each organophosphorus was applied to the MIP and blank polymer car-
tridges, and then the compounds in both the washing and elution fractions were
analyzed by GC-MS.
 Application of Molecular Imprinting Technique in OPPs Detection 293

Fig. 1. Chromatograms obtained by off-line SPE of 1.0mL of a mixture of 1g/mL of each

OPP. (a) standard solution; (b) NIP, washing fraction; (c) NIP, elution fraction; (d) MIP, elution
fraction; (e) water sample. (1) pirimiphos-methyl; (2) methylnitrophos; (3) malathion. Wash
step: 2mL dichloromethane/acetonitrile (95:5, v/v). Elution step: 2mL dichloro-
methane/methanol (90:10, v/v).

Fig.1 showed the chromatograms of OPPs in standard solution, washing solutions,

and elution fractions. It can be seen that almost all of the OPPs were completely re-
moved from the blank column after the washing step. However, a different result was
observed for the MISPE cartridge. Pirimiphos-methyl, the template molecular, was
still totally retained on the MISPE column after the washing step. The recovery of
pirimiphos-methyl was higher than 80%. In addition, the left OPPs were not retained
on the MISPE column. In other words, they cannot be recognized by the MIPs and
were completely separated from the target analyte. These results showed that the MIP
exhibited highly selective binding affinity for pirimiphos-methyl and no binding for
the left OPPs. Although there is only slight difference between the structures of those
three OPPs, this further explains that the imprinting is not only based on the interac-
tion of the functional groups of the analyte but also based on the combined effect of
shape and size complementarily[15]. The recovery of three OPPs (Table 1) showed that
the MIP cartridge could be proved to be a powerful tool for the enrichment of pirimi-
phos-methyl.

3.3 Determination of Pirimiphos-Methyl in Spiked Water Sample

To demonstrate the applicability of reliability of this method for environmental appli-

cation, real environmental water sample was selected and analyzed. Tap water was
spiked with pirimiphos-methyl at the 1g/mL concentration level and was preconcen-
trated by MISPE. The recovery and reproducibility of this method were calculated
and summarized in Table 1. As expected, for analysis of pirimiphos-methyl in the
water sample, the analyte recovery was higher than 80%.
294 L. Zhao et al.

Table 1. Recoveries of three OPPs after loading of 1.0mL of 1g/mL of each OPP onto the
SPE cartridges (n=3)

NIP(%SD) MIP(%SD)
Analyte
Washing Elution Elution Tap water
Pirimiphos-methyl 97.62.5 0 83.23.1 80.12.3
Methylnitrophos 96.13.9 0 0 0
Malathion 99.32.6 0 0 0

4 Conclusion
In this report, we discussed the utility of molecular imprinting technology for the
organophosphorus pesticides detection. MIPs selective for pirimiphos-methyl was
prepared and applied as the material for SPE in off-line separations. The polymer
showed well affinity and selectivity to pirimiphos-methyl. And the MISPE proved to
be an effective tool for the enrichment of pirimiphos-methyl from water sample. For
organophosphorus pesticides, the MISPE approach provided simpler methodology
and significant increases in selectivity relative to the conventional methods. And we
feel that this approach will be a useful analytical tool for analyzing complex samples,
especially in performing the initial screening of libraries against poorly characterized
receptors.

Acknowledgments. This work was supported by the National High Technology

Research and Development Program 863 (2010AA10Z403, 2007AA10Z202) and Bei-
jing Municipal Science and Technology Commission Program (Z09090501040901).

References
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ucts of methyl parathion by liquid chromatography/electrospray time-of-flight mass spec-
trometry and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. J. Chromatogr. A. 1137(2), 180187
(2006)
2. Brito, N.M., Navickiene, S., Polese, L., Jardim, E.F., Abakerli, R.B., Ribeiro, M.L.: De-
termination of pesticide residues in coconut water by liquid-liquid extraction and gas
chromatography with electron-capture plus thermionic specific detection and solid-phase
extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection.
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3. Ismail, N., Vairamani, M., Rao, R.N.: Determination of cis and trans isomers of monocro-
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4. Mullett, W.M., Lai, E.P.C.: Determination of theophylline in serum by molecularly im-
printed solid-phase extraction with pulsed elution. Anal. Chem. 70, 36363641 (1998)
5. Hong, C.C., Chang, P.H., Lin, C.C., Hong, C.L.: A disposable microfluidic biochip with
on-chip molecularly imprinted biosensors for optical detection of anesthetic propofol.
Biosens. Bioelectron. 25, 20582064 (2010)
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6. Pichon, V., Haupt, K.: Affinity separations on molecularly imprinted polymers with spe-
cial emphasis on solid- phase extraction. J. Liq. Chromatogr. Rel. Technol. 29(7-8),
9891023 (2006)
7. Caro, E., Marce, R., Borrull, F., Cormack, P.A.G., Sherrington, D.C.: Application of
molecularly imprinted polymers to solid-phase extraction of compounds from environ-
mental and biological samples. Trends. Anal. Chem. 25, 143154 (2006)
8. Andersson, L.I.: Molecular imprinting for drug bioanalysis. J. Chromatogr. B. 739,
163173 (2000)
9. Ramstrom, O., Skudar, K., Haines, J., Patel, P., Bruggemann, O.: Food analyses using
molecularly imprinted polymers. J. Agric. Food. Chem. 49, 20162114 (2001)
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 Assessing Rice Chlorophyll Content with Vegetation
Indices from Hyperspectral Data

Xingang Xu, Xiaohe Gu, Xiaoyu Song, Cunjun Li, and Wenjiang Huang

National Engineering Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture,

P.O. Box 2449-26, Beijing 100097, P.R. China
xxg2007@yahoo.com.cn, guxh@nercita.org.cn,
songxy@nercita.org.cn, licj@nercita.org.cn,
huangwj@nercita.org.cn

Abstract. Leaf chlorophyll content is not only an important biochemical para-

meter for determinating the capacity of rice photosynthesis, but also a good in-
dicator of crop stress, nutritional state. Due to the reliable, operational and non-
destructive advantages, hyperspectral remote sensing plays a significant role for
assessing and monitoring chlorophyll content. In the study, a few of typical ve-
getation indices (VI) with the combination of 670nm and 800nm band reflec-
tance, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Modified Simple Ra-
tio index (MSR), Modified Chlorophyll Absorption Ratio Index (MCARI),
Transformed Chlorophyll Absorption Ratio Index (TCARI), and Optimized
Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (OSAVI) are modified by using 705nm and
750nm band reflectance so as to reduce the effect of spectral saturation in 660-
680nm absorptive band region, and then used to assess the rice chlorophyll con-
tent. The result shows that the five mentioned VIs have better correlation with
rice chlorophyll content while using 705nm and 750nm. In addition, in the
study the Weight optimization combination (WOC) principle is utilized to fur-
ther assess the capacity of the five modified VIs for estimating rice chlorophyll
content, it is proved that OSAVI and MSR display the better performance.

Keywords: Chlorophyll Content, Vegetation Indices, Weight Optimization

Combination, Hyperspectral Remote Sensing.

1 Introduction
Chlorophyll is one of most important matters for crop photosynthesis, and the amount
of chlorophyll in crops can reflect whether the growth state of crop is in health or not.
Healthy and stressed crops often display changes in pigment levels (Niinemets et al.,
1997; Penuelas, J., Filella , 1998; Rasmus and Martha, 2009). In addition, chlorophyll
content is firmly related with nitrogen level. Consequently, accurately assessing the
chlorophyll content is very useful for obtaining crop productivity, probing crop
stresses and nutritional state (Zarco-Tejada et al., 2004).

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 296303, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Assessing Rice Chlorophyll Content with Vegetation Indices 297

Hyperspectral remote sensing plays a unique role in detecting crop biochemical pa-
rameters, such as dry matter, pigments and so on. In the visible regions, crops present
the different changes of spectrographic curve, and leaf chlorophyll content is the most
important factor leading to the leaf spectral variation(Zhang et al., 2008), which pro-
vides the base for remote detection of crop growth state through monitoring chloro-
phyll content. Vegetation indices (VIs) with the combination of different bands can
reduce some noise caused by external factors such as the atmosphere and the soil
background to some extent (Demarez et al., 2000; Rasmus and Eva, 2008), and are
widely used to monitor and assess the leaf chlorophyll content.
The typical VIs based on hyperspectral remote sensing, such as NDVI (Rouse et
al., 1974; Gitelson et al., 1994), MSR (Chen, 1996), MCARI, TCARI (Daughtry et
al., 2000), and OSAVI (Rondeaux et al., 1996), commonly use 670nm to estimate leaf
chlorophyll content. However, in 660-680nm red spectral region, the chlorophyll
absorptions begin to show the saturated tendency at lower chlorophyll content, which
would weaken the sensitivity of VIs to higher chlorophyll content. By contrast, the
absorptions in the region around 550nm or 700nm show the same phenomena at high-
er chlorophyll content (Sims and Gamon, 2002). So the spectral indices with these
bands in the latter regions would have better precision for assessing chlorophyll con-
tent.
The objective of the study is to compare the performance of the above five VIs for
assessing chlorophyll content by using different bands combination of reflectance to
modify these indices. In addition, the Weight optimization combination (WOC) prin-
ciple is utilized to further analyze the capacity of the five modified VIs for estimating
rice chlorophyll content.

2 Material and Method

2.1 The Study Area

The study site is located in Qianjin and Youyi Farm, Heilongjiang Nongken, China.
In the two farms, rice is main crop. Specially in Qianjin Farm, rice accounts for about
95% of total crop planting areas. In the study, there are thirty-eight paddy fields to be
selected to obtain the spectral and chlorophyll content data, and these selected paddy
fields are homogeneous for rice breed and field management. The collections of data
are carried out on August 6, 2009.

2.2 Field Data Acquisition

In the paper, canopy spectral data in every selected paddy field are collected at 380
2500 nm by a portable spectroradiometer (FS-FR2500, ASD, USA) with field of view
of 25 and a distance of about 150 cm above the ground surface. Reflectance spectra
are derived through calibration with the 99% white reference board (Labsphere, Inc.,
North Sutton, New Hampshire, USA).The measured spectra data for ten times are
averaged as the final spectral data in every paddy field.
Chlorophyll content is obtained by using the portable Chlorophyll Meter SPAD-
502 (Minolta Corporation, New Jersey, USA). In every measured paddy field, twenty
rice samples are randomly selected, and then the averaged SPAD value of all leaves
298 X. Xu et al.

of each rice samples is viewed as chlorophyll content of the measured rice samples.
Finally, the SPAD values of the twenty rice samples are further averaged as the rice
chlorophyll content for the measured paddy field.

2.3 Vegetation Indices Used in the Study

In the study, the five vegetation indices, NDVI, MSR, MCARI, TCARI, and OSAVI
are comparatively applied to assess the rice chlorophyll content.
NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) should be the most extensively
used VI which couples the maximum reflection in the infrared with the maximum
absorption in the red, and is formulated with the following equation when using
hyperspectral wavebands, where is R the reflectance at the given waveband (nm):
R800 R670
NDVI [670,800] =
R800 + R670

MSR (Modified Simple Ratio index) is the improvement on SR (Simple Ratio index).
In hyperspectral remote sensing applications, SR is directly formulated with the ref-
lection extremum in the infrared and that of the absorption in the red, and can enhance
the contrast between soil and vegetation while minimizing the effect of the illumina-
tion conditions (Barnet and Guyot, 1991), but their effectiveness is reduced by the soil
reflectance underneath the canopy. So MSR is proposed to further decrease the soil
noise, and its quantified equation is as the following:
R800 R670 1
MSR[670,800] =
R800 R670 + 1

Based on CARI (Chlorophyll Absorption Ratio Index) which measures the depth of
chlorophyll absorption at 670 nm relative to the green reflectance peak at 550 nm and
the reflectance at 700 nm in order to reduce the effect of some non-photosynthetic
materials, MCARI (Modified Chlorophyll Absorption Ratio Index) is developed
to further weaken the noise due to non-photosynthetic materials, as the following
equation:

MCARI [670,700] = ( R700 R670 ) 0.2 ( R700 R550 ) ( R700 R670 )

TCARI (Transformed Chlorophyll Absorption Ratio Index) is proposed to eliminate

reflectance effect of background matters (soil and non-photosynthetic components)
and to increase the sensitivity at low chlorophyll content, and is formulated with the
following equation:

TCARI[670,700] = 3 ( R700 R670 ) 0.2 ( R700 R550 )( R700 R670 )

OSAVI (Optimized Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index) belongs to SAVI family (Huete,

1988), and is developed to further reduce background soils, and defined as the following:

OSAVI [670, 800] =

(1 + 0.16 )( R800 R670 )
( R800 + R670 + 0.16 )
 Assessing Rice Chlorophyll Content with Vegetation Indices 299

Vegetation spectrum from 400 nm to 700 nm region is primarily determined by

chlorophyll and other pigments. The bands in the above five VIs is commonly se-
lected to assess the chlorophyll content. In recent years, it is proved that besides the
combination of the above bands, the new combinations of the other bands is possibly
more sensitive and effective to leaf chlorophyll. For example, Sims and Gamon
(2002) found that the band of 705 nm has better correlation with leaf total chloro-
phylls besides 680 nm, and they also found a strong correlation between different
combinations of reflectance at 700 nm, 705 nm, and 750 nm, and leaf chlorophyll
content. Wu et al (2008) utilized the reflectance at 750 nm and 705 nm to form the
revised VIs to estimate the chlorophyll of wheat and corn. Therefore, the reflectance
of these bands may have potentials in assessing chlorophyll content. In this study, the
above five VIs are modified to assess the rice chlorophyll content with the new com-
bination of the reflectance at 750 nm and 705 nm replacing that of 800 nm and 670
nm. The formulas of the five modified VIs are as Table 1.

Table 1. The formulas of the five modified VIs

VI Formula
R750 R705
NDVI NDVI [705, 750] =
R750 + R705
R R 1
MSR MSR[705, 750] = 750 705
R750 R705 + 1
MCARI MCARI[705,750] = ( R750 R705 ) 0.2( R750 R550 ) ( R750 R705 )
TCARI TCARI[705,750] = 3( R750 R705 ) 0.2( R750 R550 )( R750 R705 )

OSAVI [7 = 705, 750] =

(1 + 0.16 )( R750 R705 )
OSAVI
( R 750 + R 705 + 0.16 )

2.4 Weight Optimization Combination Method

Weight optimization combination (WOC) is a method which calculates optimal

weights of different models solving the same problem to form the combination model
with the aim of the least errors (Xu et al., 2009). The principle of WOC is as the
following:
There are different N models constructed with n samples for settling the same
problem, where both N and n are the same as the following mentioned, respectively.
y j : the measured value for j sample ( j = 1, 2, 3, L , n );
f ij : the estimated result for j sample with i model( i = 1, 2,3, L, N );
eij = y j fij : the error for j sample with i model;

The estimated value of the combination model formed by N models for j sample is
defined as the following:
N
f j = ki fij (1)
i =1
300 X. Xu et al.

Here, ki are weights of N single models, and k is constrained by the following

conditions:
ki 0
(2)
ki = 1
The error of the combination model for j sample is formulated with the following:
N
e j = y j f j = eij ki (3)
i =1

For determining ki, ej is usually looked on as independent variable of the objective

function, and the mathematic framework of WOC is commonly expressed as the fol-
lowing:
E = min E (k1 , k 2 , , ki )

ki = 1 (4)
ki 0

where minE is the objective function that can be the minimum error square sum, or
minimum absolute error sum, or the other cost function.
The process solving the formula (4) for the acquisition of ki is a little complicated,
and there are various solving algorithms for the formula (4) with different effective-
ness. In the study, the iterative optimization algorithm based on dual optimal combi-
nation is selected to calculate the optimal weights, whose detailed description can be
found in Tang et al (Tang et al., 1994)

3 Result and Discussion

To analyze the performance of the five modified VIs for assessing chlorophyll con-
tent, the five VIs, respectively using the combination of 670 nm & 800 nm, 705 nm &
750 nm, are correlated with the measured rice chlorophyll in 38 paddy fields from the
two farms. Their correlation coefficients are as shown in Table 2.

Table 2. The correlation coefficients between the five VIs and SAPD chlorophyll content

Vegetation index R[670,800] R[705,750]

NDVI 0.351 0.478
MSR 0.365 0.485
MCARI -0.345 0.453
TCARI -0.457 -0.474
OSAVI 0.342 0.470

From Table 2, we can see that after using the combination of 705nm and 750nm,
the correlations between the modified VIs and rice chlorophyll have more obvious
increase in comparison with those of the initial VIs with 670nm and 800nm. Although
the correlation coefficient of TCARI with rice chlorophyll improves unconspicuously,
 Assessing Rice Chlorophyll Content with Vegetation Indices 301

the correlations of the other four VIs, NDVI, MSR, MCARI and OSAVI have been
greatly raised.
In order to further compare the ability of the five modified VIs assessing rice chlo-
rophyll, WOC is adopted by using the following steps: Firstly, the five models which
correlate the five revised VIs with rice chlorophyll respectively are set up, the
LLST(Linear Least Squares Fit) is the main modeling method in the study; Secondly,
the five models viewed separately as the single model are input into WOC; Finally,
the iterative optimization algorithm above mentioned is applied to calculate the
weights.
In the process of using WOC with the iterative optimization algorithm, the more
useful information the single model contributes to, the bigger weight it is given, and
vice versa. That is to say, WOC has the function of judging redundant information
(Tang, 1992). As far as the single model providing little or useless information is
concerned, WOC would give the model less or zero weight. Therefore, in the study,
we can determine which of the VIs are more probably sensitive to rice chlorophyll
according to the weight when the five models constructed separately by the five mod-
ified VIs are input into WOC.

Table 3. Weights of the single model in the combining model based on WOC

Model with different VI[705,750] Weight Least Sum of Square Error

NDVI 0 272.08
MSR 0.33 262.43
MCARI 0 273.65
TCARI 0 266.88
OSAVI 0.67 261.79
Combination Model -- 261.60

Table 3 shows the weights of the five models with the modified VIs based on
WOC. From Table 3, the VIs MSR and OSAVI acquire non-zero weight, 0.33 and
0.67 respectively, and the other three are given zero weight, which illustrates that it
would be enough to use the two VIs MSR and OSAVI when preparing to adopt
the modified VIs at the same time to assess the rice chlorophyll. Moreover, Table 3
also tells us that the combination model has higher precision than each of the single
models due to the minimum least Sum of Square Error.

4 Conclusion
In the study, the five typical vegetation indices, NDVI, MSR, MCARI, TCARI and
OSAVI with usually using the combination of 670nm and 800nm are modified by
replacing the two bands with 705nm and 750nm to assess rice chlorophyll content,
and there are conclusions as the followings:
302 X. Xu et al.

(1) The five modified vegetation indices with the combination of 705nm and 750nm
have better correlation with rice chlorophyll content in comparison in the five
VIs with 670nm and 800nm, which shows that the former has the potentials in
assessing chlorophyll content.
(2) When using WOC to further compare the performance of the five modified ve-
getation indices for assessing rice chlorophyll, the two vegetation indices MSR
and OSAVI show better performance than the other three VIs
The study only explores the ability of the five modified vegetation indices assessing
rice chlorophyll for one rice growth period, and the following research work would
focus on multi-periods.

Acknowledgement. Funding for this research is supported by 863 National

High Technology R&D Program (code: 2006AA210108, 2006AA10A302 &
2006AA10A307) (P. R. China).

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 Automated Extracting Tree Crown from Quickbird
Stand Image

Guang Deng, Zengyuan Li, Honggan Wu, and Xu Zhang

Institute of Forest Resource Information Techniques, Chinese Academy of Forestry,

Beijing, 100091, China
{dengg,zy,whg,zhangxu}@caf.ac.cn

Abstract. Artificial intelligence technologies with spatial information tech-

nologies play more and more roles in precision agriculture and precision for-
estry. This paper puts up a new artificial intelligence algorithm which based on
seeded based region growth method to extract tree crown on Quickbird forest
stand image. It is a kind of object based canopy and gap information extracting
method specially suited for high-resolution imagery to get meaningful tree
crown object .The main processes to carry out the experiment and validation on
the Quickbird satellite images in Populusxiaohei plantation even stand at Xue
JiaZhuang wood farm in Shanxi Province of China is described in detail in the
paper. The average tree numbers identification error is 18.9%. The result shows
that this algorithm is an effective way to get segmented crown in real stand
image. This algorithm can be powerful tools for precision forestry. We suggest
users to choose suitable features and parameter values try by try in forehand
applying.

Keywords: Tree crown recognition algorithm; Seeded based region growth

segmentation; Object based information extracting.

1 Introduction
Precision forestry is defined by Taylor et al. [1], as planning and conducting site-
specific forest management activities and operations to improve wood product quality
and utilization, reduce waste, and increase profits, and maintain the quality of the
environment. Principle of precision forestry was based on precision agriculture. Preci-
sion agriculture uses set of tools, which has been successfully introduced and now it is
used in precision forestry. Artificial intelligence technologies with spatial information
technologies play more and more roles in environment information extraction and
environment effect analysis. This paper puts up a new artificial intelligence technol-
ogy which based on seeded based region growth method to extract canopy and canopy
gaps on Quickbird forest stand image. Tree detection can provide estimates of tree
abundance and spatial pattern that are useful for evaluating density and stocking ob-
jectives. Delineation of individual tree crowns can get crown diameter of tree to be
used to model tree structural variables such as height, volume, or biomass. Individual
tree and clumped trees information are basal knowledge for forest management
in precision forestry level. From the view of forestry machinery, this technique

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 304311, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Automated Extracting Tree Crown from Quickbird Stand Image 305

can make the positioning capability of forest harvesting machinery more precise
which can be integrated the artificial intelligence forest road, trees and forest open
area identified.
In past 15 years, many scientists put up methods to extract tree from high spatial
resolution imagery to get more efficiently and more accurately results. [2,3,9,10]
Gougeon [2] developed a valley-following algorithm for the isolation of individual
crowns in Canadian Boreal forests. The method finds crown boundaries by first fol-
lowing the shaded areas (radiometric valleys) between trees, and then refining the
boundaries using a rule-based program. Culvenor's TIDA[3] method use the (local)
radiometric maxima and minima as the primary image features used for the crown
delineation process, being indicative of crown centroids and boundaries, respectively.
Though these methods boost the tree crown recognition research in optics remote
sensing area, but it has long distance to practice level for precision forestry manage-
ment. Validating and comparing these methods are now days mission for information
precision forestry research area.

2 Object Based Canopy and Gap Information Extracting Method

Conventional image classifications focus on the differentiation of spectral values for
each pixel. Because objects are groups of pixels on high spatial resolution remote
sensing imagery, statistical values such as mean or standard deviation can be derived,
which provides additional information. In addition to spectral metrics, texture and
geometric characteristics of the objects can also be used for classification. This
method can improve the conventional pixel-based classification methods to get rela-
tively satisfactorily result far from pixel classification result on high spatial resolution
remote sensing images. As its results are some image segments, they can be used for
object based image analysis for detailed knowledge forest stand in modeling and
digital forest management.
From 2000, eCognition[4] became the first commercially available software for
multi resolution segmentation and object-oriented fuzzy-rule classification, specially
suited for high-resolution imagery[5]. Segmentation follows a proprietary bottom-up
region merging technique [6] starting with one-pixel objects, which are iteratively
merged into larger objects based primarily on a user defined scale parameter. To the
specifically object in nature scene, object based technique only provides a methodol-
ogy, the fine expression of the object must be looked for.[7]
The tree top seeded based region growth tree detection and crown delineation algo-
rithm for analyzing QuickBird satellite images has six main steps, which are de-
scribed in details as follows.
(1) Primary segmentation. Primary segmentation puts on the stand image after im-
age fusion and color composition and get series image object elements with small area
for latter tree crown seed extraction.
(2) Reducing the treetop searching scope. In stand image, there is many area cover-
ing by tree shade or bare land, grass, shrub and so on. By masking operation with
NDVI>0.38 of study image, the non trees areas are be shielded.
306 G. Deng et al.

Fig. 1. Quad tree segmentation

(3) Treetop selection. Treetop selection uses non maximum oppression method to
distinguish tree top from image object segments. The local maximum of ratio of near
red band (NIR) of pixel (defines in formula (1)) is selected as treetop seed which is as
center in a window within surrounding 3 image objects. If the two equal local maxi-
mum are found, they both be accepted as treetop seed and be marked.
(4) Seed growing. This step is to get tree crown extent. The condition of seed
growing is set down as mean ratio of near red band (NIR) (defines in formula (2)) of
candidate image object element and seed greater than 0.9 and lesser than 1.[8]
(5) False treetop seed wiped off. This is necessary because anterior steps get many
seeds which are not true treetop anyway. Computing the mean NDVI value and mean
red band standard deviation value (defines in formula (3)) of seeds, the false treetop is
cognized by much smaller value in theses two index. That means that the preserving
seeds are true treetop.
nL
ratio L = L
i =1
i (1)

1 n
L = vi (2)
n i =1
nL
1
L = ( i L ) 2 (3)
n 1 i =1

(6) Tree crown shape optimization. The crown boundary is not smooth enough, so
some cycling segmentation is done on image objects elements enveloping the treetop
objects. Here the quad tree segmentation performs by recursively combining (merg-
ing) the image segments as leafs and regions to get more smooth canopy outline. By
comparing the character of smaller image objects elements enveloping the treetop
objects with the treetop objects, some smaller image objects elements will be com-
bined into the ambient tree crown object.

3 Research Area and Data

The presented approach selects a research area for analyzing Quickbird satellite im-
ages in Populusxiaohei plantation even stand at Xue JiaZhuang wood farm in Shanxi
 Automated Extracting Tree Crown from Quickbird Stand Image 307

Province of China which location are presented in Fig. 1, because Populus is a very
popular broadleaf and has important value in use. The research areas east longitude is

112033,north latitude is 39018,its average year air temperature is 7 ;its average
year precipitation is 400mm; its average year evaporation is larger than 2700mm. It is
drought and the forest soil is bare. The dominant specie in research area is Popu-
lusxiaohei which planted in April 1977 has 21.6 hm2 area. The terrain of research
area is plain. The soil type of research area is meadow soil.
By programming ordering, the Quickbird imagery covering the research area on
6 May 2004 was gained, which has pan band and multi spectrum bands. The
quality of image is good and there is no cloud on the image. The geodetic coordinate
of up left corner of the image is 635167.20m,4352983.20m and down right is
635664.60m,4352655.00m. The 30 sub compartment of Xue JiaZhuang wood farm
corresponding the above Quickbird image with 501*344 pixels was selected for tree
crown extraction. In the surveying table of 30 sub compartment, the value of canopy
closure is 0.7.
In May 2004, we surveyed this area. Considering the growth condition of
the stand, we selected 3 kinds of plantation density stands, which is 2m5m (1000

trees/ha) 4m5m (500 trees/ha
4m10m 250 trees/ha). In every plantation
density, 3 standard sample plots were set up. In total, 9 standard sample plots

Fig. 2. Regional map of research area

Fig. 3. Location of research stand on Quickbird image

308 G. Deng et al.

were gained. The area of every standard sample is 900m2(30 m30m). The standard
samples of 2m5m plantation density named A1,A2,A3, the standard samples of
4m5m plantation density named B1,B2, B3, the standard samples of 4m10m plan-
tation density named C1,C2,C3. The location, tree height and tree diameter of all
these trees were measured and these trees had been marked on the printed image pho-
tos. Using these truth data, the auto and semi auto tree crown recognition algorithm
can be validated.

4 Implement and Results

In the algorithm implemented period, there are some parameters must be selected
cautiously. In Primary segmentation, the small value of segmentation scale must be
selected. After testing from 3,5 and else values, we select 3 for segmentation scale,
0.3 for weightiness of shape and 0.7 for weightiness of compactness. In seed grow-
ing step, the mean ratio of near red band (NIR) of candidate image object element and
seed is greater than 0.9 and lesser than 1. In the quad tree segmentation for crown
shape optimization, the time of cycle is set 3. Table 1 shows the some key features
and values of parameters used in this algorithm. Fig. 4 is the image of plot C1 and the
Fig. 5 is the 3d view of its spectral values.

Fig. 4. Image of plot C1 Fig. 5. 3d View of plot C1s spectral values

The result of above method is a tree crown map from the Quickbird image. Fig. 6
is the stand tree crown image map with whole sub compartment.
The validation method is carried in 9 standard samples on stand image by auto-
mated tree crown recognition to the manual delineation after field work described in
section 3. The two results are overlaid, and each tree crown image object, for each
layer, is assigned to the object in corresponding layer for which it has the greatest
overlap in area. A correct tree crown occurs when a tree crown image object from the
recognition algorithm and a tree crown image object from manually delineation are
assigned uniquely to each other.[10]
Three types of errors are defined for the comparison. Firstly, dissection occurs
when more than one image object from the recognition algorithm is associated with
the same manual tree delineation. Secondly, aggregation is when more than one im-
age object from the manual tree delineation associated with a single tree crown image
 Automated Extracting Tree Crown from Quickbird Stand Image 309

Table 1. Features and values of parameters in this algorithm

Function of features Features Value of parameters

Distinguish vegetation Mean NDVI >0.38
Treetop seeds Ratio of NIR Max

Image object window size 3

Seed grows conditions Mean ratio of NIR (0.9,1)

Crown shape Optimization Cycle times <= 3

object from the recognition algorithm. A combination error is when parts of the rec-
ognition algorithm are aggregated, and parts dissected, as shown by the assignment of
multiple image objects from each layer to the same image object in the other
layer.[10]

Fig. 6. Tree crown map from the Quickbird image

5 Conclusion and Discussions

Computing the precision of average identified tree numbers by linear regression of

tree numbers of recognition algorithm and tree numbers of field work. The result is
shown in formula(7), in which auto means the tree numbers of recognition algorithm
and manual means the tree numbers of field work. The square correlation coefficient
0.4693 means the recognition algorithm has real effect.
The top line in Table 2 shows the criterion evaluating the results of the algorithm.
The definition of them show below. From comparing tree numbers of field work and
software identification by tree matching, the confusion matrix, overall accuracy,
commission error, omission error is computed which shows in Table 2.
310 G. Deng et al.

Overall Accuracy, OA=(Tree numbers of correctly recognition trees by

(4)
algorithm / Tree numbers by field work)*100%

Omission Error, OE =(Tree numbers of omission by algorithm / Tree

(5)
numbers by field work)*100%

Commission Error, CE =(Tree numbers of commission by algorithm / Tree

(6)
numbers of correctly recognition trees by algorithm)*100%

auto=1.0892manual+0.3558 R2=0.4693 (7)

The main result is that this algorithms accuracy, commission error, omission error far
from different crown closures. Computed crown diameters after program crown de-
lineation has similar distribution of field measure crown diameters, but they have
bigger values and more dispersed range. Through grouped plantation density results
analyzing, the performance of this algorithm on 0.6 crown closure plots get well.
Omission error of 0.8 crown closure plots is high to 34% and commission error of 0.7
crown closure plots is high to 63%. This result means that the algorithm will be more
well for the moderate crown closure forest stand. For the very low and very high
crown closure forest stand, the error variance will increase.

Table 2. Accuracy analyses of auto tree number identification from different plantation density
stands

Plantation density OA(%) OE(%) CE(%)

A 40 34 16
B 60 6.7 63
C 71 8 40
Total 57 16 40

The presented tree top seeded based region growth tree detection and crown de-
lineation algorithm for QuickBird satellite images uses crown model which is focus
on basic radiometric properties of tree crowns. This method puts vegetation classifica-
tion and crown segmentation under an unified framework. We use 9 plots with differ-
ent plantation density (crown closure) to validate the above method. Average tree
2
numbers identification error is 18.9%, R = 0.4693. Ultimately, our tree top seeded
based region growth tree detection and crown delineation algorithm is an effective
tools for getting segmented crown in real stand image. This research shows that the
artificial intelligence technology can be useful in precision forestry. This research
uses comprehensive and highly accurate field survey data to validate the algorithms.
And the evaluation indicates the distance with satisfactory results and the direction to
improve on the algorithm.

Acknowledgment. Financial supports from 863 project of No. 2007AA12Z181 of

Chinese MOST and CAF project of RIFRITZJZ2007010 are highly appreciated.
 Automated Extracting Tree Crown from Quickbird Stand Image 311

References
1. Taylor, S.E., McDonald, T.P., Veal, M.W., Grift, T.E.: Using GPS to evaluate productivity
and performance of forest machine systems. In: Proceedings of the First International Pre-
cision Forestry Cooperative Symposium: University of Washington, College of Forest Re-
source, June 2001, pp. 151155 (2001)
2. Gougeon, F.A.: A Crown-Following Approach to the Automatic Delineation of Individual
Tree Crowns in High Spatial Resolution Digital Images. Canadian Journal of Remote
Sensing 21(3), 274284 (1995)
3. Culvenor, D.S.: TIDA: An Algorithm for the Delineation of Tree Crowns in High Spatial
Resolution Remotely Sensed Imagery. Computers & Geosciences 28, 3344 (2002)
4. Definiens: eCognition Version 5 Object Oriented Image Analysis User Guide. Definiens
AG, Munich, Germany (2005)
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tion of forest scenes. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinforma-
tion 7, 339359 (2005)
6. Baatz, M., Schape, A.: Multiresolution Segmentation - An Optimization Approach For
High Quality Multi Scale Image Segmentation. In: Strobl, J., et al. (eds.) Angewandte
Geographische Informationsvera-rbeitung XII, AGIT Symposium, Salzburg, Germany, pp.
1223 (2000)
7. Yu, Q., Gong, P., Clinton, N., Biging, G., Kelly, M., Schironkauer, D.: Object-based De-
tailed Vegetation Classification with Airborne High Spatial Resolution Remote Sensing
Imagery. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 72(7), 799812 (2006)
8. Noguet, D., Merle, A., Lattard, D.: A data dependent architecture based on seeded region
growing strategy for advanced morphological operators. In: Maragos, P., Shafer, R.W.,
Butt, M.A. (eds.) Mathematical Morphology and its Applications to Image and Signal
Processing, pp. 235243. Kluwer Acad. Publ., Dordrecht (1996)
9. Pouliot, D.A., King, D.J., Bell, F.W., Pitt, D.G.: Automated Tree Crown Detection and
Delineation in High-Resolution Digital Camera Imagery of Coniferous Forest Regenera-
tion. Remote Sensing of Environment 82, 322334 (2002)
10. Warner, et al.: Segmentation and classification of high resolution imagery for mapping in-
dividual species in a closed canopy deciduous forest. Science in China: E Technological
Sciences 49(suppl. 1), 128139 (2006)
 Bayesian Networks Modeling for Crop Diseases

Chunguang Bi and Guifen Chen

College of Information & Technology, Jilin Agricultural University, Changchun, China

Bi_chunguan@126.com, guifchen@163.com

Abstract. Severe large-scale diseases in agricultural regions have caused

significant economic damage. In order to improve crop yields, we develop a
framework to predict the occurrence of crop diseases. In the presence of risk
and uncertainty, this paper focuses on finding out the best pest control decision-
making program which is based on the Bayesian network. The paper describes
the flowchart of a Bayesian network and the principles used to calculate the
conditional probabilities required in it. The practice proves that BN is an effec-
tive tool for crop disease.

Keywords: Bayesian network; Modeling; Crop Diseases; Inference.

1 Introduction
With the development of animal husbandry and processing industry, the demand for
maize is growing fast. Jilin province is the main production area of spring maize and the
national commodity grain base, with the corn acreage of 2 million hm2, nearly 10% of
the national grain acreage. Corn borer is the most devastating disease in maize produc-
tion and its occurrence ofte gets affected by lots of factors such as meteorological
weather conditions and so on. Bayesian network is one of the most effective theoretical
models for uncertainty knowledge expression and reasoning. It has not only a solid basis
for probability theory, but also a perfect correspondence with technical knowledge
structures. So we use Bayesian network to model the crop diseases.

2 Bayesian Networks Introduction

A Bayesian network, also known as belief network or directed acyclic graphical model
is a probabilistic graphical model that represents a set of random variables and their
conditional dependences via a directed acyclic graph (DAG). It could represent the
probabilistic relationships between diseases and symptoms. Given symptoms, the net-
work can be used to compute the probabilities of the presence of various diseases. We
may use mathematical symbols to represent a Bayesian network model as follows:
B= (V, E, P)
among
V= {V1, V2 Vn} set of random variables
E= {ViVj|Vi,Vj V} set of directed edge
P= {P (Vi|V1, V2 Vi-1),Vi V} conditional probability table

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 312320, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Bayesian Networks Modeling for Crop Diseases 313

Variables can be the abstraction of any problem, to represent interesting phenomenon,

components, state or property, etc., with certain physical and practical significance.
Directed edges show the dependent or causal relations among variables, the arrow of
the edge representing the direction of causal influence (from parent node to child
nodes), disconnected nodes representing the variables which these nodes correspond-
ing to are conditional independent. Conditional probability table lists all possible
conditional probabilities each node related to its parent. Probability shows the
strength or confidence between child nodes and the parent. Probability of independent
node called prior probability.
Bayesian networks can be understood in two ways: first, Bayesian networks ex-
press conditional independent relations between each node. We can directly get con-
ditional independent relations and dependent relations from Bayesian networks;
Bayesian networks also express joint probability distribution of events in another
form. According to the structure of Bayesian network and condition probability table
(CPT), we can get the probability of each basic event (a combination of all attributes)
quickly. Bayesian network consists of two parts. One part is a directed acyclic graph,
in which each node represents a random variable; each arc (connection of two nodes)
represents a probability of dependence. If one arc starts from node A to node B, A is
the parent node and B is the child node. Given the parent nodes, each variable is inde-
pendent of the non-subclass nodes in the graph. Variables can take discrete values or
continuous values. They can correspond to the actual variables or hidden variables in
the data set to form a relationship.
Bayesian networks combine the dependent relations with the probability, the prior
knowledge with the sample information; overcome many conceptual and calculating
difficulties in the rule-based system in graphical way. Combining with statistical
techniques makes Bayesian networks advanced in data analysis. Compared with deci-
sion-making tree, artificial neural networks and the density estimation methods, the
advantages of Bayesian networks are as follows:
(1) Once the Bayesian network is determined, new variables can be easily added on
the basis of the current structure.
(2) Bayesian network is very suitable for handling uncertainty and incomplete data
sets. It uses probability theory to express the correlation between the variables, also
could learn and reason under a limited, incomplete and uncertain information condi-
tion. For traditional algorithm of supervision, all possible input data must be clear. If
one input data was lost, there would be some deviation for the model. In order to
solve this problem, Bayesian networks get the sum or integration of all the probability
of possible values.
(3) Bayesian network itself is a kind of uncertainty causal relationship model.
Bayesian network is different with other decision-making models. Through graphic
visualization of knowledge, it is an expression of probability knowledge, also a rea-
soning model, with a proper description of the causal relationships between networks
variables.
(4) As combination of data and prior knowledge in a probability approach, Bayes-
ian networks better reflect the over-fitting of the model.
314 C. Bi and G. Chen

3 Bayesian Networks Modeling

3.1 Modeling Process

The construction of Bayesian network is a very complex process, a good Bayesian

network will directly affect the correctness. In building a Bayesian network, we first
need to identify the main variables and their relationships which lead to the corn borer
attack, and on this basis can we build a Bayesian network model; then, we specify the
conditional probability distribution for each node in the graph. After we get the pre-
liminary conditional probability table (CPT), the system can further amend the condi-
tional probability according to experts experience and the actual experimental data.
The process of constructing a Bayesian network is as follows:

Select variables Experts fixed

Bayesian network

Establish the causal

relationship between Definition of CPT
variables between variables

Fig. 1. Flowchart of Construct Bayesian network

3.2 Problem Description

Corn borer, a major corn pest, leads to above 40% rate of corn victimization every
normal year with a 10-15% reduction in output, and above 70% rate of corn victimi-
zation in serious year with a 20% reduction. Reinforcing the study on meteorological
conditions of corn borer, establishing Bayesian networks to predict this attack, will be
of great significance for prevention work.
The outbreak of corn borer is affected by following variables:
(1) Mar-Jul accumulated temperature (ACCT). Corn borer, a kind of cold-blooded
animal, with a primitive nervous system, is less able to regulate the body temperature
itself. Therefore, its body temperature basically depends on the temperature of exter-
nal environment.
(2) Mar-Jul average maximum temperature (MAXT). In Mar-Apr, the average
temperature is still low; the overwintering larvae mainly use the highest temperature
to get more calories to accelerate development process.
(3) Mar-Jul average minimum temperature (MINT). The minimum temperature is
higher and this is conducive to the growth of corn borer.
(4) Mar-Jul 5 CM ground temperatures (GT).
(5)Feb-May cumulative sunshine duration (CSD). Corn borer is very sensitive
to photoperiod. It does not hibernate or diapause in the long-day. More hours of
 Bayesian Networks Modeling for Crop Diseases 315

sunshine, higher ground and air temperature will do well to the development of corn
borer.
(6) Jan-Jun precipitation (MP). High precipitation, high soil humidity, low tem-
perature is not conducive to the development of overwintering larvae and worse to
their pupation and eclosion.
If we can grasp the inner relations of these factors, we can predict the occurrence
of core borer more accurately. Now, we build a Bayesian network prediction model.

3.3 Establish Causal Relationships Table

First, establish the causal relationship table between variables and the occurrence of
core borer. The contents of the table are identified by experts. The arrows to right
show that rows attributes are father nodes and the columns attributes are child nodes.
On the contrary, the arrows to left show that columns attributes are the father nodes
and the rows attributes are child nodes. Two-way arrows show the relationship can
not be determined and two-way arrows with a slash show that there is no relationship
between the two.

Table 1. Demand forecasting of causality

ACCT MAXT MINT GT CSD MP Occur

ACCT / / / / /
MAXT / / / / /
MINT / / / / /
GT / / /
CSD / /
MP / / / /
Occur

As we can see from the table, experts couldnt identify the relations between Feb-
May cumulative sunshine duration (CSD) and Mar- Apr average maximum tempera-
ture (MAXT). So we got opinions from another two experts who suggest adopting
evidence synthesis method.
Evidence synthesis is an effective method in dealing with uncertain reasoning
problem. Synthesis of evidence, from the theory, first proposed by Dempster, is pro-
moted and developed by Shafer in dealing with uncertainty reasoning theory. The
earliest synthesis evidence formula of the data theory is the Dempster formula[1]:
m( ) = 0 (1)

1
m ( A) = I...1= A ( Ai ) m 2 ( A j ) m 3 ( Ak )
1 K A I A j I Am (2)
i k

K = m 1
( A i) m 2 ( A j) m 3 ( A k )
(3)
I
Ai A j
I A k
I ... =
316 C. Bi and G. Chen

In Dempster synthetic formula, 1-K, a normalized factor, completely abandon the

conflict between evidence and distribute all probability related with these conflicts to
an empty set. This is a very strict with operations. Therefore, the results often per-
verse in the synthesis of high degree conflict evidence.
In order to solve the problem, Yager proposed a new synthetic formula:
m( ) = 0 (4)

m ( A) = m 1
I ... = A
( Ai) m 2 ( A j) m 3 ( Ak ) A , X (5)
Ai A A
I j
I k

m(X ) = m 1
( A i) m 2 ( A j) m 3 ( A k ) + K (6)
A i I A j I A k I ... =
Through the evidence synthesis method above, we got the results:

Table 2. Evidence synthesis results

CSDMAXT CSDMAXT CSD/MAXT uncertainty
E1 0.5 0 0.3 0.2
E2 0.4 0 0.4 0.2
E3 0.4 0 0.3 0.3
compound 0.61 0 0.36 0.03

Synthesis results show that the parent node is SSD and child node is MAXT, then
we build the Bayesian network model as shown in figure2:

CSD

MP GT ACCT MAX MINT

Occur

Fig. 2. Prediction problem of Bayesian network initial model

3.4 Determine Conditional Probability Tables

This stage is to determine each variables state and qualitative probability informa-
tion. This information could be gotten from experts and relevant literature [2].
 Bayesian Networks Modeling for Crop Diseases 317

After variables selection, we need to confirm each variables state. In order to

reduce the size of Bayesian networks, we should limit the number that each variable
contains and only select those interesting state that users prefer to. When select the
state, make sure that the selected state is mutex to each other.
Determine the scope of variables:

(1) Mar-Jul accumulated temperature (ACCT). {2540-2550 .d, 2551-2560 .d,

2561-2570 .d}

(2) Mar-Jul average maximum temperature (MAXT). {24.1-25.0 , 25.1-26.0 }

(3) Mar-Jul average minimum temperature (MINT). {20.1-23.0 , 23.1-26.0 }

(4) Mar-Jul 5 CM ground temperature (GT). {19.1-20.0 , 20.1-21.0 , 21.1-22.0
}
(5) Feb-May cumulative sunshine duration (CSD). {1001-1100h, 1101-1200h,
1201-1300h}
(6) Jan-Jun precipitation (MP). {51-100mm, 101-150mm}
In most cases, experts only orally describe the causality. The probability we obtained
is usually frequency and some qualitative but not quantitative terms such as "may",
"often", "very little". Therefore, engineers need to make the transition from qualitative
to quantitative. Through test, Renooij found that these oral quantifiers have some
relations with actual probability[3]. She created a probability benchmarking, as shown
in figure3:

Fig. 3. Probability benchmarking

The probability benchmarking, making discrete psychological variables to con-

tinuous, help us determine probability distribution more accurately. Using this
benchmarking, experts could clearly get the relationship between psychology and
quantitative probability. Experts make a mark which corresponds to a certain number,
and this number equals to the probability distribution. The average result from that of
different experts is final probability distribution of the node [4]. With probability
benchmarking, identify the conditional probability of each node in the network. For
example as shown in table 3:

Table 3. Conditional Probability Table

CSD
1001-1100 1101-1200 1201-1300
ACCT
2540-2550 0.24 0.25 0.23
2551-2560 0.39 0.37 0.37
2561-2570 0.37 0.38 0.40
318 C. Bi and G. Chen

3.5 Bayesian Network

A Bayesian network is shown in figure 4 (with conditional probabilities):

Fig. 4. Core borer Bayesian network

However, the most important application of Bayesian network is to reasoning

backward according to actual events. For example, if we know the ground tempera-
ture is 19.1-20.0, we can enter the evidence that 'GT' =19.1-20.0. The conditional
probability tables already tell us the probabilities of corn borers occurrence
(0.452822).As figure 5 shows:

Fig. 5. Reverse reasoning

 Bayesian Networks Modeling for Crop Diseases 319

If we know corn borer breaks out, then we can enter the evidence that 'occur' =yes
and we can observe the result to get other nodes revised probability.
Bayesian network make the dependant relations of different variables more explicit.
In general there may be relatively fewer direct dependencies (modeled by arcs be-
tween nodes of the network) and this means that many variables are conditionally
independent.
The existence of unlinked (conditionally independent) nodes in a network drasti-
cally reduces the possibility of calculating all the probabilities. Usually, all the prob-
abilities can be calculated by joint probability distribution. However, we need to do
some simple calculation when there are some independent nodes[5].
After completing basic construction of Bayesian network, we still need to adjust
conditional probabilities and revise the model, then improve the accuracy.

4 Implementation of Crop Disease Forecast System Based on

Bayesian Network
Construction of a Bayesian network needs the communication and cooperation of
domain experts and Bayesian network experts[6].
There are two types of nodes in the Crop Disease forecast system--- disease nodes
and meteorological nodes. The disease nodes are Boolean variables, which contain
states of occur and dis-occur, while meteorological nodes may indicate multiple
states.
This BN is a multi-layer network.

Fig. 6. Inference results of the BN

5 Conclusions
As Bayesian network applies probability knowledge with complex systems reason-
ing, and experts always supply the probability value we need. So, this paper starts
320 C. Bi and G. Chen

building BN model with these experts knowledge. On this basis, we establish the
Crop Disease Forecast System. There is a large number of uncertain knowledge in the
diagnosis of crop pests, while Bayesian network has unique advantage in dealing with
uncertain factors.
In following study, we found that adopting application of Ontology in building
Bayesian networks will make the whole network perfect. In addition, Bayesian net-
work could revise the conditional probability table and make more accurate prediction
of crop disease for its self-learning function.

References
1. Mingzhu, X., Guangju, C.: A Modified Combination Rule of Evidence Theory. Electronic
Journals 3(9), 17151716 (2005)
2. Jensen, F.V., Nielsen, T.D.: Bayesian Networks and Decision Graphs, pp. 1832. Springer,
Heidelberg (2007)
3. Du, T., Zhang, S., Wang, Z.: Learning Bayesian Networks from Data by Particle Swarm
Optimization. Journal of Shanghai Jiao Tong University E-11(4) (2006)
4. Friedman, N., Linial, M., Nachman, I., Peter, D.: Using Bayesian networks to analyze ex-
pression data. Computational Biology 7, 601620 (2000)
5. Friedman, N., Koller, D.: Being Bayesian About Network Structure. A Bayesian Approach
to Structure Discovery in Bayesian Networks. Machine Learning 50 (2003)
6. Guifen, C., Helong, Y.: Bayesian Network and Its Application in Maize Diseases Diagno-
sis. In: Proceedings of First IFIP TC 12 International Conferences on Computer and Com-
puting Technologies in Agriculture (2007)
 Characteristics of Soil Environment Variation in
OasisDesert Ecotone in the Process of Oasis Growth

Haifeng Li1,2,3, Fanjiang Zeng1,3,*, Dongwei Gui1,3, and Jiaqiang Lei1,3

1
Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, CAS, Urumqi,
830011, Xinjiang, China
2
Graduate School of the CAS, 10049, Beijing, China
3
Cele National Station of Observation & Research for
Desert-Grassland Ecosystem in Xinjiang, Cele, 848300, Xinjiang, China
haifengl1984@sina.com,
zengfj@ms.xjb.ac.cn

Abstract. Cele Oasis on the southern edge of Tarim Basin was used to investi-
gate the impact of human activity on the soil environment of the oasis desert
ecotone during the oasis expansion process. Since farmland is extending into the
oasisdesert ecotone during oasis expansion, reclaimed farmland and control
plots within the ecotone were investigated. The variations in soil moisture, soil
nutrients and soil particle-size distribution of the two plots to a depth range of
0100 cm were discussed. The soil moisture of each layer in the farmland to a
depth of 0100 cm differed significantly from that in the control plot; the former
was generally higher than the latter in the same layer, particularly during the
farming period (i.e. AprilSeptember). Agricultural soil moisture showed a
time-variation rule from multimodal to unimodal with increased depth. Soil
moisture of the control plot showed a generally monotonic increasing trend with
increased depth; however, for the farmland plot, there was a unimodal increasing
trend of initial increase and then a decrease with increased depth. Each layer of
the farmland plot had a higher soil nutrient composite index than that of the
control plot; however, this improving effect of farmland reclamation on soil nu-
trient conditions in the oasisdesert ecotone decreased with increased depth. The
variation of soil particle-size showed a particular regularity under the influence
of cultivation, i.e. silt and clay contents in farmland increased obviously and sand
contents decreased.

Keywords: Soil moisture Soil nutrient Size distribution Cele Oasis.

Both oasis expansion and desertification are basic geographical processes in arid re-
gions, and existing research has shown that both oasis expansion and desertification are
accelerating in arid regions [1]. Oasis expansion is usually regarded as the opposite to
desertification in an arid region, referring to the process of transformation from desert
to oasis in an arid region due to combined action of anthropic and natural factors [2].

*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 321334, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
322 H. Li et al.

Despite significant oasis expansion at present, many researchers still emphasize de-
sertification or develop their research toward desertification [3,4] and few discuss
variation of the ecological environment during the process of oasis growth. Variation of
land coverage always accompanies both desertification and oasis expansion processes
and has important impacts on the soil environment [5-9].
Relevant research indicates that both oasis and desert show an increasing trend in
Xinjiang while the ecotone between them is decreasing gradually as has Cele Oasis
on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin over the past 50 years: the oasis area increased
while oasisdesert ecotone area gradually decreased [1]. The oasisdesert ecotone is an
interface where the most frequent exchanges of energy, substances and information
occurs between oasis and desert ecosystems, and its soil environment status is a direct
reflection and a miniature of external interference such as human activity intensity and
natural agent (climate) variation [10]. In arid and extremely arid regions, the oasis
growth process presents mostly continuous expansion of production units into the
oasisdesert ecotone. These production units are mainly farmland [11]; therefore, the
soil environment variation during the expansion process of farmland into the oa-
sisdesert ecotone is a key point, which is helpful to further understand the impact of
human factors on the soil environment during the process of oasis expansion as well as
the differentiation characteristics of the soil environment.
Cele Oasis on south edge of Tarim Basin has an extremely arid climate and is the
example in this paper. The soil environment characteristics of reclaimed farmland and
those of a control plot in the oasisdesert ecotone were compared from the perspective
of oasis expansion. The specific characteristics following farmland reclamation are
discussed: (1) characteristics of soil moisture variation; (2) integrated variation char-
acteristics of soil nutrient indexes; and (3) soil particle-size differentiation character-
istics. Following comparison and analysis, the basic rules of soil environment variation
in the oasisdesert ecotone during the oasis expansion process are preliminarily
discussed.

1 Profile of Region of Interest

Cele Oasis (oasis is used in a broad sense here) lies in the middle section of the south
edge of Taklimakan Desert and at the north foot of Kunlun Mountain, located at
351755393000N and 800324821034E. Elevation in Cele County has
range 12806780 m above sea level. The research site was limited to 13401380 m.
The mean annual precipitation is 35.1 mm, mean annual evaporation is 2595.3 mm, and
mean annual temperature is 11.9C; a typical continental arid climate. It is windy all
year around, with the prevailing wind direction northwest. Soil type is mainly aeolian
sandy soil, with the original soil mostly Quaternary System diluvialalluvial deposits
[12], of light texture, high sand and low clay contents, excellent permeability and poor
fertilitywater retention [13]. The oasis is surrounded by natural vegetation in the
east and west parts, while its southern part connects with mobile dunes and the Gobi
desert. The experiment and observations were implemented at the west of the oasis
(350120.7N and 804345.9E).
 Characteristics of Soil Environment Variation in OasisDesert Ecotone 323

2 Experimental Plot Selection and Index Measurement

Farmland was reclaimed in the oasisdesert ecotone in 1994, and one test plot (FP) was
constructed, with cotton planted and irrigation by channeling water from the Cele River
floods or flood-irrigation with groundwater. The long-term fertilizer input amount was
equivalent to that used by local farmers. Thus, it represents the main production unit
during the oasis expansion process. One control plot (CP) was selected close to the re-
claimed farmland plot as a reference; vegetation on this plot was mainly Alhagi sparsi-
folia Shap. at coverage of about 38.9%, representing the natural status of the oasisdesert
ecotone. The area of each plot was 1 ha. After 15 y of continuous cultivation, observa-
tions of soil moisture, nutrients and soil particle-size were analyzed and compared in
2009 with those of the control plot. Since groundwater depth in the test region is > 15 m
[1], the impact of groundwater on agricultural soil moisture was small. The impact of
cultivation on the soil environment is mostly in the upper layer, thus soil environmental
characteristics only within the depth of 0100 cm are discussed.

2.1 Measurement of Soil Moisture

Volumetric water content of plot soil was measured with a neutron gauge (CNC503DR
model by Beijing Nucleon Apparatus Company) during 1 January to 31 December 2009:
every 10 cm was taken as one layer within 060 cm, and every 20 cm within 60100 cm,
and measurement was conducted once every 5 d. Precipitation was field-measured with a
rain-gauge bucket at a meteorological observation site close to the test plot.

2.2 Sampling and Analysis of Soil Nutrient

Soil sampling was from the farmland and control plots after cotton harvesting in October
2009. Three points were selected at random in each plot, and samples collected from five
soil layers: 020, 2040, 4060, 6080 and 80100 cm. All samples were placed in
plastic bags, closed with a seal and sent back to the laboratory for drying in the shade and
root-removing treatment. Seven indexes of soil nutrients were analyzed by standard soil
test procedures [14], i.e. soil organic matter (SOM), total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus
(TP), total potassium (TK), available nitrogen (AN), available phosphorus (AP) and
available potassium (AK). Soil samples from each plot were also used for particle-size
analysis using a laser granulometer (Mastersizer 2000, Malvern Instruments, England).

2.3 Analysis and Evaluation of Soil Nutrient Indexes

To comprehensively reflect the status of soil nutrients, soil nutrient properties were
analyzed and compared using the soil retrogression index (RI) [15]. For specific cal-
culation and analysis, the soil properties of the control plot were used as the baseline.
RI value of each soil layer of farmland was obtained using the formula that follows:
n
RI = ( xi xi ) / xi 100% / n (1)
i =1

324 H. Li et al.

Where, RI is soil-nutrient composite index, xi is measured soil nutrient index of

each layer from the control plot, and xi is the measured value of the same-layer soil
nutrient index from the farmland plot (SOM, TN, TP, TK, AN, AP and AK). If RI > 0
for each layer, this indicated that soil nutrient composite indexes from the layer of the
farmland plot was higher than that from the same layer of the control; and vice versa if
RI < 0.

2.4 Statistical Analysis

Significance of differences between means was compared by t-tests, respectively,

between soil nutrient indexes of farmland and control plots. One-way ANOVA
was used to compare soil characteristics of the different layers in farmland and
control plots, respectively. The least significance range (LSR) method was used for
multiple comparisons, and Pearsons correlations method for correlation analysis.
ANOVA, LSR and Pearson correlations were all implemented with SPSS 16.0
software.

3 Results and Analysis

3.1 Differentiation Characteristics of Soil Moisture

There was one year of continuous observations in 2009 of mean soil moisture variation
within the soil depths of 0100 cm in farmland and control plots (Table 1).

Table 1. Soil moisture discrepancy test at different depth of two plots

Between plots (t-test) Within plot (analysis of variance)

Depth (cm)
Sig. (2-tailed) FP CP
*
010 0.026 3.971.77 e 2.600.73 f
1020 0.002** 6.102.31 de 3.381.06 ef
2030 0.000** 7.672.67 de 3.850.87 de
**
3040 0.000 9.063.18 cd 4.240.81 cd
4050 0.000** 10.704.04 bc 4.630.91 bcd
5060 0.000** 13.165.02 ab 4.951.14 abc
6080 0.000** 14.834.19 a 5.171.02 ab
**
80100 0.000 12.033.53 abc 5.501.13 a
**
F Value 13.383 12.193**

Values in each column with the same letter are not significant (LSR) between different soil
depth; * P < 0.05; ** P < 0.01.
 Characteristics of Soil Environment Variation in OasisDesert Ecotone 325

There was a significant difference within 010 cm between farmland and control
plots (P < 0.05), and a significant difference within all the other layers (P < 0.001)
(Table 1). The maximum value (14.83%) was at 6080 cm for the farmland plot and the
minimum value (3.97%) was at the surface layer. This differed to the control plot where
the maximum was at 80100 cm and the minimum at the surface layer.
Soil moisture of the two plots also showed obvious differentiation characteristics
and a particular regularity over time. The soil moisture status at different depths, for
each month of the one year is shown in Fig. 1.

Depth:0~10cm Depth:10~20cm
24.0 24.0
Soil water content (Vol,%)

Soil water content (Vol,%)

20.0 20.0

16.0 16.0

12.0 12.0
8.0 8.0
4.0 4.0
0.0 0.0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Time(months) Time(months)

24.0 Depth:20~30cm Depth:30~40cm

24.0
Soil water content (Vol,%)

Soil water content (Vol,%)

20.0 20.0
16.0 16.0
12.0 12.0
8.0 8.0

4.0 4.0
0.0 0.0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Time(months) Time(months)

24.0 Depth:40~50cm Depth:50~60cm

24.0
Soil water content (Vol,%)

Soil water content (Vol,%)

20.0 20.0
16.0 16.0
12.0 12.0
8.0 8.0

4.0 4.0
0.0 0.0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Time(months) Time(months)

Depth:60~80cm Depth:80~100cm
24.0
24.0
Soil water content (Vol,%)

Soil water content (Vol,%)

20.0 20.0 FP
16.0 16.0 CP

12.0 12.0
8.0 8.0
4.0 4.0
0.0 0.0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Time(months) Time(months)

Fig. 1. Seasonal variation of soil moisture at different depths of two plots

326 H. Li et al.

The soil moisture of each layer of the farmland plot was generally always higher
than the same layer of the control plot within 0100 cm during the different periods
(Fig. 1). However, during the fallow periods of JanuaryMarch and October De-
cember, the difference between farmland and control plots was small, in particular at a
depth of 30 cm. During the farming period of MarchSeptember, the farmland plot had
obviously higher soil moisture than the control plot. The soil moisture content curve for
the farmland plots was multimodal at 030 cm, bimodal at 4080 cm, and unimodal at
80100 cm, i.e. a rule of time variation from multimodal to unimodal presented itself
with increased depth.
Variation of soil moisture content at different depths of the two plots over different
periods is shown in Fig. 2.
The difference in soil moisture between farmland and control plots at different
depths was clear (Fig. 2). Soil moisture of the control plot had a generally monotonic
increase with increased depth. There was a unimodal increase in the farmland plot with

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 Characteristics of Soil Environment Variation in OasisDesert Ecotone 327

increased depth; increasing first and then decreasing, with the peak during July Sep-
tember at depths of 5060 cm, and the peak for other months all at depths of 60
80 cm (average soil moisture was 14.6%), similar to the annual mean at this depth
(Table 1).
Pearsons correlation analysis indicated that average soil moisture of each layer of
the farmland plot within 0100 cm had no significant correlation with precipitation;
neither did average soil moisture farmland at 010 cm with irrigation volume. How-
ever, at 1020 cm soil moisture was significantly (P < 0.05) and positively correlated
with irrigation volume, as was soil moisture of each layer within 20100 cm (P < 0.01).
Soil moisture of the control plot at 010 and 1020 cm was significantly (P < 0.01) and
positively correlated with precipitation. However, there was no significant correlation
with precipitation for soil moisture of each layer within 20100 cm.

3.2 Comprehensive Variation Characteristics of Soil Nutrient Index

Based on t-tests of nutrient indexes of the two plots, SOM, TN, TP, AN and AP con-
tents of farmland were all significantly (P < 0.05) higher than those of the control plot
at 020 cm. There were no significant differences in the other indexes between farm-
land and control plots; however, the AK content of farmland was somewhat lower. The
difference in SOM, TN and AP contents was significant between farmland and control
plots at 2040 cm, but not in any other index except that AK of the farmland plot
was higher than that of the control. At 4060 cm, AP content of farmland was

Table 2. Soil nutrient attribute mean and variance analysis of every layer of two plots
(mean SD)

Depth
Plot SOM(g/kg) TN(g/kg) TP(g/kg) TK(g/kg) AN(mg/kg) AP(mg/kg) AK(mg/kg)
(cm)
020 4.150.08a 0.230.01a 0.610.02a 23.870.32a 10.600.87a 15.61 5.02a 118.3313.58b

2040 3.270.36ab 0.160.02b 0.590.02a 23.770.34a 2.772.20c 5.54 0.38b 153.6731.21b

4060 2.680.68ab 0.140.06b 0.570.06a 24.480.98a 6.071.07b 1.61 0.40b 198.0036.43a

FP
6080 2.800.39b 0.140.04b 0.590.05a 24.780.61a 4.731.20bc 4.71 0.32b 129.33 4.16b

80100 2.410.77b 0.120.03b 0.590.04a 23.780.67a 3.540.88bc 3.15 0.34b 137.33 9.64b

F Value 5.284* 4.667* 0.448ns 1.641ns 15.948* 21.782* 6.024*

020 2.200.24a 0.100.01a 0.57 0.01a 23.600.04a 1.671.13 b 2.330.96a 154.6725.72a

2040 2.110.20a 0.110.02a 0.58 0.02ab 23.780.27a 2.431.56 b 0.920.30b 135.6713.32ab

4060 2.030.10a 0.100.02a 0.54 0.01bc 23.580.66a 9.392.21 a 0.670.14 b 115.67 7.51b
CP
6080 2.020.22a 0.110.01a 0.54 0.02bc 24.170.52a 4.631.02 b 1.110.22 b 113.33 4.58b

80100 2.210.31a 0.110.01a 0.53 0.01c 23.080.96a 3.141.66 b 1.150.16 b 121.33 7.51b

F Value 0.486ns 0.306ns 5.680* 1.345ns 11.455* 5.514* 4.179*

Values in each column with the same letter are not significant (LSR) between different soil depth
within each plot; * Significant at P < 0.05; ns: Not significant at P < 0.05.
328 H. Li et al.

significantly higher than that of the control plot, but not for any other soil nutrient
index, although all soil nutrient indexes of farmland were somewhat higher. At 6080
cm, SOM content of farmland was significantly higher than that of the control plot, but
not for any other soil nutrient index. At 80100 cm, there were no significant differ-
ences in all soil nutrient indexes between farmland and control plots.
Multiple comparisons among the nutrient indexes at different depths for the two
plots are shown in Table 2.
ANOVA and LSR multiple comparison results showed that soil nutrient discrepancies
at different depths of the farmland plot were reflected mainly in SOM, TN, AN, AP and
AK indexes; there were no significant differences in TP and TK indexes. SOM, TN, AN
and AP contents of farmland at 020 cm were all significantly higher than those of layers
deeper than 20 cm. There was no significant difference in SOM content of layers deeper
than 20 cm. Within 060 cm, SOM content showed a decreasing trend with increased
depth. SOM content had a significant impact on TN content [16], and so TN content
showed a decreasing trend with increased depth within 0100 cm depth. AK content of
farmland at 4060 cm was significantly higher than in all other layers; however, there
was no significant difference in AK content of other layers.
There were no significant differences in SOM, TN and TK contents of each soil
layer of the control plot within 0100 cm. Discrepancy in TP content was mainly at
040 and 80100 cm, with no other significant differences in TP content in other layers.
The discrepancy in AN index was reflected in AN content at 4060 cm, which was
significantly higher than in any other layer; there was no significant difference in AN
content among other soil layers. AP content at 020 cm was significantly higher than
that of other layers; however, there was no significant difference among other soil
layers. AK content of soil layers within 020 cm was significantly higher than that of
all other layers deeper than 40 cm, but there was no significant difference in AK content
of soil layers deeper than 2040 cm.
Composite index RI of soil nutrients in each layer of the farmland plot is shown in
Fig. 3. Within 0100 cm, RI > 0 for all layers of the farmland plot, indicating that the
composite index of soil nutrients in each soil layer was higher than that of the control
plot. At 020 cm, RI of farmland was 186% higher than in the control plot, indicating
that after oasisdesert ecotone soil was reclaimed and became farmland, that the
long-term irrigation and fertilization management increased soil nutrient levels. RI was
91% higher at 2040 cm, indicating that soil nutrient conditions of this layer had
greatly improved compared with the control plot. Within 40100 cm, RI of each layer
was < 40% and decreased gradually with increased depth, indicating that farmland
reclamation only improved soil nutrient conditions of the oasisdesert ecotone within a
certain depth, i.e. improvement was gradually weakened with increased depth.
The soil nutrient composite indexes between each layer deeper than 20 cm and the
surface layer (020 cm) of both plots were compared, i.e. the soil properties of each plot
at 020 cm were taken as the baseline. RI of layers at 2040, 4060, 6080 and 80100
cm of farmland and control plots were calculated with formula (1), and all results were
negative (Fig. 4), indicating the soil nutrient composite indexes of both farmland plot
and control plot at 020 cm were higher than those of deeper layers down to 100 cm.
 Characteristics of Soil Environment Variation in OasisDesert Ecotone 329

RI(%)
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200

0-20 185.85

20-40 90.53
)
m
c
(
h 40-60 37.11
t
p
e
D
60-80 15.90

80-100 11.95

Fig. 3. Composite index of soil nutrient in every layer within 1-m depth of the farmland plot
(taking control plot as baseline)

RI(%)
-35 -30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0

0.00 0-20

FP
20-40 )
m
CP c
(
h
t
40-60 p
e
D

60-80

80-100

Fig. 4. Composite index of soil nutrient in every layer deeper than 20 cm of both plots (taking
020 cm as baseline)

3.3 Differentiation Characteristics of Soil Particle Size

The soil particle-size distributions of each layer of both plots for 0100 cm were within
the range 0.352000 m (Table 3).
The t-tests indicated no significant differences in clay contents between farmland
and control plots at 020 cm, but the value of the farmland plot was slightly higher than
that of the control plot. Silt contents of farmland were significantly higher (P < 0.01),
and sand contents significantly lower (P < 0.01) than the control plot (Table 3). There
330 H. Li et al.

Table 3. Soil size distribution of both plots (mean SD)

Soil size composing /%

Plot Depth/cm
Clay (0.352.0m) Silt (2.050m) Sand (502000 m)
020 1.840.41 28.054.28 70.114.65
2040 1.950.38 27.705.34 70.355.69
FP 4060 1.671.11 25.5510.31 72.7911.26
6080 1.870.38 26.544.72 71.605.02
80100 1.970.27 26.145.96 71.896.20
020 1.130.90 20.954.33 77.925.12
2040 1.690.85 24.955.32 73.366.12
CP 4060 1.850.40 24.515.23 73.655.62
6080 1.590.91 23.785.18 74.635.76
80100 1.860.51 25.236.63 72.917.14

were no significant differences in clay, silt and sand contents between farmland and
control plots at depths of 2040, 4060, 6080 and 80100 cm, respectively (P < 0.05).
The impact of cultivation on variation of soil particle-size showed a particular regu-
larity: silt and clay contents in farmland clearly increased and sand contents decreased.
ANOVA indicated no significant differences in clay contents of each layer between
farmland and control plots within 0100 cm (P < 0.05), and similarly for silt contents and
sand contents. The soil layer with the highest clay contents in the farmland plot was at
80100 cm, the highest silt contents at 020 cm, and the highest sand contents at 4060
cm. The soil layer with the highest clay contents in the control plot was at 80100 cm, the
highest silt contents at 80100 cm, and the highest sand contents at 020 cm.

4 Discussion

The research on soil moisture of the oasisdesert zone in the middle reaches of the
Black River within depths of 050 cm indicated that soil moisture content of the surface
layer in a oasisdesert ecotone was lower than that of oasis farmland [17]. A similar
result was obtained in our study, and in addition the soil moisture content of each layer
within 0100 cm in the natural status of the oasisdesert ecotone was found to be lower
than that of farmland.
The research on soil moisture characteristics of the oasisdesert ecotone at Minqin
indicated a vertical variation of soil moisture with an increasing trend from surface to
deeper layer within 0120 cm [18]. Soil moisture of the desertoasis ecotone in the
middle reaches of the Black River within depths of 0200 cm increased with increased
depth [19]. Our results indicated that within 0100 cm, the soil moisture of the control
plot in the oasisdesert ecotone had a generally monotonic increasing trend with in-
creased depth, consistent with previous findings. Because of poor soil texture in the
surface layer of the control plot, weak water-retention capacity and the impact of
evaporation and infiltration, the soil moisture content of the surface layer was signifi-
cantly lower than that of deeper layers.
 Characteristics of Soil Environment Variation in OasisDesert Ecotone 331

The research findings on Kerqin sandy land indicated that precipitation influenced
soil moisture content of the surface layer at 00.8 m depth only, due to the consumption
of most precipitation by vegetation via transpiration [20]. In this paper, Pearsons
correlation analysis indicated a significant positive correlation between soil moisture of
aeolian sandy soil of the control plot at 020 cm and precipitation, while no such cor-
relation occurred for layers deeper than 20 cm, indicating that precipitation had an
impact on soil moisture content mainly at 020 cm, and below that depth the soil
moisture may be affected by other factors such as infiltration.
Usually agricultural soil moisture is affected by various factors such as precipitation,
irrigation volume, crop growth and climatic conditions. Some findings have indicated
that farmland moisture characteristics of arid areas in northern China are affected
mainly by evapotranspiration rate [21]. In the event of no groundwater recharge, then
precipitation or irrigation would be the main sources of water for farmland, and dif-
ferent precipitation (irrigation) volumes will induce variations in soil moisture [22].
Soil moisture of the farmland plot showed a unimodal increasing trend with increased
depth, which increased first and then decreased; of these the peak value was during
JulySeptember at a depth of 5060 cm, and was the result of inconsistent irrigation
volumes and irrigation intervals. The soil moisture of each layer of the farmland plot
was significantly and positively correlated with irrigation volume within 1020 cm (P
< 0.05) and within 20100 cm (P < 0.01), indicating that irrigation was the major factor
affecting agricultural soil-moisture characteristics within a depth of 1 m. Research by
Sun showed that soil moisture during the cotton growth period at Cele was 6.6413.3%
with irrigation [23]. The average soil moisture range of the farmland plot (080 cm)
was 10.8312.89% during the cotton growth period (AprilOctober) in this paper,
similar to the findings of other researchers the results can be taken as a guide for local
field irrigation.
The acquisition, accumulation and consumption of soil organic matter, nitrogen and
phosphorus differ according to diverse land uses and soil tillage [24]; and coverage
variation caused by oasis growth also had a significant impact on soil nutrient charac-
teristics [1]. The oasisdesert ecotone has less organic matter accumulation under an
original state, while farmland becomes fertile with application of farmyard manure and
inorganic fertilizer during growing seasons following crop planting. A composite index
of soil nutrient was obtained, based on various soil properties, which effectively re-
flects soil quality and is helpful for visual comparison and evaluation [25, 26]. The
comparison of RI between the two plots showed that farmland had significantly higher
values than that of the control plot, indicating that soil nutrient improvement in the
ecotone was positive with certain substance and energy inputs. Soil nutrients reached a
maximum in both plots at 020 cm, possibly indicating that irrigation and cultivation
factors had an impact mainly on the cultivated horizon of farmland; while litter fall of
natural vegetation in the ecotone participated in the nutrient cycle, also making soil
nutrients in the surface layer of the control plot relatively higher.
Silt and clay contents of the farmland plot were higher than those of the control, but
sand content was lower presumably due to the impact of artificial irrigation and culti-
vation on accumulation of fine soil particles during the oasis expansion process [11].
Sand and silt contents were the major component in upper and lower layers of both
332 H. Li et al.

farmland and control plots, and the proportions were: sand > silt > clay (< 2.00%),
which is the same as the soil size-grade distribution characteristics of the middle Heihe
River basin [27], also reflecting poor soil texture in arid regions.
Increasing decomposition of vegetation and inputs of organic matter after reclama-
tion were responsible for the improved soil nutrients. Bouyoucos indicated that an
increase in organic matter improved the soil moisture content [28], and organic matter
provides the cementation for water-stable soil aggregates [29]. The soil porosity of
original sand improved with the increasing trend of organic matter, silt contents and
clay contents, thus improving the soil structure.

5 Summary

With farmland being the main land use, as a result of population and economic pres-
sures, there are important and positive impacts on the soil environment during the
process of expansion into the oasisdesert ecotone. The contrastive analysis of physical
and chemical properties (e.g. soil moisture, nutrient and particle sizes) between a
15-y-cultivated farmland plot and a control plot in the ecotone was helpful to obtain a
preliminary understanding of variation in soil environmental characteristics in the
oasisdesert ecotone.
There was a significant difference in soil moisture of each layer between farmland
and control plots within depths of 0100 cm due to irrigation. The soil moisture of each
layer of the farmland plot during the farming period (i.e. AprilSeptember) was gen-
erally higher than that of the same layer of the control plot. The agricultural soil
moisture showed a time-variation rule from multimodal to unimodal with increased
depth. The soil moisture of the control plot showed a generally monotonic increasing
trend with increased depth. However, the farmland plot showed a unimodal increasing
trend of initial increase and then a decrease with increased depth, with the peak value at
5060 cm during JulySeptember and at 6080 cm during other months.
Under the preconditions of inputs of certain substances and energy, soil nutrient
conditions of farmland were obviously improved, and the soil nutrient index was sig-
nificantly higher than that of the control plot. The improving effect of farmland rec-
lamation on soil nutrient conditions in the oasisdesert ecotone was limited however,
and such an improving effect decreased with increased depth. For both farmland and
control plots, the soil nutrient composite indexes at 020 cm were clearly higher than
those of other layers within 20100 cm; but the soil nutrient content in both farmland
and control plot in oasisdesert ecotone is not high compared with other regions in
China. Cultivation and management had a positive impact on soil particle-size distri-
bution in the oasisdesert ecotone: silt contents and clay contents in the farmland soil
obviously increased while sand contents decreased.

Acknowledgements. The project was supported by the National Basic Research Pro-
gram of China (973 program 2009CB421302), Technology Key Project of Xinjiang
(Grant No.200733144-2), The National Science and Technology Supporting Program
of China (2009BAC54B01) and National Natural Science Foundation of China
 Characteristics of Soil Environment Variation in OasisDesert Ecotone 333

(NO.41001171). The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable
comments.

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Chlorimuronethyl Resistance Selectable Marker Unsuited
for the Transformation of Rice Blast Fungus
(Magnaporthe Grisea)

Chang Qing*, Yang Jing*, Liu Lin, Su Yuan, Li Jinbin,

Zhu Youyong, and Li Chengyun**

Key Laboratory of Agro-biodiversity and Pest Management of the Education Ministry of China,
Yunnan Agricultural University, Kunming, 650201, China
li.chengyun@gmail.com

Abstract. Chlorimuronethyl resistance gene is increasingly used as a selectable

marker for transformation, especially fungal transformation. Magnaporthe grisea
is an important model organism for investigating fungal pathogenicity, and Agro-
bacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation (ATMT) is used for functional
mutagenesis of the fungus. However, our results showed that rice blast strains
collected from infectious rice fields have highly conserved resistance to chlori-
muronethyl, even comparable to transformants which carrying chlorimuronethyl
resistance genes as selectable marker in laboratory conditions. PCR results showed
that all tested field strains presented the amplified products of the same size as the
selectable marker amplified from plasmid carrying chlorimuronethyl gene. Se-
quence analysis of PCR products amplified from field strains confirmed that field
strains harbored the highly identity homolog of chlorimuronethyl resistance gene.
Blast search in GenBank suggested that the fragment is presenting in reference
genome sequence of 70-15, but it is not a wide-spread gene in other organisms,
excepted for Herpetosiphon aurantiacus. Although the origin and reason of
the conserved chlorimuronethyl resistance gene in field isolates of blast fungus is
unclear, the ecological function of the gene is noteworthy.

Keywords: Magnaporthe grisea, chlorimuronethyl resistance gene, selectable

marker, fungi transformation.

1 Introduction

Fungi play important roles in many human, plant, and animal activities, including bio-
technological processes, phytopathological and biomedical research. They are also excel-
lent models for molecular and genetic studies (Casas-Flores et al., 2004). Molecular studies
of fungal biology have been greatly advanced by Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated
transfromation (ATMT) techniques. Transformation via non-homologous integration of

* The authors make equal contributions to the paper.

** Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 335342, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
336 C. Qing et al.

plasmid DNA carrying a selectable marker has been widely used for fungal transformation
(Chang et al., 2006). For comprehensive and in-depth study of the interaction between
pathogen and host, a series of vectors bearing more available selectable markers (e.g. more
antibiotic resistant genes) must be constantly developed to meet ATMT.
Magnaporthe grisea has been extensively utilized as a model of fungal pathogen for
understanding the molecular basis of host plant-fungus interaction, due to its genetic
and molecular tractability (Dean, 1997; Talbot, 1995), as well as the economical im-
portance of the disease it caused. ATMT have been widely used to investigate the
infection process and the genes involved in the complex interaction between M. grisea
and rice. To date, many selectable markers have been used for fungal transformation,
such as hygromycin, bialaphos, zeocin and chlorimuronethyl resistance genes. Based
on current reports, chlorimuronethyl has not yet been reported to be used for M. grisea
transformation, but other selective markers have been used for the purpose. Chlori-
muronethyl belonged to the sulfonylureas series herbicide. The chlorimuronethyl re-
sistance gene has been engineered to be modified and eliminate sites for the most
common restriction enzymes, and chlorimuronethyl selectable markers have been used
to construct a series of vectors for fungal transformation (Sweigard et al., 1997).
Sulfonylureas, especially chlorimuronethyl, which was the active ingredient of the
herbicide Classicreg, inhibits acetolactate synthase (Sweigard et al., 1997). The sul-
fonylurea resistant allele of M. grisea ILV1 has been subcloned as a 2.8 kb fragment
and modified by the elimination of eight enzyme sites (Sweigard et al., 1997). The
chlorimuronethyl resistance gene that was cloned from allele of the Magnaporthe
grisea ILV1 encoded acetolactate synthase involved isoleucine and valine synthesis
(Sweigard et al., 1997). ILV1 was a homologue of MGG_07224 (threonine dehydra-
tase) from Magnaporthe grisea 70-15 (Hoffmann and Valencia, 2004). Chlori-
muronethyl selectable markers was used for Neurospora crassa (Li et al., 2005),
Cercospora nicotianae (Chen et al., 2007) and other fungal transformations. Although
M. grisea transformation has many available selectable markers, in some special cases,
other selectable markers such as the marker bearing the chlorimuronethyl resistance
gene has been developed to cater for special requirements. This begs the question
whether this selectable marker could be successfully used for M. grisea transformation.
In the present study, the chlorimuronethyl resistance gene has been studied as a po-
tentially available marker for M. grisea transformation.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Fungal Strain and Cultural Conditions

Thirty field isolates and two transformants of M. grisea were used in this study. Field
field isolates were collected from different regions of Yunnan Province and the two
transformants were obtained through Y98-16 transformation. pBIMgNIP04 was con-
structed plasmid bearing the chlorimuronethyl resistance gene. Fungal cultures were
grown on oatmeal agar (OMA; 40 g of oatmeal for 1 L) at 25C under continuous
fluorescent light to promote conidiation (Lee and Lee, 1998). Conidia were harvested
from 7- to 10-day old cultures using sterilized water.
 Chlorimuronethyl Resistance Selectable Marker 337

2.2 Transformation

The A. tumefaciens strain GV3101, containing pBIMgNIP04, was grown at 28 for 48

h in a minimal medium (MM; Hooykaas et al., 1979) supplemented with kanamycin
(50 g/ml). Bacterial cells in a 2 ml aliquot of this culture were harvested and washed
with an induction medium (IM; Bundock et al., 1995). The cells were resuspended with
5 ml of IM containing 200 M acetosyringone (AS). The cells were grown for an ad-
ditional 4-6 h before mixing with an equal volume of conidial suspension of M. grisea
field strain Y98-16. This mix (200 l) was plated on filter paper on a co-cultivation
medium, adding 200 M AS. Following co-cultivation at 25C for 72 h, the filter paper
was cut into strips using scissors, and they were reversely plated on PDA medium
plates containing chlorimuronethyl (purchased from Japan, CAS: 9082-32-4,
No.036-16671) as the selection agent for fungal transformants. Concentrations of
chlorimuronethyl were 100, 200 and 300 g/ml. In order to eliminate the remaining A.
tumefaciens cells, the cefotaxime (200 g/ml) and spectinomycin (200 g/ml) were
added in the PDA medium. After 3-day old selective cultivation, individual transfor-
mants were transferred into OMA medium containing chlorimuronethyl (300 g/ml)
and incubated until conidiation. Conidia of the individual transformants were picked
and transferred to OMA.

2.3 DNA Extraction and PCR Determination

Based on chlorimuronethyl resistance gene nucleotide sequence, PCR primer pairs

were designed by software Primer Designer. The primer sequences followed as 5 ' - G C
A A G G A G T G G T T C G A C C A G A T C A A - 3 ' and 5 ' - G T C A G A G C A T C A C
C G A C A T C G T C A G - 3 ' , and the PCR product size was 562 bp. DNA was extracted

Fig. 1. PCR product of chorimuronethyl resistance gene in genomic DNA of rice blast fungus, M.
grisea Lane1: DL2000 marker, lane2-9: partial rice blast strains from different fields from
Yunnan, lane10: wild type strain Y98-16 genomic DNA as template; lane11: wild type strain
CY2 genomic DNA as template; lane12: genetic transformant carrying chlorimuronethyl resis-
tance gene as selection marker; lane13: negative control
338 C. Qing et al.

from fungal mycelia grown in potato dextrose broth for 4 days at 28 at 120 rpm. The
DNA extraction method followed Chadha and Gopalakrishna (2005). PCR reaction
was performed on an Eppendorf PCR machine. Each tube contained a 25 l reaction
mixture, including Taq polymerase (TAKARA Biotechnology (Dalian) Co. Ltd).

Thermal cycling conditions consisted of 2.5 min at 95 following by 35 cycles of 30 s

at 94 and 30 s at 62 , 1 min at 72 , and one final cycle of 10 min at 72 .
3 Results
PCR results showed that all tested strains, including the two transformants, were ex-
pected to appear at ~500 bp band (Fig. 1). To confirm whether the PCR products were
identical, the PCR product from wild type strain Y98-16 and one transformant
MgNIP04-1 bearing the chlorimuronethyl resistance gene were cloned into pGEM-T

Fig. 2. Sequence alignment of chlorimuronethyl resistant gene with M. grisea 70-15, transfor-
mant carrying chlorimuronethyl resistance gene and wild type strain of Y98-16. The aligned
sequences of transformant and Y98-16 were cloned and sequenced from PCR products that using
primer pairs of chlorimuronethyl resistant gene to amplify transformant DNA and Y98-16 DNA,
respectively.
 Chlorimuronethyl Resistance Selectable Marker 339

vector and sequenced. The sequencing results were aligned with 70-15 genome se-
quences and partial coding sequence of chlorimuronethyl resistance gene using BioEdit
(Fig. 2). Based on alignment results, a section of DNA sequences, which located in
supercontig 6.18, ranging from 1272316 to 1275124 of 70-15 strains, were homologous
with the chlorimuronethyl resistance gene and PCR product from Y98-16. For all
aligned sequences, almost all of bases were identical.

Fig. 3. Chlorimuronethyl resistance test of wild type strains of CY2 and Y98-16 and two trans-
formants of T1 and T2. CK (control): no chlorimuronethyl; 100 g/ml mean concentration of
chlorimuronethyl was 100 g/ml; 200 g/ml mean concentration of chlorimuronethyl was 200
g/ml; 300 g/ml mean concentration of chlorimuronethyl was 300 g/ml.
340 C. Qing et al.

Chlorimuronethyl resistance gene sequence was blasted in NCBI, the result showed
that the gene appeared higher identity with M. grisea acetolactate synthase gene and
partial coding sequence of MGG06868 (E-value: 0.0), while appeared lower identity
with Herpetosiphon aurantiacus ATCC 23779 (E-value: 4e-05), but it is absent in other
organisms presented database, suggested that it is suitable marker for transformation of
other fungi and organisms. To understand the genomic environment of the gene, se-
quences located upstream and downstream of the gene was carried out. There was no
any transponson around the gene. G+C% content of M. grisea homologue to chlori-
muronethyl gene, -1818 bp of 5 and 3 terminal of the homologue was analyzed using
Seqool, respectively. The result showed that GC% content of the homologue was
52.96%, -1818bp of 5 terminal was 55.23%, and -1818bp of 3 terminal was 47.47%.
Based on the concentration of chlorimuronethyl introduced by Sweigard (1998),
which was 100 g/ml, it was necessary to verify whether the wild type strains were
resistant to chlorimuronethyl under different concentrations. The transformant Y98-16
and CY2 were screened on PDA medium plates containing chlorimuronethyl (100, 200
and 300 g/ml, respectively) as the selection agent. Results showed that all test strains,
including Y98-16 and CY2, showed resistance to chlorimuronethyl in the tested con-
centrations (100, 200 and 300 g/ml) (Fig 3).

4 Discussion

Fungal genetic transformation has greatly accelerated the analysis of gene function.
Fungal transformation methods include protoplast, biolistic and agrobacterium tume-
faciens-mediated transformations (ATMT). And Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated
transformation (ATMT) is used for functional mutagenesis of the fungus(Jeon and Lee
et al, 2007). No matter which methods are used, there must be antibiotic resistance
genes as selectable markers for successfully selecting incorporated genes for a
desired trait during transformation. For transformants to be successfully screened, the
plasmid containing an antibiotic resistance gene must be constructed. There are four
types of selectable marker genes, including antibiotic resistant (e.g. neomycin and
kanamycin), herbicide tolerant (e.g. bialaphos and chlorimuronethyl), meta-
bolic/auxotrophic and screenable marker genes (www.nuffieldfoundation.org/
bioethics/publication/modifiedcrops/rep0007969.html). Of these selectable markers,
herbicide tolerant marker was originally used in screening transgenic plants, but now
this marker was also used for fungal transformation.
Since green evolution, quantities of herbicides have been used to control grasses.
Some grasses had developed tolerance to these chemical components during long-term
competition with chemicals. While chlorimuronethyl as for a kind of herbicide was
applied in fields in early 1980s and it widely applied in rice fields, soybean fields,
maize fields, wheat crop fields, rape fields, lawn and other weeds in non-cultivated land
for a long time. In addition, increasing transgenic organisms carrying herbi-
cide-resistance genes such as chlorimuronethyl and bialaphos were released into the
fields, and possibility of gene flow from these transgenic organisms to other organisms,
especially under herbicide stress is present. If a specific DNA sequence of a strain had
 Chlorimuronethyl Resistance Selectable Marker 341

higher or lower G+C content than its genome mean G+C content, or up- and
down-stream sequence, which indicated that this specific DNA sequence was obtained
from exogenous bacterium or plasmid of other species (Li et al, 2008). The GC content
of M. grisea homologue to chlorimuronethyl gene was analyzed, the result showed that
GC content of the homologue and its 5 terminal were higher than M. grisea genome
(GC% of content was 51.57%), and its 3terminal was lower than 51.57%. which of-
fered a speculation that M. grisea homologue to chlorimuronethyl gene possibly was
obtained from exogenous bacterium or plasmid of other species. It was necessary to
verify the speculation through experimental method. So, the selectable marker carrying
chlorimuronethyl gene was unsuitable for M. grisea genetic transformation.
If transgenic plants or fungi carrying Chlorimuronethyl were released into fields or
markets, it would inevitably threaten human and/or animal health. Therefore, it is
necessary to develop suitable and safe selectable markers in the future. Crop developers
have been seeking more useful markers for selecting transgenic plants, animal or fungi
and these methods have been adopted in the selection process (Dale and Ow, 1991;
Ebinuma, et al., 1997). In conclusion, some markers carrying antibiotic genes such as
chlorimuronethyl, were neither suitable for M. grisea transformation nor other fungi or
plant transformation from the long-term perspective of global food and environmental
safety.

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr M.A. Fullen for helpful suggestions and manuscript modification. This
work is partially supported by the National Basic Research Program (2006BC100202)
and the National Natural Foundation (30860161).

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 Support Vector Machine to Monitor Greenhouse Plant
with Gaussian Loss Function

Manfu Yan1, Qing Zhang1, and Jianhang Zhang2

1
Department of Mathematics, Tangshan Teachers College, Tangshan Hebei 063000, China
3005@tstc.edu.cn
2
Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119278

Abstract. In this paper, it applys Gaussian loss function instead of -insensitive

loss function in a standard SVRM to devise a new model and a new type of
support vector classification machine whose optimization problem is easier to
solve and has conducted effective test on open data set in order to apply the new
algorithm to environment monitoring in greenhouse plants and the monitoring
result is better than any other method available.

Keywords: Support Vector Machine, Gaussian Loss Function, Greenhouse

Plants, Environment Monitoring.

1 Introduction
It can be conclude that, the classification problem is a special type of the regression
problem from the mathematics language description [1]. Therefore, it is feasible to
create classification algorithm by Suport Vector Machine (SVM). A general Support
Vector Regression Machine uses-insensitive loss function to create classification
algorithm. However, the solution of the problem is very difficult to get in this method.
As a result, by substituting Gaussian loss function for the -insensitive loss function,
the dual problem is derived. After some simplification and transformation of equations,
the resultant optimization problem is easy to solve. At last, this new method is applied
to Iris open data set, in order to do the data collection and algorithm varification. In a
word, the new algorithm can be applied to modern agriculture and solve practical
problems, and it is proved to be achievable and effective.

2 SVR Model of Solving Classification Problems

A classification problem is that the trainingset is given as,

T = {( x1 , y1 ),L , ( xl , yl )} (X Y )l (1)

here xi X = R n , yi Y 1}, i = 1, L , l , then it could figure out one real-valued function

={1,
g ( x ) in order to deduce the corresponding value y under any mode x by using
decision function

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 343352, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
344 M. Yan, Q. Zhang, and J. Zhang

f ( x ) = sgn( g ( x )) (2)
By comparing the definition with that of classification problems, the latter can be
considered as a kind of special regression problem, thus it is able to solve such prob-
lems by applying Support Vector Regression Machine.

2.1 The Original Optimization Problem and the Dual Problem

Now, try to consider the classification problem as regression problem since yi takes
value from {1, 1} , and instead of -insensitive loss function, Gaussian loss function is
selected, the form of original optimization problem is
1 C l
w + i2
2
min
w , ,b
(3)
2 2 i =1

s.t (( w xi ) + b) yi i , i = 1, 2,L , l (4)

yi (( w xi ) + b ) i , i = 1, 2,L , l (5)
i 0, i = 1, 2,L , l (6)

Problem (3)-(6) equal to

1 C l
w + i2
2
min
w, , b
(7)
2 2 i =1

s.t i (( w xi ) + b) yi , i = 1, 2,L, l (8)

Apparently constraints in the problem can be formulated as equalities, then problem (7)
and (8) equal to
1 C l
w + ( yi ( w xi ) + b) 1) 2
2
min (9)
w ,b 2 2 i =1

Let

i = 1 yi (( w xi ) + b) (10)
then the above problems can be expressed as
1 C l
w + i2
2
min
w, ,b
(11)
2 2 i =1

s.t yi (( w xi ) + b) = 1 i , i = 1, 2,L , l (12)

The resulting problem is exactly the original optimization problem in the Least Squares
Support Vector Machine.
 Support Vector Machine to Monitor Greenhouse Plant 345

Next, discuss properties of the resulting problem and its dual problem, and then create
an algorithm based on them.
Theorem 1. The Dual problem of problem (11)-(12) is
1 l l l
min


2 i =1 j =1
i j yi y j (( xi x j ) + ij ) i
C i =1
(13)

l
s.t y
i =1
i i =0 (14)

where
1 i = j
ij = (15)
0 i j

Proof. Introducing the Lagrange function of problems (11)-(12)

1 2 C l 2 l
L( w, b, , ) = w + i i ( yi (( w xi ) + b) + i 1) (16)
2 2 i =1 i =1

where R l is the Lagrange multiplier vector, find the minimum of Lagrange function
with respect to w, b, , get the following KKT condition:
l
w = i yi xi (17)
i =1

y
i =1
i i =0 (18)

= (19)
C

yi (( w xi ) + b) + i 1 = 0, i = 1, 2,L , l (20)
Substitute the above conditions into the Lagrange function and find the maximum of
, the dual problem (13) and (14) are obtained.
The several theorems below are about relations between solution of original problem
(11)-(12) and that of dual problem (13)-(14) are all established:
Theorem 2. The solution (w , b , ) of original problem (11)-(12) exists and the solu-
tion is unique.
Theorem 3. Suppose ( w , b , ) is the solution of original problem(11)-(12), then dual
problem(13)-(14) must have solution = (1 ,L , l )T to satisfy
l
w = i yi xi (21)
i =1

Proof. Concluded from Theorem 1 and Wolfe Theorem, if (w , b , ) is the solution of

original problem (11)-(12), and the dual problem(13)-(14) must have solution which
satisfies equation (21).
346 M. Yan, Q. Zhang, and J. Zhang

Theorem 4. Suppose = (1 ,L , l )T is an arbitrarily solution of dual prob-

lems(13)-(14), then the solution to ( w, b ) of original problem (11)-(12) exists and must
be unique,
l
w = i yi xi (22)
i =1

i l
b = yi (1 ) j y j ( x j xi ) (23)
C j =1

Its proof can be seen in [2]

2.2 The SVR Algorithm of Solving Classification Problems

For general nonlinear problems, put the input space R n into a single mapping () ,
which can transform it to a high-dimensional Hilbert space. In this space, the original
optimization problem is constructed and its dual problem is obtained.
l l l
min 1 ai a j yi y j ( ( xi ) ( x j ) + ij ) ai (24)

2 i =1 j =1 C i =1

l
s.t a y
i =1
i i =0 (25)

Instead of the dual problem of the inner product ( ( xi ) ( x j )) , the kernel function
K ( xi , x j ) is introduced, then the dual problem becomes,

1 l l ij l
min

2 i =1 j =1
ai a j yi y j ( K ( xi , x j ) + ) ai
C i =1
(26)

l
s.t a y
i =1
i i =0 (27)

ij
For K ( xi , x j ) + C in the objective function, it can be represented by a kernel function

ij
K ( xi , x j ) = K ( xi , x j ) + (28)
C

In Hilbert space, Theorem 2-4 are still hold for the relationship between the solution of
dual problem and that of the original problem, then the formula of the solution to b*
becomes
i* l
b* = yi (1 ) ai* yi K ( x j , x i ) (29)
C i =1
 Support Vector Machine to Monitor Greenhouse Plant 347

According to theorem 4, the following algorithm is established:

Algorithm 1. The SVR Algorithm for Solving Classification Problems

(i)Assume a known trainingset
T = {( x1 , y1 ),L , ( xl , xl )} (X Y )l , here, xi X = R n , yi Y = {1,1}, i = 1, 2,L , l
(ii) Choose a suitable positive C and a kernel K ( x, x) ;
(iii) Construct the problem and find the solution of

min 1 ai a j yi y j ( K ( xi , x j ) + ij ) ai
l l l

(30)
2 i =1 j =1 C i =1

l
s.t a y
i =1
i i =0 (31)

The optimum solution is obtained a * = (a1* ,L al* )T

(iv)To create decisive function
l
f ( x) = sgn( ai* yi K ( xi , x ) + b* ) (32)
i =1

Here b* is given by equation (29).

2.3 The Numerical Experiments

In order to verify the proposed Algorithm 1, a test was conducted on Iris data set [3].
The Iris data set is used to test the performance of classification algorithms. The data set
contains the number of 150 sample points, which are divided into three categories,
namely, I(Iris-setosa), II(Iris-versicolor) and III(Iris-virginica), there are 50 sample
points in each type and each sample point has for properties.
There are three two-class classification problems, namely, Class I and II is the pos-
itive class, and Class III is the negative class; or Class I and III is the positive class, and
Class II is the negative class; or Class II and III is the positive class, and Class I is the
negative class. In each of the two-class classification problems there are 150 sample
points, which has been randomly assigned to training set and testing set. The training
set contains 50 positive points and 25 negative points, while the testing set contains 50
positive points and 25 negative points. The trainings are conducted by using
Algorithm 1 and standard C-SVM. During the training process, the RBF Kernel func-
tion is adopted for the two algorithms. The parameter C is set to be 0.1, l, 10, 100, 1000,
10000 and so on. The decisive functions gained in each training session are tested, and
each testing results are recorded. Finally compute and compare the average testing
accuracy, result is shown in the following table:
348 M. Yan, Q. Zhang, and J. Zhang

Table 1. Result Comparison Table

Classification C SVC Algorithm 1

{I, II}III 95.6% 96.1%
{II, III}I 100% 100%
{I, III}II 97.5% 97.2%

From the above comparison results, obviously Algorithm 1 and C SVC share the
similar testing accuracy rate.

3 The Application of SVR Classification Algorithm to the

Environment Monitoring on the Greenhouse Plant Growth

The great progress in technology has brought a serious problem to the traditional ag-
riculture, which is far from meeting the needs of the modern social development [4].
Therefore, improvement and revolution must be done to the traditional agriculture. A
new cultivation method is developed through many years experience, which is that
people can control environmental factors so that the crops can grow in the most suitable
environment. In addition, the growing seasons may be extended and the best output is
gained. This agricultural mode is known as the greenhouse agriculture, or as factorial
agriculture and greenhouse agriculture in developed countries. With its striking feature
of being free from environmental constraint, the new agricultural mode enables the
crops to grow under some pre-designed conditions is highly yielding and greatly ef-
fective. Hence it has been a trend all over the world. In a word, the research on envi-
ronment monitoring is crucial, especially for the real-time environment monitoring.

3.1 Objective Conditions and Advantages of SVM-Based Environment

Monitoring of Greenhouse Plants

The environmental factors for soilless greenhouse cultivation include temperature,

humidity, CO2, illumination, EC, and nutrition elements. After discussing with
agricultural experts, choosing l greenhouses to be measured with n factors as the
measurement parameter. The i-th parameter is marked as [ x ]i , i = 1, 2,L , n , then
x = ([ x]1 ,L, [ x]n )T here, xi R n , and normal greenhouse is recorded as 1, otherwise -1,
then let
T = {( x1 , y1 ) ,L , ( xl , yl )}
,
Here [ x ]i R n , i = 1, 2,L , n , yi = 1, or 1

It is just a trainingset of Support Vector Classification Machine. Thus the problem of

environmental monitoring could be solved by SVM. (see 3.2).
Nowadays, the normal data ranges for the environment monitoring of greenhouse
plants are given. In practice, adjusting those parameters based on the standard. How-
ever, it is found that although all the data are in range, the problem is still come out
 Support Vector Machine to Monitor Greenhouse Plant 349

sometimes. It indicates that the interval control method has a large deviation and it is
not reliable. For example, as temperature is adjusted, it may interfere with the humidity,
so the environment control is not effective and sometimes make it worse. The advan-
tage of SVM is that it do not have to set up the ranges for each parameter beforehand;
instead, taking into account of all the parameters together, resulting in the much im-
proved accuracy of monitoring. Assume the output is -1, which means the current
environment is not the one wanted, so adjusting the corresponding parameters in the
computer until the result is 1. This operation is obviously easy and effective with the aid
of computer.

3.2 The Application to Environment Monitoring of Celery Cultivation

Three years research on celery is conducted in Shouguang, Shandong and Fengnan,

Hebei. 100 greenhouses are randomly taken as our sample and measured 15 parame-
ters, which are suggested by agricultural experts. The parameters include temperature,
humidity, illumination, and so on. A data set of 100 15-dimension vectors is obtained,
at the same time, let agricultural experts determine whether the celery greenhouse is
normal or not [5]. The 100 15-dimention vectors are given values of -1 and 1 according
to the result is abnormal or not. In this way, the trainingset of the SVM is obtained.

3.2.1 Data Pre-retreatment

From the data, it is noticed that some parameters are in a narrow range, for example, the
nitrogen concentration is between 0.004 and 0.01, but some parameters are in a wide
range, like illumination is between 200 and 1200 luxes. Thus, standardization of those
parameters is needed. The maximum-minimum standardized method is used. For
example, nitrogen [xi ] is between 0.004 and 0.01, so here uses maximum-minimum
formula,

[x ] = [x ] min ([x ] )
j i j i j i

[ ] min ([x ] )
max x j

j =1, 2,L100 i j i (33)
j =1, 2,L100
j =1, 2,L100

Standardize the data set to D .

The data set is randomly splited into 2 subsets by the ratio of 7:3. One subset is
trainingset T and the number of training point is l (here l = 70 ), the other subset is test
set S , the test point is m (here, m = 30 ). The number of the positive points in training
set T is T+ , that for the negative points is T . Similarly, the number of the positive
points in test set S is S + , the number of negative points is S . The number of positive
points is 74, and the number of negative points is 26. There is an imbalance between
these two kinds of points. Therefore, set up penalty parameters C+ and C for both
positive and negative points when using SVM. C+ and C could be determined by the
following formula,
C + = CT / l , C = CT+ / l , (34)

Here C > 0, which has been given in advance.

350 M. Yan, Q. Zhang, and J. Zhang

3.2.2 The Choice of Model

Suitable models of SVM are needed to be chosen for the above classificatory problem.
Three models were choose, the first one is weighed proximal SVM model [6], and the
original problem is

min
w , ,b
1
2
( 2 1
2 yi =1
) 1
w + b2 + C+ i2 + C i2
2 yi =1
(35)

s.t. yi (( w xi ) + b) 1 i , i = 1,L , l , (36)

and its dual problem is

1 l l 1 1 l
min

i j yi y j ( K ( xi , x j ) + 1) + 2C
2 i =1 j =1

yi =1
i
2
+
2C

yi =1
i
2

i =1
i (37)
+

The second model is support vector machine algorithm 1, the optimization problem to
be solved is (30) - (31).
The third one is weighed standard SVM model [7]. The original problem is
1 2
min w + C + i + C i (38)
w , b , 2 yi =1 yi =1

s.t. yi (( w xi ) + b) 1 i , i = 1,L , l , (39)

i 0, i = 1,L , l , (40)

and its dual problem is

1 l l l
min


2 i =1 j =1
i j yi y j K ( xi , x j ) j
j =1
(41)

s.t. y
i =1
i i =0 (42)

0 i C+ , yi = 1 (43)

0 i C , yi = 1 (44)
Proper parameters are going to be chosen after defining the three above models. The
parameters include kernel function K ( x, x ) and C+ , C , and the parameters in kernel
function as well. Here, the radial basis kernel function is choosen,
x x 2

K ( x, x) = exp
2

Now the parameters to be determined are C+ , C and .

 Support Vector Machine to Monitor Greenhouse Plant 351

For each model, the best parameters is choosen by the method of lattice. In other
words, the ranges of C+ and C , are {0.1,1,10,100,1000,10000} and the ranges of , which
is {0.1,0.2,0.5,1,2,5}. Thereby, they have constituted a group of parameters, ( C+ , C , ) .
Loo deviations were calculated for each group of parameters [8]. The group with mi-
nimal Loo value is the group of best parameters ( C+ , C , ) . For weighed proximal SVM
model and it is (C = 10, = 2) ; for Algorithm 1 its group of best parameters is
(C +
= 100 C = 100, = 5 ) ; for weighed standard SVM, it is (C = 10, = 1).

3.2.3 Comparison of Results

Substituting three groups of best parameters into the corresponding models, decisive
functions are obtained, which can be used to decide the points in test set, as shown in
the following table.

Table 2. Result Comparison Table

Checkup Models
Results C-SVM Algorithm 1 PSVC
Checkup Items

Result Precision 90% 95% 86%

Percentage of False
3% 0% 12.5%
Report
Percentage of
66.7% 83.3% 66.7%
Checkup Result

The Result Precision is the ratio of items of those checked correctly to all the items
in the sample test set; the percentage of False Report is the ratio of false reported items
to the number of real usual items; Percentage of Checkup Result is the percentage of the
found real false items in all the real items.
From the above experiment results, Algorithm 1 leads to the best result precision
among three kinds of models.

4 Conclusion
Based on the above discussion, the classification problem is treated as a special re-
gression problem, and the -insensitive loss function is substitued to Guassian loss
function, so that the optimization problem is easy to solve. This classification algorithm
introduces a new way of solving classification problem, and the new algorithm has
been applied to practical greenhouse plant environment monitoring. It not only solves
the practical problem, but the effectiveness is varified and comparison with old method
shows the advantages of the new method.
352 M. Yan, Q. Zhang, and J. Zhang

References
[1] Deng, N., Tian, Y.: Support Vector Machine Theory, Algorithm and Expansion, pp.
6364. Science Press, Beijing (2009)
[2] Yan, M.: Support Vector Machines for Classification and Its Application. China Agri-
cultural University, Beijing (2005) (Doctors Degree Paper)
[3] Deng, N., Tian, Y.: Optimal Method of Data Processing Support Vector Machine. Sci-
ence Press, Beijing (2004)
[4] Wang, X.: The Problems and solutions of Public Vegetable Base, vol. (3), pp. 13 (2010)
[5] Zhang, D.: Celery. China Celery (1), 15 (2010)
[6] Fung, G., Magansarian, O.L.: Proximal Support Vector Machine Classification. In: KDD
2001, San Francisco, CA USA (2001)
[7] Yang, Z., Liu, G.: Principle and Application of Uncertain Support Vector Machine, pp.
148151. Science Press, Beijing (2007)
[8] Vapnik, V., Chapelle, O.: Bounds on Error Expectation for Support Vector Machines.
Neural Computation 12(9) (2000)
 Classification Methods of Remote Sensing Image Based
on Decision Tree Technologies

Lihua Jiang1,2, Wensheng Wang1,2, Xiaorong Yang1,2,

Nengfu Xie1,2, and Youping Cheng3
1
Agriculture Information Institute, Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences,
Beijing, 100081, China
2
Key Laboratory of Digital Agricultural Early-warning Technology,
Agriculture Information Institute, Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences, Beijing, 100081
3
Agriculture Bureau, Huailai County, Hebei Province, 075400, China
{jianglh,wangwsh,yxr,nf.xie,youping}@caas.net.cn

Abstract. Decision tree classification algorithms have significant potential for

remote sensing data classification. This paper advances to adopt decision tree
technologies to classify remote sensing images. First, this paper discussed the
algorithms structure and the algorithms theory of decision tree. Second, C4.5
basic theory and boosting technology are explained. The decision tree
technologies have several advantages for remote sensing application by virtue
of their relatively simple, explicit and intuitive classification structure.

Keywords: Decision tree; Classification; Remote sensing image.

1 Introduction
Classification and Extraction of remote sensing information has been an important
content in remote sensing technology field. In remote sensing classification
application, traditional classification methods [1] such as supervised classification and
unsupervised classification and artificial neural nets classification [2] and expert
system classification are both based on spectral image features. But because image
self has the phenomenon that the same thing has different spectrum, and different
things have the same spectrum, the classification methods that only rely on ground
spectrum features always turn up many misclassifications and omission errors [3].
Lots of study indicates that classifications combined with image spectrum information
and other assistant information can improve precision of classification largely.
Decision tree classification as spatial data mining and knowledge discovery [4]
supervised classification method, breaks through the problem that construction of
previous classification tree or classification rule always take advantage of ecology and
remote sensing knowledge ex-ante certainty and the results always closely related
with experience and professional knowledge [5]. It obtains classification rules by
means of decision study process and neednt satisfy normal distribution. It can use
earth knowledge in GIS database to help classify and improves precision of classify.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 353358, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
354 L. Jiang et al.

At present, decision tree classification [7] has applied in remote sensing image
information extraction and land utilization coverage classify. In American, USGS and
EPA etc. departments have united taken out USA land coverage database plan and
decision tree classification technology has not only applied in land classify but also
urban density information and crown layer density information extraction. The land
classify precision has reached 73%-77% and urban density information extraction
precision has reached from 83% to 91% and tree crown precision has reached 78%-
93% [8]. Mapping efficiency has improved 50% and can satisfied with large scale
land classify data production requirements.
Decision tree study method is one of data mining methods to work out classify
problem in practical application [9]. It can reason classify rules of decision tree form
of expression. The great virtue of decision tree is that study process neednt users
know a lot of background knowledge. As long as trained examples can expressed by
property - result and use this algorithm to learn. Classify knowledge obtained
by decision tree is easy to express and apply. At present, foreigner scholars have
already used decision tree to obtain knowledge and applies in spatial analysis and
study process [10].

2 Decision Tree Arithmetic

Decision tree is a method which can inductive learn by training samples and build up
decision tree or decision rule and then use decision tree or decision rule to classify
data. Decision tree is a tree construction. It is composed of a root node, a series of
internal nodes and leaf nodes. Every node can have only one father node and two or
more child nodes. Nodes are connected with each other by branches. Every internal
node correspond a test properties or properties group and every side correspond every
possible value of property. Leaf node correspond a class property value and different
leaf node can correspond the same class property value. Decision tree can not only be
expressed by tree, but also a team of IF-THEN production rules. Every road from root
to leaf correspond one rule and the condition of rule is to option of all nodes property
values. And result of rule is class property of leaf node in the road. Compared
with decision properties, rules are more simple and convenient to understand, use
and mend and can make up the base of expert system. So rules are used more and
more in actual application. This paper mainly introduces a widely used in remote
sending application arithmetic-classify and regression tree and another decision tree
arithmetic C4.5.

2.1 Classify and Regression Tree (CART)

Classification and regression tree is a common tree growth algorithm. It is presented

by Breiman etc. [11] and it is a supervised classify. It trains the samplings to construct
binary tree and decode to classify. The feature is to take advantage of the binary tree-
structured fully, in other words, root node includes all samplings. Root node is
divided up into two child node in definite divide rules. This process repeats again in
child node and becomes a regression progress until the child node can not be divided
into two child nodes. Train of thought of construction a CART is that based on the
 Classification Methods of Remote Sensing Image 355

whole sampling data, build up a multilevel and multi-leaf nodes tree to reflect
relations between nodes and then cut the tree to build up a series of child trees and
select appropriate tree in order to classify the data. In details, the process includes
building up a tree and pruning a tree.

2.1.1 Tree Growth

A discrimination of tree nodes is named a branch and it corresponds to a subset of
training samples. Branch of root node corresponds to the whole training samplings.
Thereafter discrimination is process of partition training samplings. So process of
building up a tree is querying property to produce partition rules. In this paper, CART
adopts a index called node impurity level: i(N) presents the impurity level of node
N. When mode data in node cone from the same category, i(N)=0; when categories of
data distributes evenly, i(N) will be very big. Partition rules are produces based on
minimal value of impurity level function. Here two impurity functions are introduced.
(1)Entropy Impurity, is also called information impurity:

i (N ) = P (w j )log 2 P ( w j ) (1)
j

Including, P(w j ) is the calculus of probability accounting for w j mode sampling

data that node N belonged to of the whole samplings. According to the characters of
entropy, if all mode data come from the same category, the impurity level is zero; or
else impurity level is more than zero; when all categories data appears with the same
calculus of probability, entropy is the maximum.
(2) VAR ImpurityGini impurity level.According to node samplings come from
different categories and it is related with total distribution variance, below formula is
put forward.

i (N ) = P (wi )P (w j ) = 1 P 2 (w j ) (2)
i j j

Meaning of Gini impurity level is to represent error rate of category making in

node N.
When given a tree which has grown to node N and the node is attribute queried, a
visible heuristic train of thought is to select the query whose impurity level drops
fastest. The impurity level drops can be noted:

i (N ) = i (N ) PL i (N L ) (1 PL )i (N R ) (3)

Including, N L and N R are separately left node and right node; i( N L ) , i ( N R ) are
separately impurity level. PL is the probability that when query T is adopted, the tree
grows from N to N L . And the optimum query value S is the maximum value
of i (T ) .
356 L. Jiang et al.

2.1.2 Tree Pruning

If we persist in building up trees until all the leaf nodes reach minimal impurity level.
The data will be fitted excessively and classify tree will degenerate to a convenient
lookup table. It is maybe not good for noise signal lamp generalization
performance of bigger Bayes error. On the contrary, if the branches stop too early,
error of training sampling will be not small enough resulted in category performance
is very poor. A main stopping branch method is pruning, at the same can prevent the
tree growing too gigantic. In this paper, below index is adopted to reach the aim.

cos t = size + i(n )

leaf node
(4)

cos t is represented cost function of tree weighting error probability and complexity
penalty summation. size is represented leaf node quantity to weight complexity of

tree classifier. is represented complexity index. i(n) is represented

leaf node
summation of impurity level of all of leaf nodes to show the uncertainty of adopting
this classification tree to classify training samplings.
According to formula (4), tree pruning can be completed by below two steps:
(1) In all the brother leaf nodes, compare cos t after combined leaf nodes.
(2) Delete the leaf node that cos t reduces the most. If cos t has not reduced,
nothing will be done.
Repeat above pruning process until pruning can not go on.
In pruning process, training error deduces with leaf nodes increasing; testing error
deduces at the beginning and reaches minimum and then gradual roll up affected by
training samplings. Take use of independent data to test, and select the subtree which
has the minimum test error as decision tree. This paper adopts a heuristics verification
technique cross validation to select the best tree: 10-fold cross validation. The
training samplings are divided into ten subsets which are equality in number and
disjoint with each other. Classifier will train the data 10 times and every time nine
groups data subsets are trained and the test one is as validation set to estimate testing
error. Estimated testing error is the average value of the ten groups.

2.2 C4.5 Basic Theory

C4.5 is another widely applied signal decision tree building up method, and is adopts
information gain ratio to classifier. It uses training group to select the properties whose
information capture rate is the largest and information gain in not less than all
properties average value as tree nodes. Take every possible value as a branch of node
and recursively builds up a decision tree. Entropy impurity level function in CART is
adopted in building up a tree. The information gain is equivalent to impurity level
decreasing value in CART. In addition, index of capture rate is added in order to wipe
off influence of high branch property. At the same time, capture rate take leaf node
count and size of every node after every partition into account. Consideration objects
mainly are every partition but not information content in category. Termination
 Classification Methods of Remote Sensing Image 357

condition is that properties of records in subset are the same or no property can be
divided.
The difference compared with CART, C4.5 take advantage of statistical significant
error probability technique based on branches to realize pruning. Another significant
difference is that processing method to damage pattern. In training period, C4.5 has
not adopted surrogate split to settle damage of categorization data, but adopts
probability weighting method to deal with property missing.

2.3 A New Technique Adopted in Decision TreeBoosting Method

In decision tree classifier designing, a boosting technology is widely used in the

middle period of 1990s in machine learning field to improve classifier precision. This
method can boost samplings classifier precision which is difficult to recognize. At the
same time, this technology can cut down sensitivity that classifier algorithm affecting
data noise and training sampling error.
Boosting is a learning method which can boost any learning algorithm precision
and it can boost weak learn algorithm to strong learn algorithm. Its theory comes from
probably approximately correct learning model. It can take advantage of some
learning algorithm to generate a series of base classifiers. Every base classify training
depends on classifier results produced by former classifier and endows failed training
samplings with major weight to pay them more attention in subsequent learning. At
last, classifier weights voting every base classifier and gets the last result and reduces
signal classifier error and improve classify precision. Freund and Schapire brought
forward the most pragmatic boosting algorithmAdaBoost according to boosting
basic theory in 1995 and widely applied.

3 Conclusion

The advantage of decision tree algorithm used in remote sensing data classify lies in that
it can show the shortage of MLC algorithm when deals with complicated distribution
data sets. Decision tree has better flexibility and robustness for data distribution feature
and classify marking. So when remote sensing image data features distribution is very
complicated or dimensions of source data have different statistical distribution and
scales, decision tree classify method can obtain the best classified results.
Tree classify construction of decision classify method need not suppose some sort
of parametric density distribution in advance. So the whole classify precision is
superior to traditional parametric statistics classify method. But with the development
of artificial intelligence technology and theory, study of remote sensing image
classify has developed to a higher level. Geonomy knowledge and aid decision
making of geographic information can boost precision of remote sensing image
classification and information extraction and expert system is a good means to resolve
this problem. So combination of decision tree and expert system based on knowledge
is becoming a cause for concern.
358 L. Jiang et al.

Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the National Science and Technology Major Project of the
Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant No. 2009ZX03001-019-01),
Special fund project for Basic Science Research Business Fee, AIIS(Grant No. 2010-J).

References
1. Li, S., Ding, S.: Decision Tree Classify Method and Application in Earth Coverage
Classify. Remote Sensing Technology and Application 17(1), 611 (2002)
2. Luo, L., Gong, H.: Study and Implement of Remote Sensing Image Decision Tree
Classifier. Remote Sensing Information, 1316 (2006)
3. Li, F., Li, M.: Remote Sensing Image Auto Classify Study Based on Combination of
Artificial Neural Networks and Decision Tree. Remote Sensing Information 3, 325
(2003)
4. Jiang, Q., Liu, H.: Use Texture Analysis to Extract TM Image Information. Remote
Sensing Journal 8(5), 458464 (2004)
5. Friedl, M.A., Brodley, C.E., Strahler, A.H.: Maximizing land Cover Classification
Accuracies Produced by Decision Trees at Continental to Global Scales. IEEE
Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 37(2), 969977 (1999)
6. Di, K., Li, D., Li, D.: Remote Sensing Image Classify Study Based on Spatial Data
Mining. Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Mapping Journal 125(1), 4248
(2000)
7. Mclver, D.K., Friedl, M.A.: Estimating Pixel-scale land Cover Classification Confidence
Using Non-parametric Machine Learning Methods. IEEE Transaction on Geo-science and
Remote Sensing 39, 19591968 (2001)
8. Mclver, D.K., Friedl, M.A.: Using Prior Probabilities in Decision-tree Remotely Sensed
Data. Remote Sensing of Environment 81, 253261 (2002)
9. Zhan, X., Sohlberg, R.A., Townshend, J.R.G.: Detection of Land Cover Changes Using
MODIS 250 m Data. Remote Sensing of Environment 83, 336350 (2002)
10. Rogan, J., Franklin, J., Roberts, D.A.: A Comparison of Methods of Monitoring Multi-
temporal Vegetation Change Using Thematic Mapping Imagery. Remote Sensing of
Environment 80(1), 143156 (2002)
11. Li, S., Zhang, E.: Remote Sensing Image Classify Method Study Based on Decision Tree.
Territory Study and Development 22(1), 1721 (2003)
 Computer-Aided Design System Development of Fixed
Water Distribution of Pipe Irrigation System

Mingyao Zhou, Susheng Wang, Zhen Zhang, and Lidong Chen

College of Hydraulic Science and Engineering, Yangzhou University,

31 middle Jiangyang Rord, Yangzhou 225009, Jiangsu Province, P.R. China
Tel.: +86-514-87978640; Fax: +86-514-87978640
myzhouyz@163.com

Abstract. It is necessary to research a cheap and simple fixed water distribution

device according to the current situation of the technology of low-pressure pipe
irrigation. This article proposed a fixed water distribution device with round ta-
ble based on the analysis of the hydraulic characteristics of low-pressure pipe
irrigation systems. The simulation of FLUENT and GAMBIT software con-
ducted that the flow of this structure was steady with a low head loss comparing
to other types of devices. In order to improve the design efficiency, a program
was made using Visual Basic. The system was user-friendly, flexible operation,
convenient and able to meet the needs of different users.

Keywords: pipeline; irrigation; fixed water distribution device; Computer-

Aided.

1 Introduction
As the economy developed speedy, the contradiction between the water use of indus-
try, agriculture and life will be more prominent. So developing water saving agricul-
ture comes to be an important measure to the contradiction and to improve the grain
yield (Department of Rural Water Resources in Ministry of water resources, 1998;
Yuanhua Li et al., 1999; Ligui Xie et al., 2001). The low-pressure pipeline irrigation
system is a new water saving and energy saving irrigation system in our country these
years. It proved to be saving water more than 40%, energy 20~30%, and land 2~4%.
With the significant benefits and broad prospect, the low-pressure pipeline irrigation
has been becoming the major trends of water saving irrigation project(Department of
Science and Education in Ministry of water resources, 1991).
Water gaging equipment and technology is the basic measure to plan the water us-
ing and to control the irrigation quality. It can not make the water arrangement
of every plot accurate without water gaging equipment, though the recent water dis-
tribution devices have the control ability. So developing the fixed water distribution
device of the pipeline system is necessary to adapt to the field irrigation management,
and provide instantly accurate water allocation(Shuangen Yu et al., 2004). Water

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 359366, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
360 M. Zhou et al.

distribution device contains tee, standpipe and hydrant, but the research on fixed wa-
ter distribution device of pipeline is still relatively few(Xiao Li et al., 1996; Qingfeng
Ji et al., 2001; Changde Wang, 2005). Considering the economic, reasonable and op-
erational factors, this article discussed the fixed water distribution device with round
table based on the comparison and analysis of current hydrant(Qingseng He
et al., 1992; Jiesheng Huang et al., 1998; Zhengrong Huang et al., 2001; Liguo Ming
et al., 2002).

2 Structure Design of Fixed Water Distribution Device with

Round Table

2.1 The Principle of Operation

From the comparison and analysis, we chose the adjustable fixed water distribution
device with spring structure. The structure is shown in Fig.1.

Fig. 1. Fixed water distribution device with round table 1-shell; 2-spring; 3-ball valve; 4-ball
bar; 5-butterfly valve

The bottom of the water distribution device is controlled by butterfly valve. When
the pipeline works, the butterfly valve is opened, and the spring becomes deformed
under the impulse of water flow. The deformation is larger as the water pressure is
higher, and the ball goes to the upper part of the device. For the special structure of
the round table, the area of flow comes down and the flow rate stays steady. And vice
versa.

2.2 Design of the Structure Dimension

Because of the water impulse force, the ball will be at different places. If we want the
flow rate maintain steady, the area of flow should be corresponding to the water
pressure. This can be put into practice by the structure of round table. The structure
dimension is shown in Fig.2.
 Computer-Aided Design System Development of Fixed Water Distribution 361

In Fig.2, r1 is the radius of the ball, r and R is the radius of the top and the bot-
tom of the round table, R1 is the radius at the position of flow area, and h is height
of the round table. The structure dimension design can be divided into three steps:

Fig. 2. Structure dimension of the device

First, set the ball radius, then calculate R1 by (1).

A
R1 = + r1 (1)
.

Second, make certain the height of the round table combining the standpipe.
Finally, calculate r and R. It should be in the standard pipe size, in order that it is
propitious to manufacture and install.
In additional, the top and bottom of the round table need to meet the conditions as
follows:
(1)The area of the top is greater than the minimal flow area of the device.
(2)There is a differential between the area of the top and the bottom, so the flow
area can change as the ball moving.
(3)There should not be a huge difference between the radius of the bottom and the
standpipe, or it is easy to damage and hard to install.

2.3 Design of the Spring

It made a simple treatment when design the spring. The spring was thought to be a
uniform elastic rod and it only did one-dimensional longitudinal vibration(Zhilun Xu,
2002). When the spring interacted to other objects, it followed the Hookes law. So
Hookes law became the starting point of the spring problem. The analysis of the
balls force balance is shown in Fig.3.
362 M. Zhou et al.

Fig. 3. Force analysis of the ball

In Fig.3, F1 is the water impulse force, F2 is the elastic force, and G is the balls
gravity.

F1 = F2 + G . (2)

F2 = Q v + P1 r12 G . (3)

In the formula, Q is the runoff of the device, m3/s; is the density of water, kg/m3;
V is the flow rate, m/s; P1 is hydrodynamic pressure, pa.

The elasticity of the spring can be ascertained by the Hooke's Law F = k x.

F2 N F21 Qv N + PN r1 Qv1 P1r1

2 2

k= = (4)
x xmax .

3 Flow Field Simulation of Fixed Water Distribution Device

The structure can be improved by flow field analysis using FLUENT software. At
the same time, we can compare the advantages and disadvantages with the other
structures.

3.1 Simulation of the Flow Field

(1)Build the model by GAMBIT

GAMBIT is a high-quality pre-processor for CFD analysis which can be used to
build models and generate grids. Before the CFD simulation, draw the grid figure and
the boundary nodes by GAMBIT, then structured the grids, set boundary type and
save the grids.
(2)Simulation the flow by FLUENT
Start the FLUENT 2D solver, read the grids file, and ascertain the unit length. Set

the fluid physical properties and boundary conditions, use the standard onflow
model and non-coupled solution method to solve the steady flow of two-dimensional
space(Fujun Wang, 2005; Hongwei Wang et al.,2009).
 Computer-Aided Design System Development of Fixed Water Distribution 363

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

aSliding water distribution device bBall valve water distribution device

Fig. 4. Comparative analysis of flow field

cGland water distribution device dPlate valve water distribution device

3.2 Simulation Conclusion

From the Fig.4, we can conclude that the ball valve water distribution device with
round table had a more steady flow. The flow rate of this structure changed slightly
and the fluid state was pretty well. There were many swirls in the other three struc-
tures and the flow was disordered which could not fill the pipe. We can obtain some
conclusions through the simulation result:
(1)Arc-shaped bend pipe was more favorable than right angle bend pipe for the
water flow steady through and keeping a stable flow field.
(2) The round table was a bundle mouth structure, which was more suitable for the
fluid flow. And that played a role of steadying flow diversion, ensured the flow rate
changed little, and reduced the swirl generation.
(3) The ball valve measured up to the law of liquid flow, didnt hinder the water
flow. The flow can keep their original streamline with few swirls and turbulence.

4 Computer Aided Design System of Fixed Water Distribution

Device
In order to improve the design efficiency, we compiled a design program of fixed
water distribution device using Visual Basic language to meet the different irrigation
conditions and different users.
364 M. Zhou et al.

4.1 System Development Process

When develop a new system, we should confirm the objectives, clients and imple-
mentations first, and make the system intuitive with friendly interface, operability
and flexibility. Therefore, it should make sure the development process of the
system.
(1) Fixed the arrangement of the pipeline system, the distance between the water
distribution devices, the device number, the pipe diameter, the runoff and other key
factors.
(2) Solved the head loss of pipeline.

n
(nq)1.77
h = 1.1 0.948 10 5 n L (5)
i =1 d 4.77 .
In the formula, d, q, l, i were separately the pipe diameter, single device flowrate,
the distance between the water distribution devices and the device number.
(3) Solved the flow rate of every water distribution device.

H n = H n 1 + h . (6)

Vn = 2 gH n . (7)
Hn is the head at the calculated device, and Vn is flow rate.
(4) Calculated the area needed for every device when they had the same flowrate.

An = q / Vn . (8)
(5) Set the structure dimension of the device.
(6) Ascertained the position of the ball in the device. For obtaining the flow area,
the ball moving distance x was needed.

AN / + r1 - r
xn = h (9)
R r .
(7) Analyzed the force in the ball.

Fn = qVn + H n r12 . (10)

(8) Calculated the elastic coefficient.
Fn F1
k= (11)
h xn .
In the system, L, n, d , q and r1 were the parameters that needed to be input.
 Computer-Aided Design System Development of Fixed Water Distribution 365

4.2 Operation System Design

We programmed the design process by Visual Basic language through the analysis
above. The operation interface is shown in Fig.5.

Fig. 5. Operation interface of the computer aided system

In the main program interface, input the parameters, then click the calculate button,
the device dimension and the elastic coefficient of the spring will be obtained.
The operation is convenient, and the program is easy to maintain and manage. Fur-
ther more, the program has the ability of extension for adding the other design mod-
ules in case it is needed.

5 Conclusions
(1)The structure of round table had a steady flow and low head loss proved by the
flow simulation. It satisfied the design demand and adapted to the fixed distribution of
pipe irrigation.
(2)The spring is the main part of the round table device, and there will be a prob-
lem with the accuracy of the device when the spring was rusted. So the structure still
needs to be optimized and improved.

Acknowledgements
This research was funded by National key Technology R & D Program of China
(accession number 2006BAD11B03-02).
366 M. Zhou et al.

References
Department of Rural Water Resources in Ministry of water resources: Engineering of pipe
transmission, pp. 101123. China water Power Press (1998) (in Chinese)
Li, Y.: Theory and technology of water saving irrigation, pp. 4550. Wu Han Water and Hy-
dropower University Press (1999) (in Chinese)
Xie, L., Wang, Y., Xie, Z.: Research on field engineering complement of low-pressure pipeline
irrigation. Water Saving Irrigation (3) (2001) (in Chinese)
Department of Science and Education in Ministry of water resources: Transmission and irriga-
tion technology of low-pressure pipeline, 6372 (1991) (in Chinese)
Yu, S., Zuo, X., Zhao, W.: Water gaging status and development trend of irrigation district of
china. Water Saving Irrigation (4) (2004) (in Chinese)
Li, X., Sun, F., Zhang, L.: The pipe material and fittings of pipeline irrigation system, vol. (2).
Science Press (1996) (in Chinese)
Ji, Q., Shen, B., Li, G.: Research development progress of water gaging device. Irrigation and
Drainage (12) (2001) (in Chinese)
Wang, C.: Application of irrigation water gaging technology of china. China Water Conserva-
tion (7) (2005) (in Chinese)
He, Q., Li, Z., Li, C.: Research on multifunction water distribution valve of low-pressure pipe-
line. China Rural Water and Hydropower, 2428 (1992) (in Chinese)
Huang, Z., Zhang, Z.: Simulation and study of auto-hydrant irrigation system. Irrigation and
Drainage (4) (2001) (in Chinese)
Ming, L., Xu, Q., et al.: Application research of a new autogenous pressure hydrant. China
Rural Water and Hydropower (6) (2002) (in Chinese)
Huang, J., Sheng, K., Zhang, Y.: A new irrigation device of paddy fieldauto-hydrant. China
Rural Water and Hydropower (8) (1998) (in Chinese)
Xu, Z.: Concise guide of elastic mechanics, vol. 8. China Higher Education Press (2002) (in
Chinese)
Wang, F.: Application of CFD in the turbulence analysis and performance prediction of hydrau-
lic machinery. Journal of China Agricultural University 10(4) (2005) (in Chinese)
Wang, H., Liu, X., Liu, D.: CFD analysis of ball check valve. Fluid Transmission and Con-
trol (2) (2009) (in Chinese)
Construction and Practice of Information Demonstration
Area in Mentougou District of Beijing

Juan Pan, Na Zhang, Shan Yao, and Jian Xu

Department of Computer and Information Engineering, Beijing University of Agriculture,

Beijing, P.R. China 102206
juan_pan@163.com

Abstract. The rural informatization is one of the important foundation for the
construction of the metropolis-modern agriculture, which Beijing government
makes great effort to develop now. Based on current situation of rural informa-
tization construction in Mentougou district of Beijing, this study established an
information demonstration area in order to integrate the information from the
local natural ecology, agricultural production, special products trading and gov-
ernment. We made use of the technology of 3S, database and network to
achieve the digitalization and visualization of the rural information. The study
helps to guide the agricultural production and agricultural products circulation
and offers the effective decision support for the sustainable development of the
demonstration area.

Keywords: rural informatization, information demonstration area, 3S, informa-

tion service platform, Eco-Agriculture.

1 Introduction
With the balance development of modern rural and urban areas, Beijing strengthens
the rural informatization construction. The rural information infrastructure in Men-
tougou district has made remarkable progress after years of effort. An integrated
basic information service network has been established, which provides a strong
guarantee for Mentougou informatization construction (Shi 2009). 3S and Internet
technology provide a new mode for the management of rural information, which
realizes the management of spatial information that cant be carried out in the
traditional one.
The Commission of Science and Technology of Mentougou district has established
three websites successivelyHigh-quality Goods Website, Chinese Walnut Website
and Ecology Commercial City Website. However, the first two websites do not have
the background system, and the third one needs to improve its trading function. Fur-
thermore, these three websites provide some redundant function, and their network
systems are instable. According to the current situation of informatization construc-
tion in Mentougou district, the study established information demonstration area in

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 367373, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
368 J. Pan et al.

order to strengthen coordination and integration of rural information resources, and

effectively promote the development of information technology in rural areas.
We made use of 3S, database and network technology to manage and develop all
kinds of rural information. Through the digitalization and visualization of the rural
information, the study helps to guide the agricultural production and agricultural
products circulation and offers the effective decision support for the sustainable de-
velopment of the demonstration area.

2 The Overview of Study Area

Mentougou district is located in the southwest of Beijing, 62 kilometers east-west,
34 kilometers north-south, with a total area of 1,455 square kilometers. It is located
at 115 25 00 ~ 116 10 07E, 39 48 34 ~ 40 10 37N. The mountain area
accounts for about 98.5% of the whole area, and the plain accounts for 1.5%. The
study area belongs to the middle latitude continental monsoon climate. Its droughty
and windy in spring, hot and rainy in summer, cool and moist in fall, cold and dry
in winter. There is great difference between western mountainous area and eastern

plain in climate, the annual mean temperature is 11.7 in the east and 10.2 in
the west. There are three rivers flowing through the study area the Yongding
River, Daqing River and Beiyun River. Yongding River covers the largest
drainage area, which is about 1,368.03 square kilometers. Mentougou integrated
ecosystem is composed of mountains, green fields and water system, which is
an important ecological barrier and water source conservation area for Beijing.
Therefore Mentougou is the key district to ensure the sustainable development of
the Capital.

3 Structure and Function of the System

According to the requirement of the eco-conservation and terrain features, the study
established the information demonstration area in order to improve the competitive-
ness of agricultural products, optimize and upgrade the rural economic structure, and
transform the pattern of economic growth. The construction of information demon-
stration area made full use of the advantages of GIS in data management, information
visualization and spatial information analysis, integrated the information of natural
ecology, agricultural production, special products trading and government, and estab-
lished an eco-agriculture information service platform. Two towns, Wangping and
Miaofenshan, are firstly selected as the experimental units. Then the practice is ex-
tended to the whole district.

3.1 Natural Ecological Information Module

This module provides information display and query of meteorological, natural vege-
tation, hydrology, geology, soil type and so on. The meteorological information
mainly involves temperature, relative humidity, precipitation and sunshine hours.
 Construction and Practice of Information Demonstration Area 369

3.2 Agricultural Production Information Module

This module mainly records the information of agricultural resources to realize the
network management of agricultural production process. The information includes
farm fields, soil nutrient, soil fertility, varieties of agricultural products, planting
area, tree age and its spatial distribution. The soil nutrient includes the organic
matter, total nitrogen, available nitrogen, available phosphorus, available potas-
sium and PH value. In addition, according to standardized production practice,
this module records the information of water and fertilizer management,
training and pruning , pest control, growth process of crop and so on. All of the
above mentioned information can be displayed and queried with the field parcel as
a unit.

3.3 Special Products Trading Module

Mentougou district produces abundantly special products, such as pear, walnut,

cherry, almond and apricot. Some products, named as the tributes to the imperial
palace, are famous over China, especially the roses in Xiangjiangou Village,
Miaofengshan town enjoy sound reputation both in domestic and overseas due to big
flowers, thick petal, dense color, fragrant gout and high oil content. Special products
trading module realizes online trading and product tracing. Online trading mainly
includes product information publication and recommendation, agricultural product
credit guarantees, payment function, distribution process and information flow re-
cords. For the function of tracing back the product information, the product identifica-
tion codes are affixed to the smallest package. With the unique identification code, the
platform can query the detailed records of production management, products process-
ing, logistics distribution information, and builds the quality assurance system from
the origin of product to the market.

3.4 Government Affair Management Module

This module issues the related policies and regulations information, and manages
the daily business of towns and villages. The module emphasizes on the statistics
analysis of social and economic data to provide the basic economic evaluation. The
data includes numbers of households, total population, per capital annual net in-
come, per capital disposable income, annual wages income, household business
income, annual property income, annual transfer income, total expenditure and
others.

4 Implementing Scheme

As shown in Fig.1, implementing scheme of the system is composed of data acqui-

sition and processing, database construction and network platform construction.
370 J. Pan et al.

data acquisition

remote GPS fundamental field survey statistical

sensing data data geographic data data data

database construction

platform frame

functional division of the platform

agricultural natural special government

production ecological products affair
information information trading management
module module module module

Mentougou Eco-Agriculture information service platform

Fig. 1. Implementing scheme of the system

4.1 Data Acquisition and Processing

The basic data and maps need to be collected and integrated. The data includes satel-
lite image map, basic map and thematic map, statistical data on rural economy over
years, and other agricultural data of meteorology and envirnment and etc.

4.2 Database Construction

Rural information resources mainly include natural resource information, ecological

information, agricultural production management information, agricultural market
information and government affair information. All the information are processed,
formatted and saved in the information resource database, which can be easily saved,
retrieved, transmitted, published and shared through modern information technology.
 Construction and Practice of Information Demonstration Area 371

According to the local conditions, the information demonstration area constructs

the spatial and attribute database, among which spatial information service is the basic
database. The accuracy, capacity, coverage and update of spatial database not only
affect the current construction of information demonstration area, but also have
far-reaching influence on the economy of the district and the scientific value of the
study. Spatial database integrates the information of topographic, traffic network,
administrative division, soil type, soil nutrient, land use status, field parcel distribu-
tion, temperature, rainfall and so on. Attribute database includes agricultural produc-
tion information, product trading information, product tracing and management of
administrative villages. All the information is connected with field parcel data.

4.3 Network Platform Construction

The study establishes Mentougou Eco-Agriculture information service platform, using

.NET, SQL Server and SuperMap as development tools, C# as development language.
The platform integrates four above-mentioned information management modules to
realize the information query, analysis, decision-making, trading, trace back and oth-
ers. The browser/server structure is applied to the system, and the client users can
access the platform using a web browser.

5 Function Actualization of System

This paper takes management of space data and visualization showing for example to
show the function actualization of system. Visualization showing interface of Men-
tougou geographical space data is showed as Fig.2, which realizes management and
visualization of data such as village boundary, road, water system, soil, vegetation,
landform, farmland and soil using style, etc. The system can brings plane map as well
as three-dimensional relief map, both of the ways of showing can realize the zooming
in and zooming out of the map. In addition, relief map has flight function, which

Fig. 2. Visualization showing interface of Mentougou geographical space data

372 J. Pan et al.

means the user can get access to related information of three-dimensional landform by
user-defined route.
The system provides two query methods: query map by attribute and query attrib-
ute by map. As shown in Fig.3, based on the year, names of town and administrative
village selected by the user, the system shows relevant positional information. When
the user clicks on the map, the system will show information from the attribute data-
base, such as area, numbers of households, agricultural population, income, climate,
fertility of soil, etc.

Fig. 3. Query result of administrative village

6 Conclusion and Prospect

The study establishes the information demonstration area based on the technology
of .NET, 3S and database to realize the integration of rural information resources.
Through fully utilizing the advantages of GIS in map expression, spatial data man-
agement and map processing, the information service platform improves the visuali-
zation and convenient of management of rural information, advances the management
efficiency of rural information.
Further study and discussion:
(1) To provide technical support for the planting structure adjustment, product va-
riety update and agricultural division based on further study on the database of cli-
mate and agricultural resources.
(2) To establish the fertilizer recommendation system for green food according to
the soil nutrient database of special products, and to provide scientific support for
cultivation of high yield and quality with the study of the relation between soil nutri-
tion status and product yield and quantity.
(3) To establish the remote sensing monitoring system to monitor diseases and in-
sect pests of special products and provide real reference for decision-making.
(4) To build comprehensive evaluation model for ecological capacity maximizing
the ecological, economic and social benefits in order to promote the virtuous circle of
ecosystem, and provide decision support for sustainable development of the area.
 Construction and Practice of Information Demonstration Area 373

Acknowledgments
This study was funded by the Commission of Science and Technology of Mentougou
district, and the project number is D0804090041000.

References
He, L.Y., Huang, W., Guo, Z.H., Miao, J.: Status, Task and Problem of Information Demon-
stration Village Construction in China. In: CCTA 2007, pp. 409415 (2007) (in Chinese)
Li, M.: Demand Analysis and Development Strategy for Informatization of Rural Area in Bei-
jing city. J. Agriculture Network Information, 4749 (2009) (in Chinese)
Shi, Y.Q.: Reflections and Suggestions On Rural Informatization Construction in the Mountain
Areas of Beijing. J. Agriculture Network Information, 4144 (2009) (in Chinese)
Zhu, H.J., Wu, H.R., Feng, C., Zhong, X., Sun, X.: The Application of GIS in the Information
Service Platform for New Village Construction. J. Journal of Agricultural Mechanization
Research, 164166 (2008) (in Chinese)
 Data Acquisition Method for Measuring Mycelium
Growth of Microorganism with GIS

Juan Yang1,, Jingyin Zhao1, Qian Guo2, Yunsheng Wang1, and Ruijuan Wang2
1
Technology & Engineering Research Center for Digital Agriculture,
Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shanghai 201106, P.R. China
2
Institute of Edible Fungi, Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shanghai 201106,
P.R. China
yangjuan@saas.sh.cn

Abstract. Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus or most microorganisms,

consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. It is through the hyphae
that a fungus absorbs nutrients from its environment. For most fungi, the ability
of nutrition translation from mycelium to fruit body is determined by growth
status of hyphae. It is very necessary to study the effect of environmental fac-
tors on mycelium growth, and know the befitting environment condition. How-
ever, finding a good data acquisition method for measuring the mycelium is the
key point.
A new method was introduced in the paper. The method is using image iden-
tification and space data analysis function of the GIS to acquire development
rate of mycelium i.e. hyphae. Pleurotus eryngii under commercial production is
taken as example. The effect of different temperature and humidity on myce-
lium growth was analyzed. It is hoped to explore a new method for scientific
and precise measurement the growth status and development rate of mycelium.

Keywords: mycelium, data acquisition, microorganism, Pleurotus eryngii.

1 Introduction
Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus or most microorganisms, consisting of a
mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. It is through the hyphae that a fungus absorbs
nutrients from its environment. Hyphae are very wispy and only several microns long.
The structure of hyphae only can be observed by microscope, so the growth of hyphae
is usually expressed by morphologic change of mycelium. There are two methods to
measure mycelium growth at present. The first method is physical method. By check-
ing the space change of the mark on the forepart of a mycelium or the diameter
change of a mycelium in certain period of time, the growth of the mycelia can be ob-
served. However, this method has a big error, moreover, it only adapts to the smooth

The research was supported by the project of the Science and Technology Commission of
Shanghai Municipality, China (grant No. 08DZ2210600 and No. 08QA14058) and the Na-
tional Natural Science Foundation of China (grant No. 30800765).

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 374380, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Data Acquisition Method for Measuring Mycelium Growth of Microorganism 375

agar substrate in laboratory [1] and can not be used in nature or in production of edi-
ble fungi. For the circumstances outside the laboratory, the substrate is often rough
surfaced soil or the admixture of wood chip, corncob chip and so on. Another ap-
proach is to measure the fungal-specific biochemical markers [2], which is classified
as chemical method. The signature fatty acid 18:26,9 [3], ergostrrolp[4] and chi-
tin[5] have been used as a marker for ectomycorrhizal(EM) fungi[7-8], and the neutral
lipid fatty acid 16:15 has been used as a marker for arbuscular mycorrhizal(AM)
fungi[8]. For example, ergosterol is a fungus specific lipid used as a marker for living
fungal biomass [4,6], by quantifying its ergosterol content where the activity of myce-
lium was determined[9]. There is another situation for some fungi that the target
production is the antiviral, antibacterial or antifungal substances from its secondary
metabolites, such as Pycnoporus sanguineus, which produces an important secondary
metabolite, cinnabarin. The growth of the fungus was represented by the cinnabarin
production [10].
However, most fungi or microorganisms do not have the specific biochemical mat-
ters in them. How to quantitatively express the growth of mycelium i.e. hyphae? A
new method named photogrammetry was introduced in the paper for measuring the
growth of mycelium. The approach was also applied in the GIS data acquisition [11].
The key of the approach is using image identification and space data analysis function
of the GIS software. Then the mycelium of Pleurotus eryngii under commercial
production was taken as example. The effect of different temperature and humidity
on mycelium growth was analyzed. The aim of this paper is to explore a new method
for scientific and precise measurement of growth status and development rate of
mycelium.

2 Materials and Methods

Mycelium Living in All Kinds of Substrate

The method is not only appropriate for measuring the growth of mycelium living in
the smooth agar substrate in laboratory experiments, but also for the mycelium living
in almost all kinds of substrate, for example, the mycelium of Agaricus bis-
porus(Lange) Sing. living in the soil, the mycelium of Pleurotus eryngii living in the
admixture of wood chip, corncob chip and so on.
It needs to mention that the method is not applicable for EM fungi or AM fungi,
in which the mycelium accretes with plant roots and forms a symbiont. There are no
methods having been available to distinguish mycelia from EM fungi or AM fungi
from saprotrophic fungal mycelia in soil [7]. Therefore, the amount of EM fungi or
AM fungi is usually calculated by the chemical method, which is reflected by their
specific compounds.

Image Acquisition

The strongpoint of this method is that it is no need to destroy the growth of mycelium
or touch the mycelium in data acquisiton, so the process and trends of growth of
hyphae can be monitored.
376 J. Yang et al.

The image of mycelium can be obtained by digital cameras with at least 1024 768
pixels or 300 resolutions.

Image Processing

The obtained photo is usually a color image, which has three bands, respectively, red
(band_1), green (band_2) and blue (band_3). Through opening the band image of the
color image in the ArcMap software, the monochrome image of the color image can
be obtained. In the monochrome image, each pixel has a gray value (usually between
0 and 255) that specifies a particular shade of gray. Black is 0 and white is 255.
Taking the mycelium of Pleurotus eryngii as example, the hyphae live in the sub-
strate loaded in the bottle, and the mycelium revealed on the bottle mouth is a window
that reflects the growth of the hyphae. The picture of the mycelium on the bottle
mouth was taken and opened in the ArcMap software. In the band_3 (blue) image of
the three band image, the contrast between mycelium and substrate is the biggest
one(see Fig.1). The second step is extracting the region to be analyzed on the photo
by the Spatial Analyst ToolsExtraction of the ArcGIS. That is, the useless region
is removed (see Fig.2B) and the Object Image Layer is obtainded.

Fig. 1. Three band image of the acquired color image

Fig. 2. The key image layer in the method

A.the original image; B. the image that useless region was removed; C. the raster layer of
substrate and mycelium pixel.
 Data Acquisition Method for Measuring Mycelium Growth of Microorganism 377

Fig. 3. The raster count of the two pixel value in the Attribute Table of the ArcGIS

Data Acquisition

With the identification tool in the ArcGIS, the gray value of each pixel can be identi-
fied. Because the color of Pleurotus eryngii mycelium is white and the color of
substrate is much darker, the gray value tends to 0 for the pixel of Pleurotus eryngii
mycelium and to 255 for the pixel of the substrate. It is important to confirm the criti-
cal gray value between the mycelium pixel and the substrate pixel. With the critical
gray value, a new raster layer can be got by using the Raster Calculator tool of the
Spatial Analyst Tools in the ArcGIS (see Fig.2C).
In the new raster layer, the pixel of mycelium is valued 1 and the pixel of substrate
is valued 0 if input formula in the Raster Calculator tool shows the Object Image
Layer > the critical gray value , or the pixel of mycelium is valued 0 and the pixel
of substrate is valued 1 if input formula in the Raster Calculator tool shows the
Object Image Layer < the critical gray value . Opening the Attribute Table of the
raster layer, the raster count of two pixel values is displaying (see Fig.3). The propor-
tion of mycelium can be calculated through the raster count of mycelium divided by
the sum of the raster count of mycelium and substrate. By monitoring the develop-
ment of the proportion of mycelium in unit times, the development rate of hyphae can
be expressed.

3 Application and Discussion

Background

An example about the effect analysis of temperature and humidity for mycelium
growth is given to illustrate the application of the method.
There are two phases for the hyphae of Pleurotus eryngii under commercial pro-
duction. In the first phase, the strains of Pleurotus eryngii are inoculated into the
culture medium loaded in plastic bottle. Then the bottle with the strains is incubated

under conditions at 25 , 70-75% RH about 25 days, and it is still kept in this situa-
tion about 10 days for afterripening after the hyphae spreading into the entire bottle.
On top of the bottle, lid is removed and the surface of the culture medium is mechani-
cally scratched to remove the exterior aerial mycelium and a 15mm layer of substrate.
This process is used to induce uniform formation of primordia with synchronous
mushroom production [12]. The opened bottles are placed in a production room
378 J. Yang et al.

controlled at temperature about 18 , 85-95% RH. The hyphae are entering into the
second development phase.
The second phase is very important, especially the hyphae in the surface of the cul-
ture medium are important because they will kink into the bud of mushroom. The air
climate control systems for the growing rooms are designed and manufactured by
Patron AEM in Netherlands in this study. These unique systems are able to control
temperature, humidity and CO2 concentration in growing rooms very precisely and
efficiently.
In the experiment of the example in this study, treatments included temperature at

14 , 15 , 16 , 17 and 18 with 97% RH, and relative humidity at 89%, 91%,

93%, 95% and 97% at 16 . Three replicates for each treatment were set. The ex-
periment was a 2 (supplement) 5 (treatment) design with 3 replicates per treatment.
The mycelium growth was measured daily (every 24 hours) at 8 bottles for each
experiment. Each value is the mean of 24 measured results (3 replicates8 bottles).

Results and Analysis

In the mycelium growth stage, the mycelium proportion showed remarkable change in
different days (Tab.1). The mycelium growth followed the theoretical logistic growth
curve exactly (Fig.4).

Table 1. Pleurotus eryngii mycelium growth at different times

time/d 1 2 3 4 5 6
mycelium
18.13% a 27.70% b 44.47% c 56.49% d 63.79% e 67.29% f
proportion (%)
1
The mycelium proportion was each days means of two treatments. Different letters
indicate statistically different values (ANOVA/LSD) (P<0.05).

The effects of temperature on mycelium of Pleurotus eryngii over a range of tem-

peratures from 14 to 18 are shown in Fig.4A and the effects of humidity over a
range of relative humidity from 89% to 97% are shown in Fig.4B. The mycelium pro-

portion showed a biggish difference at temperature from 14 to 18 . As the tem-
perature increases, the mycelium development rate grows faster. It is indicated that

the temperature of 17 and 18 for mycelium growth is much better than other tem-
peratures. The mycelium development rate also grows faster as the RH increases.
However, there is no difference in the mycelium proportion under RH from 89% to
97%.
The above results can also be shown from the statistically multiple comparisons

(Tab. 2). At different temperature, the mycelium developed the fastest at 17 , fol-

lowed by 18 , 16 , 15 and 14 . And there is remarkable difference for the my-

celium proportion among 17 and 18 , 16 , as well as among 18 , 16 and

15 , 14 . Under different humidity, the mycelium developed the fastest under 95%
and 93% RH, followed by 97%, 89% and 91% RH. However, in the experience, it
was found that the surface of the substrate was very dry under 93% RH during the late
stage of mycelium growth, and the kinked buds of mushroom were less.
 Data Acquisition Method for Measuring Mycelium Growth of Microorganism 379

(a) (b)
Fig. 4. Growth of Pleurotus eryngii mycelium incubated at different temperatures and relative
humidity. (a) temperature treatment. (b) Humidity treatment.

Table 2. Effect of temperature and humidity on growth of Pleurotus eryngii mycelium

Treatment mycelium Treatment mycelium

(temperature) proportion (%) (humidity) proportion (%)
17 0.5979 a 95% 0.5546 a
18 0.5371 b
93% 0.5279 ab
16 0.5054 b 97% 0.5054 bc
15 0.3600 c
89% 0.4883 c

1
14 0.3350 c
91% 0.4821 c
The mycelium proportion was the means of different treatments. Different letters
indicate statistically different values (ANOVA/LSD) (P<0.05).

Through comprehensive analysis of the data, it is believed that the optimal tem-
perature and humidity conditions for mycelium growth in the growing room is 16
and above, and 95% RH and above.
Using this method, the growth of mycelium can be dynamically monitored with no
mycelium being destroyed. In addition to this, with the same principle of the method in
this paper, in combination with computer image analysis, microscopy can be used in the
study of microorganism structure. And the latter method has been used to quantify the
growth, number and shape of cells in the different tissues of ageing mushrooms [13].

4 Conclusion
GIS can be used for a wide range of applications such as urban and regional planning,
agriculture, and wildlife and natural resource management. GIS is capable of captur-
ing, storing, manipulating, and displaying spatial reference information to allow for
380 J. Yang et al.

efficient data organization and access. The method introduced in the paper can be
named photogrammetry. It mainly uses image identification and space data analysis
function of the GIS.
Three steps are included in the method, that is, image acquisition, image process-
ing and data acquisition. Thereinto, the last two steps are the key. Image analysis is
also one of the major research tasks in photogrammetry currently [11].
The method is not only appropriate for measuring the growth of mycelium living in
the smooth agar substrate in laboratory experiments, but also for the mycelium living
in almost all kinds of substrate. From the examples taken in the paper, it can be seen
that the growth of mycelium can be dynamically and quantatively monitored with no
mycelium being destroyed by using the method.

References
[1] Bending, G.D., Read, D.J.: The structure and function of the vegetative mycelium of ec-
tomycorrhizal plants VI. Activities of nutrient mobilizing enzymes in birch litter colo-
nized by Paxillus involutus (Fr.) Fr. New Phytologist 130, 411417 (1995)
[2] Olsson, P.A.: Signature fatty acids provide tools for determining of the distribution and in-
teractions of mycorrhizal fungi in soil. FFMS Microbiology Ecology 29, 303310 (1999)
[3] Olsson, P.A., Johansen, A.: Lipid and fatty acid composition of hyphae and spores of ar-
buscular mycorrhizal fungi at different growth stages. Mycological Research 104, 429
434 (1996)
[4] Nylund, J.E., Wallander, H.: Ergosterol analysis as a means of quantifying mycorrhizal
biomass. In: Norris, J.R., Read, D.J., Varma, A.K. (eds.) Methods in Microbiology,
vol. 24, pp. 7788. Academic Press, London (1992)
[5] Ekblad, A., Nsholm, T.: Determination of chitin in fungi and mycorrhizal roots by an
improved HPLC analysis of glucosamine. Plant and Soil 178, 2935 (1996)
[6] Ekblad, A., Wallander, H., Nsholm, T.: Chitin and ergosterol combined to measure total
and living biomass in ectomycorrhizae. New Phytologist 138, 143149 (1998)
[7] Wallander, H., Nilsson, L.O., Hagerberg, D., Baath, E.: Estimation of the biomass and
seasonal growth of external mycelium of ectomycorrhizal fungi in the field. New Phy-
tologist 151, 753760 (2001)
[8] Olsson, P.A., Johansen, A.: Lipid and fatty acid composition of hyphae and spores of ar-
buscular mycorrhizal fungi at different growth stages. Mycological Research 104(4),
429434 (2000)
[9] Carrillo, C., Daz, G., Honrubia, M.: Improving the Production of Ectomycorrhizal Fun-
gus Mycelium in a Bioreactor by Measuring the Ergosterol Content. Engineering in Life
Sciences 4(1), 4345 (2004)
[10] Duarte, B.J., Maria, M.D.S., Pacheco Sabrina, M.V., et al.: Comparative study of myce-
lial growth and production of cinnabarin by different strains of Pycnoporus sanguineu.
BioFar. 2(2), 15 (2008)
[11] Heipke, H., Pakzad, K., Straub, B.M.: Image Analysis for GIS Data Acquisition. The
Photogrammetric Record 16, 963985 (2003)
[12] Rodriguez Estrada, A.E., Royse, D.J.: Yield, size and bacterial blotch resistance of Pleu-
rotus eryngii grown on cottonseed hulls/oak sawdust supplemented with manganese,
copper and whole ground soybean. Bioresource Technology 98, 18981906 (2007)
[13] Braaksma, A., van Doorn, A.A., Kieft, H., van Aelst, A.C.: Morphometric analysis of
ageing mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) during postharvest development. Postharvest Bi-
ology and Technology 13, 7179 (1998)
 Decision Support System for Quantitative Calculation of
Crop Climatic Suitability in Hebei Province

Jing Zhang1,3, ,Youfei Zheng1, and Xin Wang2,3

1
Nanjing University of Information Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province,
P.R. China 210044
2
Hebei Provincial Institute of Meteorology, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, P.R. China 050021
3
Hebei Provincial Meteorological and Eco-environmental Laboratory, Shijiazhuang,
Hebei Province, P.R. China 050021
Tel.: +86-311-85218904; Fax: +86-311-85218901
hbqxjzj@126.com

Abstract. The growth and development of crops would not be separated by

comprehensive climatic factors, such as temperature, precipitation, sunshine
and others. To some extent, the behaviors of the climate factors have great af-
fection on the climatic suitability of crops. In order to achieve the quantitative
assessment of climate factors, the decision support system for quantitative cal-
culation on climate suitability of major crops in Hebei province such as winter
wheat, corn and cotton, has been established. Developed by Microsoft Visual
Basic 6.0 language, and program design built in modular structure, the system
was included by three modules following as the database of climatic suitability
over the stages of crops growth and development, calculation of climate suit-
ability degerees and decision-making services. Using the differene periods such
as ten days, month, season, crop growth period as the unit, the quantity changes
of temperature, precipitation and sunshine would be translated into crop-
climatic suitability degrees on different growth perod by membership function
of fuzzy mathematics so as to achieve a quantitative assessment of climatic fa-
tors. The calculated results output adopts grid and graphic formats, and accord-
ing to the results, different management decision-making information.would be
chosen then .It's shown that the analysis results of crop-climatic suitability by
the system for different crops and time perods are consistent with the actual
situation.

Keywords: Fuzzy mathematics, Climatic Suitability, quantitative calculation,

decision support systems.

Hebei Province is a major producer of winter wheat, corn and cotton; it leads the na-
tion in terms of both land acreage and output. Growth of plant is a complex process;
meteorological variables, such as temperature, precipitation, sunshine, play a vital
role in the process. Research of different scales, different crop growth climate
resource and ecology climate adaptability evaluation have had been done by some

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 381389, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
382 J. Zhang, Y. Zheng, and X. Wang

Chinese scholars(Lu Yu-hua et al., 2003; Bai Yongping,2000; Luo Huailiang et al.,
2004; Huang Huang, 1996; Yin Dong, 2002), the suitability of only one meteoro-
logical elements for the growth of crops was also studied(Xu Xuexuan et al., 2000).
In practice, when evaluating whether meteorological conditions are appropriate for
crop growth and development process or not, such terms "favorable" and "unfavor-
able" were tended to assigh, rather vague notions. There is no clear distinction be-
tween the two conditions; thus, convey limited amount of information. In this paper,
this problem would be intended to solve. The objective is to introduce a rigorous
mathematical model to quantify the degree of meteorological favorability for crop
growth. In addition, the exact impact of changing metrological condition on plant
growth would also be revealed. All above these would provide basic data for the
modernization of agricultural resources, and lay a foundation.

1 Underlying Principles of the System

1.1 The Interpretation of Climate Suitability for Crops

Crop Climate Suitability is generated by a membership function of fuzzy mathemat-

ics: numerical change in meteorological factors is the input, and the output is level of
suitability for crop growth, yield and quality.
Temperature, precipitation, sunshine during crop growth period can be each treated
~ ~ ~
as a separate fuzzy set ( T , R , S ). By building membership function of fuzzy sets,
i.e. suitability model, the degree of match between the variables
~ ~ ~

t r s and the
respective fuzzy sets T (t ) , R (r ) , S ( s ) can be calculated, in other words, the suit-
ability of temperature, precipitation and sunshine t r s for crop growth. In
this way, the climate suitability for crops can quantitatively assessed. The scale of
output is from 0 to 1: the bigger, the more desirable.

1.2 Model of Climate Suitability for Crops

1.2.1 Model of Climate Suitability for Winter Wheat

The Model of Climate Suitability for winter wheat in terms of temperature, precipita-
tion, sunshine, as defined as follows(Ma Shuqing et al.,1994):

~ (tij tli ) (thi tij )B thi t0i

T (tij ) = , B= (1)
(t0i tli ) (thi t0i )B t0i tli

rij / rli rij < rli

~
R ( rij ) = 1 rli rij rhi (2)

rhi / rij rij > rhi
 Decision Support System for Quantitative Calculation of Crop Climatic Suitability 383

e [( sij s0i ) / bi ]
2

~ s ij < s0 i
S ( sij ) = (3)
1 sij s 0i
~ ~ ~
Sij = 3 T (tij ) R (rij ) S ( sij ) (4)

Where:
~
T (tij ) represents climate suitability for winter wheat in terms of temperature dur-
ing the ith interval of 10 days within jth month; tij denotes the average temperature
during the period while tli , thi , t0i each indicates the lowest, highest and appropriate
~
average temperature the winter wheat can tolerate. R (rij ) represents climate suitabil-
ity for winter wheat in terms of precipitation during the ith interval of 10 days within
jth month; rij denotes the amount of precipitation (mm) during the period; we define

rli =0.6 r0i , rhi =1.5 r0i where r0i indicates the amount of water the winter wheat
~
demands. S ( sij ) represents climate suitability for winter wheat in terms of sunshine
duration during the ith interval of 10 days within jth month; sij denotes the total sun-
shine duration during the period (h); s0i expresses the critical point that reach 70% of
total sunshine duration for the period (h); bi is a constant. S ij represents the compre-
hensive climate suitability for winter wheat.

1.2.2 Model of Climate Suitability for Corns

The Model of Climate Suitability for corns in terms of temperature, precipitation,
sunshine, as defined as follows:

~ (tij tli ) (thi tij ) B

thi t0i
T (tij ) = , B= (5)
(t0i tli ) (thi t0i )B t0i tli

~ rij / r0 i rij < 0.7 r0 i

R ( rij ) = (6)
1 rij 0.7 r0i

~ sij / s0i sij < s0i

S (sij ) = (7)
1 sij s0i
~ ~ ~
Sij = 3 T (tij ) R (rij ) S ( sij ) (8)
384 J. Zhang, Y. Zheng, and X. Wang

Where:
~
T (tij ) represents climate suitability for corns in terms of temperature during the
ith interval of 10 days within jth month; tij denotes the average temperature during
the period while tli , t hi , t0i each indicates the lowest, highest and appropriate aver-
~
age temperature the corns can tolerate. R (rij ) represents climate suitability for winter
wheat in terms of precipitation during the ith interval of 10 days within jth month; rij
denotes the amount of precipitation (mm) during the period; r0i is defined as the
~
amount of water the winter wheat demands. S ( sij ) represents climate suitability for
winter wheat in terms of sunshine duration during the ith interval of 10 days within jth
month; sij denotes the total sunshine duration during the period (h); s0i expresses the
critical point that reach 70% of total sunshine duration for the period (h); bi is a con-
stant. S ij represents the comprehensive climate suitability for winter wheat.

1.2.3 Model of Climate Suitability for Cottons

The Model of Climate Suitability for cottons in terms of temperature, precipitation,
sunshine, as defined as follows:

~ (tij tli ) (thi tij )B thi t0i

T (tij ) = , B= (9)
(t0i tli ) (thi t0i )B t0i tli

rij / rli rij < rli

~
R (rij ) = 1 rli rij rhi (10)

rhi / rij rij > rhi

e[ ( sij s0 i ) / bi ]
2
( sowing and
~
S ( sij ) = boll opening stage) (11)
[( sij s0 i ) / bi ]2
e (otherwise)
~ ~ ~
S ij = 3 T (tij ) R (rij ) S ( sij ) (12)

Where:
~
T (tij ) represents climate suitability for cottons in terms of temperature during the
ith interval of 10 days within jth month; tij denotes the average temperature during
the period while tli , t hi , t0i each indicates the lowest, highest and appropriate
 Decision Support System for Quantitative Calculation of Crop Climatic Suitability 385

~
average temperature the corns can tolerate. R (rij ) represents climate suitability for
winter wheat in terms of precipitation during the ith interval of 10 days within jth
month; rij denotes the amount of precipitation (mm) during the period; rli , rhi are
defined as the lower and upper limit, respectively, of amount of water cotton de-
~
mands. S ( sij ) represents climate suitability for winter wheat in terms of sunshine
duration during the ith interval of 10 days within jth month; sij denotes the total sun-
shine duration during the period (h); s0i expresses the critical point that reach 70% of
total sunshine duration for the period (h); bi is a constant. S ij represents the compre-
hensive climate suitability for winter wheat.

1.2.4 Calculating Climate Suitability for Different Time Intervals

From sowing to harvesting, the growth of crops spans different months, quarters or
even growth stages. Climate suitability of months, quarters or growth stages corre-
sponds to individual 10-day climate suitability. The subject of system is crops; based
on 10-day climate suitability collected from individual weather stations, the climate
suitability for different time intervals would be derived by taking the weighted aver-
age of 10-day climate suitability(Huang Huang, 1996; Zhao Feng et al.,2003).
m2
~ ~
T (t mj ) = b T (t
j = m1
ti ij )

m2
~ ~
R ( rmj ) = b
j = m1
ri R ( rij ) (13)

m2
~ ~
S ( smj ) = b
j = m1
si S ( sij )

~ ~ ~
S mj = 3 T (t mj ) R (rmj ) S ( smj ) (14)

Where:
~ ~ ~
T (t mj ) , R (rmj ) , S (smj ) are the climate suitability in terms of temperature, pre-
cipitation, sunshine duration, respectively, during mth month of crop growth season in
jth year; m1 , m2 indicates the beginning and ending 10-day interval of mth month
~
(within a quarter or a growth season. In the case that m1 =1 and m2 =3, T (t mj ) ,
~ ~
R (rmj ) , S (smj ) each corresponds to the monthly climate suitability in terms of tem-
perature, precipitation, sunshine duration, respectively. btj , brj , bsj denote the
weight assigned to climate suitability in terms of temperature, precipitation, sunshine
386 J. Zhang, Y. Zheng, and X. Wang

~ ~ ~
duration, respectively, of the i th 10-day interval. T (ttj ) , R (rtj ) , S (stj ) represent
the 10-day climate suitability in terms of temperature, precipitation, sunshine dura-
tion, respectively. Finally, s mj is the comprehensive climate suitability for mth month
within jth year.

2 Introduction of System

2.1 System Operating Environment

The system is developd by Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0, the development platform is
Chinese version of Windows XP/2003 Server, the operating system applied is Win-
dows 32-bit desktop operation system. The hardware environment: desktop PC based
on Intels 808x instruction system. Software development environment: Windows
XP/2003 Server based operating system.

2.2 System Structure

The program employs modular structure and drop-down menu. The program consists
of three components(Fig.1): a database that records the weather parameters that de-
termine climate suitability for crops, a calculation module and a decision making
module. The calculation module also includes two sub-components: one accommo-
dates real-time climate suitability while the other provides the historical information.

Fig. 1. Structure of Decision support system for quantitative calculation of crop climatic
suitability in Hebei
 Decision Support System for Quantitative Calculation of Crop Climatic Suitability 387

The real-time calculation module is capable of produce climate suitability based on

different time horizons, i.e., every 10 days, monthly, quarterly or for the entire growth
period. The decision making module provides background information for crop
growth and make suggestions on appropriate management measures.

2.3 System Function

2.3.1 Climate Suitability Condition Management

The database contains all kinds of agro-meteorological indicators of winter wheat,
corn, cotton that spans various growth stages from planting to harvest: including tar-
get climate suitability, upper and lower bound of a range of acceptable climate suit-
ability level. Researchers may choose to consult, modify, expand or streamline the
database.

2.3.2 Calculation of Real-Time Climate Suitability

The system receives and processes real-time meteorological information on a 10-day
basis. Based on the comprehensive meteorological data, 10-day climate suitability in
terms of temperature, precipitation, sunshine or combined could be calculated, per-
taining to winter wheat, corn or cotton. From that, the same indicators on monthly or
quarterly basis could be further obtained, or even for the entire growth season. The
output is presented in graph and spreadsheet.

2.3.3 Calculation of Historical Climate Suitability

The system can read the historical metrological information including temperature,
precipitation, sunshine from the database to calculate the climate suitability in terms
of temperature, precipitation, sunshine or combined at different point in time.
The result can form the foundation for the analyzing the impact of climate change on
agriculture.

2.3.4 Decision Making Module

According to the calculation, the system can make recommendations on course of
actions in response to varying weather conditions. Researchers can consult, modify,
add or delete the recommendations; researches can also search information related to
the plant growth and development.

2.4 System Operating Procedures

The system can automatically collect real-time 10-day weather data from weather
stations across the province. The system can process the data and extract the relevant
information, including temperature, precipitation and sunshine. The selected data is
then incorporated into the database and become the input of function (1) ~ (12) to
derive climate suitability indicators. The procedure is illustrated in Fig.2.
The output is presented in graphs or tables.
Table output: By applying MSHFlexGrid Control. the format would be set up, so
that the system can export the climate suitability in terms of temperature, precipita-
tion, sunshine or combined for different areas during different time intervals;
388 J. Zhang, Y. Zheng, and X. Wang

Fig. 2. System operating procedures

2.5 Characteristics of the System

The system allows real-time calculation of climate suitability for crops. Individual
modules of the system run relatively independently from each other, making way
for future modification or maintenance. The system can be easily expanded; the
interface is user-friendly and is very easy to use. In addition, in consideration of
possible misuse of the system, a dialog box is developed to help researchers tackle
errors or mistakes they made. In conclusion, the system could be believed widely
adopted.

3 Conclusion

The system is developed by VB6.0 language; it employed a modular structure

which is easy to maintain and expand. The system works in a time frame of 10-
day, month, quarter or growth season; it uses the membership function of fuzzy
math to convert meteorological data, such as the numerical change in temperature,
precipitation or sunshine into climate suitability for crops. The result, which is
exported in various formats, can provide quantitative basis for agriculture decision
making. The practical application showed that has very good business application
effect.
 Decision Support System for Quantitative Calculation of Crop Climatic Suitability 389

References
Lu, Y., Zheng, D.: Evaluation on eco-climate adaptability of crop and herbage in northern
ecotone. Chinese Journal of Eco-Agriculture 11(4), 130133 (2003)
Bai, Y.: The assessment and quantization of agricultural ecoclimate resources in Northwest
region (Gansu, Ningxia). Journal of Natural Resources 15(3), 218224 (2000)
Luo, H., Chen, G., et al.: Eco-climatic suitability of agricultural research. Agricultural Re-
sources and Regional Planning 25(1), 2832 (2004)
Huang, H.: Red and yellow earth of Chinas climatic and ecological adaptability of crop pro-
duction research. Journal of Natural Resources 11(4), 341345 (1996)
Yin, D., Wang, C.: The evaluation model of climatic resources of herbage in the pastoral area
of northern China. Journal of Natural Resources 17(4), 494497 (2002)
Xu Xue-xuan, X., Gao, P., et al.: Fuzzy Analysis on Rainfall Adaptability to Crop Growth in
Yanan Area. Soil and Water Conservation 7(2), 7376 (2000)
Ma, S.: Jilin Agricultural Climate Research, p. 33. Meteorological Press, Beijing (1994)
Zhao, F., Qian, H.-s., et al.: The climatic suitability model of crop:a case study of winter wheat
in henan province. Resources Science 25(6), 8081 (2003)
 Delineation of Suitable Areas for Maize in China and
Evaluation of Application for the Technique of Whole
Plastic-Film Mulching on Double Ridges

Chaojie Jia, Wenlong Zhao, Yaxiong Chen, and Guojun Sun

MOE Key Laboratory of Arid and Grassland Ecology, Lanzhou University,

Lanzhou, Gansu Province, 730000, P.R. China
jiachaoj280@126.com

Abstract. Climate, topography, soil and land use data which closely associated
with the distribution of maize (Zea mays L.) has been collected and collated to
identify the suitable areas for maize on condition of nature and using the tech-
nique of whole plastic-film Mulching on Double Ridges in China, the database
of these factors have been created in the current article. The weights of these
factors, criteria and suitability levels have been defined using Multi-Criteria
Evaluation (MCE) approach based on Geographic Information System (GIS),
each factor was classed into five suitability levels: Most suitability, Moderate
suitability, and medium, Moderate unsuitability and Unsuitability. Pair-wise
comparison matrixes were made to get the weights of each factor, the suitability
maps of the factors have been obtained by overlaying these layers according to
their weights, got the suitability map for maize. The suitable areas map was cre-
ated by the suitability map and the land use map which has been masked the
non-cultivated land. The result indicated that the higher yield of maize can be
gained from 4.535105 km2 which distributed in 741 counties in16 provinces.
In accordance with the method of above, analysis the suitable area after the
techniques of whole plastic-film mulching on double ridges was used. The re-
sults showed the higher yield could be got in 6.145105 km2, some areas of
Gansu, Inner Mongolia and other places in arid and semiarid areas that cant
distribute or only have low yield maize could get higher yield after using the
technique of whole plastic-film mulching on double ridges. With the increased
requirement of food, the new techniques and the more perfect regional planning
of grain could be take into account for socio-political and environment issues.

Keywords: Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE), Spatial analysis, whole plastic-film

mulching on double ridges, Geographic information system (GIS).

1 Introduction
Protected cultivation, mainly represented by plastic-film mulching, has greatly im-
proved crop production worldwide since the 1950s [1]. However, the technique of
whole plastic-film mulching on double ridges is trialed in China from the 1990s, and
is in phase of field test and promotion currently. The technique can reduce water loss
through evaporation, therefore may increase water available to plants, and increase

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 390400, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Delineation of Suitable Areas for Maize in China 391

the topsoil temperature [2]. It could be applied in the areas that have low temperature
or rainfall to improve the grain yield.
To research and develop agriculture on condition of using the technique of whole
plastic-film mulching on double ridges, the accurate identification and the characteri-
zation of current production areas and potential areas are necessary [3]. MCE ap-
proach was used to determine relevant criteria (factors) which is understanding as the
biophysical restraints and defined the suitability levels for each factors. MCE was
defined as an umbrella term to describe a collection of formal approaches which seek
to take explicit account of multiple criteria in helping individuals or groups explore
decisions that matter [4], could be understood as a world of concepts, approaches,
models and methods that aid an evaluation (expressed by weights, values or intensi-
ties of preference) according to several criteria [5]. MCE has been one of the most
widely applied models in management and planning because of it was (1) the formal
approach, (2) the presence of multiple criteria and (3)the evaluation are made either
by individuals or groups [6]. Geographic information system (GIS) has a powerful
function in spatial analyses such as: predicting the distribution of the wild relatives of
bean by analyzing climate conditions that favor beans growth, and for planning po-
tential conservation areas by using relationships between environmental factors and
the distribution of birds. However, the utility or GIS functionality in the management
of the above areas has been limited by the restrictions inherent in overlaying of digital
information maps. Some of these restrictions are: (1) overlays are difficult to use
when there are many underlying variables (more than 4), (2) the overlay procedure
does not enable one to take into account that the underlying variables are not of equal
importance [7]. From the 1990s, integration of the MCE approach with GIS for
solving spatial planning problems has received considerable attentions among urban
planners. The ability of GIS to integrate with the MCE approach has been shown in
studies related to site determination for a nuclear waste facility and for a noxious
waste facility. And the GIS-based MCE has also extended to solving planning prob-
lems that involve conflicting multi-objectives such as land use allocation problems[7-
8] MCE seems to be applicable to GIS-based land suitability analysis[9] and help us
to carry out the delineation of suitable areas for crops. The maize is one of the most
important grain and forage crops in China, playing a crucial role in protect food secu-
rity. The main goal of this research is to describe suitable areas for maize on condition
of natural and after use the technique of whole plastic-film mulching on double ridges
under the GIS based MCE to evaluate the application area for the technique of whole
plastic-film mulching on double ridges. With the increased requirement of food, the
new techniques and the more perfect regional planning of grain could be take into
account for socio-political and environment issues.

2 Methods

2.1 Study Areas

The study area throughout the land of China, include mainland of China, Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region, the Macao Special Administrative Region and Taiwan
province. It is located latitude from 352N to 5333N and longitude from 7340E to
135230E. The total area is approximately 9600000km2.
392 C. Jia et al.

Fig. 1. The study areas

2.2 Procedures

The distribution and growth of crops are decided by water, temperature, light and soil.
According to the: leading dominant (the main factor affecting the growth of maize);
incompatibility (the factor affect the maize independence); diversity (selected factors
were significantly different, can express the threshold); marketability (factors which
be chosen have a corresponding data)[10] In the light of expert opinions, as well as
literature, eight factors which are closely connected with the growth of maize were
selected to establish the relevant criteria of MCE. They were: accumulated tempera-
ture, average temperature in April which was regarded as the Minimum temperature,
the average temperature in July was the Maximum temperature, the annual precipita-
tion, Soil Texture, Soil pH, Elevation and Field water-holding capacity. Then, the
database was established.

2.2.1 Establish of Spatial Databases

1. Climate Database
Climate information was obtained from 722 meteorological stations which belong to
the China Meteorological Administration and located within or close to the study
area. The recorded years were from 1978 to 2008. The format of original data which
we obtained was text, calculated in the EXCEL; Based on these data, Accumulated

temperature ( 10 ), the Minimum temperature, the Maximum temperature and the
Precipitation was extracted and calculated separately. Convert the data to point in
ArcGIS, and then interpolate the temperature data and the precipitation data with the
Kriging and the IDW method. Before interpolation for the spatial data, compare the
accuracy of various interpolation are necessary. 90% of the points were used as the
 Delineation of Suitable Areas for Maize in China 393

Fig. 2. The flow chart shows the main procedures applied in this study

training points and the other were test points, using mean relative error (MRE) be-
tween the measured (Zoi) and the value after interpolation to test the accuracy of the
inverse distance weighting (IDW), ordinary kriging(OK), spline(SP) and trend surface
(TR). Formula as follows:

1 n
Z oi Z ei
M RE =
n

i =1 Z oi
(1)
394 C. Jia et al.

Table 1. The compare of accuracy of various interpolation method

IDW OK SP TR
accumulated temperature 0.137713 0.082544 0.159480 0.098259
Minimum temperature, 0.105527 0.096969 0.115875 0.134711
Maximum temperature 0.098793 0.055474 0.088144 0.092951

The results showed that OK was the best interpolation for the temperature.

2. Soil Database
Soil characteristics data were taken from digital Soil Type Maps (from ISSCAS) using
a scale of 1:1 000 000. Sampling points was created, the total number of points were
99034. The information of soil texture and soil pH was obtained from soil type. Then
the soil texture point data and the soil pH point data were interpolated into grid maps
within ArcGIS.

3. Relief Database
The altitude data were obtained from the digital elevation model (DEM). DEM has
characteristics of space location and attribute of terrain, it is an indispensability part
when establish resource and environment information in different levels. National
digital contour map at the scale of 1:250,000was obtained from the State Bureau of
Surveying and Mapping. This contour data was used to create DEM within ArcGIS,
the process was contours TIN lattice DEM.

4. Unification of the data format

All the data was converted to the same format, the spatial resolution was 1000 m per
pixel, the Krasovsky_1940_Albers coordinate system was used as the projected
coordinate system and GCS_Krasovsky_1940 was the geographic coordinate system.
The spheroid of the maps was the Krasovsky_1940 and the datum was
D_Krasovsky_1940.

2.2.2 MCE Process for Suitable Areas of Maize

1. Define specific suitability level of the factors
By means of expert opinion and literatures, a specific suitability level per factor for
maize on condition of natural and using the whole plastic-film mulching on double
ridges technical was defined (Table 2). These levels were used as a base to construct
the criteria maps. The levels were: Most suitable, Moderate suitable, Medium, Mod-
erate unsuitable, unsuitable. Then factor maps were constructed in the ArcGIS
environment. On condition of using the technique of whole plastic-film mulching on
double ridges the threshold of restriction of precipitation was decreased for 50mm
[11], and the accumulated temperature restriction decreased for 650C[12] ,the restric-
tion condition of Min temperature decreased 2C and elevation reduced for 300m, the
field water-holding capacity decreased for 0.10[13].
 Delineation of Suitable Areas for Maize in China 395

Table 2. Level of suitability for maize on condition of nature

Level of suitability on condition of nature
Factor Most suitable Moderate suitable Medium Moderate Unsuitable
unsuitable
Accumulated

temperature( 10C) (C)
2500-3300 3300-5000 5000-7000 1000-2500 <1000 or >7000
Precipitation (mm) 500-800 300500or8001500 500-2000 >2500 0-300
Maximum temperature
20-25 15-20or25-30 5-15 >25 <5
(C)
Minimum temperature
10-17 17-20 0-10 >20 <5
(C)
Soil texture Loam Sandy loam Sand clay loam Other class Sand or clay
Soil PH 6.5-7.0 5.0-6.5 7.0-8.0 <5.0 >8.0
Elevation(m) <1200 1200-1500 500-3000 300-3600 >3600
Field water-holding
0.30-0.46 0.25-0.30 0.23-0.25or0.46-0.50 0.18-0.23 <0.18or>0.50
capacity (%)

Table 3. Level of suitability for maize on condition of using the Technique of Whole
Plastic-Film Mulching on Double Ridges
Level of suitability on condition of nature
Factor Most suitable Moderate suitable Medium Moderate Unsuitable
unsuitable
Accumulated

temperature( 10C) (C)
1850-3300 3300-5000 5000-7000 1000-1850 <1000 or >7000
Precipitation (mm) 250-800 8001500 1500-2000 >2000 0-250
Maximum temperature
20-25 15-20or25-30 5-15 >25 <5
(C)
Minimum temperature
8-17 17-20 0-8 >20 <5
(C)
Soil texture Loam Sandy loam Sand clay loam Other class Sand or clay
Soil PH 6.5-7.0 5.0-6.5 7.0-8.0 <5.0 >8.0
Elevation(m) <1500 1500-3000 3000-3600 3600-5000 >5000
Field water-holding
0.20-0.46 0.18-0.20 0.46-0.52 >0.52 <0.18
capacity (%)

2. Weighting for the factors

A variety of techniques exist for the development of weights, but the promising tech-
nique is the pair wise comparison developed by Saaty (1977) in the context of a deci-
sion-making Process known as the Analytical Hierarchy Process (Eastman et al.,
1995). It has characterized of systematization, flexibility and practicality. Relative
importance of each factor were compared, according to regression between them and
final yield of maize, the score of each factor were given, and amend the score with the
relationship between them. The first pair-wise comparison matrix was obtained. Rat-
ings were provided on a nine-point continuous scale, which ranges from 9 to 1/9. A 9
indicates that relative to the column variable, the row variable is significantly more
important. A 1/9 indicates that relative to the column variable, the row variable is
significantly less important. Statistic the number of each factor appeared in the litera-
ture which described the yield and the distribution of maize, establish another Pair-
wise comparison matrixes. Test two matrix use the CRJ (Matrix Consistency ratio), if
the CRJ<0.10 matrix was available; if the CRJ>0.10[14], we must amend the matrix
on the opinion of experts who research the maize. Weight was calculated in the
MATLAB software using the pair-wise comparison matrixes above.

2.2.3 Mask
Overlay the factor maps with their weight, and then crossing the land use/cover map
which has been taken out of the city, lakes, rivers and other types of land that cant or
wont grow the crops with the suitability map to find the plant areas. These works
were conducted with the Weighted Overlay Module in the ArcGIS environment.
396 C. Jia et al.

Table 4. Analysis of weight for various factors

Field1water-
accumulated Minimum Maximum Soil Total
Factor Precipitation holding Soil pH Elevation
temperature temperature temperature texture weight
capacity

Weight 0.209348 0.19134 0.141142 0.163879 0.11368 0.075808 0.059333 0.04547 1

3 Results
The technical play a marginal role when maize in the stage of milky(Zhao F. 2005).
The most suitable area of six factor maps was extent after use the technical, especially
the Precipitation was the most significant. It means that this technical has a prominent
role for the Precipitation. The area that distensible mainly distributed in where the
arid and semiarid area or the cold area. The Field water-holding capacity also has the
significant change.

Fig. 3. Factor maps for maize on condition of natural, including suitability levels for each
factor. 1= Accumulated temperature, 2= Precipitation, 3=Minimum temperature, 4= Maximum
temperature 5= Field water-holding capacity, 6=Soil texture, 7= Soil pH, 8= Elevation.

On condition of natural, the area of the most suitable level was 4.53505105 km2, the
moderate suitable level was 2.048032105 km2. After using the whole plastic-film
mulching on double ridges technical, the area of the most suitable level was 6.14456105
km2 and the moderate suitable level was 2.12719105 km2. The most and moderate
suitable level could got more yield and was considered use the land efficiently.
 Delineation of Suitable Areas for Maize in China 397

Fig. 4. Factor maps for maize on condition of using the whole plastic-film mulching on double
ridges technical, including suitability levels for each factor. 1= Accumulated temperature, 2=
Precipitation, 3=Minimum temperature, 4= Maximum temperature 5= Field water-holding
capacity, 6=Soil texture, 7= Soil pH, 8= Elevation.

Fig. 5. Maps of suitability for maize in China (1) On condition of nature (2) on condition of
using the whole plastic-film mulching on double ridges technical
398 C. Jia et al.

Fig. 6. The map of the area congruent for using the whole plastic-film mulching on double ridges

Evaluate the suitable level use the same method and then crossing the land
use/cover map, the result showed that there are 1.609105 km2 increased from the
other levels to the most suitable levels, that lead the yield of maize increased about
6.291010kg. 7.97104 km2 of the other levers was improved to the moderate suit-
able level, and that bring on the yield of maize increased about 1.6421010kg. The
area that congruent for using the whole plastic-film mulching on double ridges was
located in Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia, Shanaxi, Shanxi and so on. The precipita-
tion of these province was the restrict condition for developing agriculture. In other
areas which could use the technical were mainly because it could improve the tem-
perature of topsoil.

4 Discussion
Production and distribution of maize was the result of multi-factor effect [15], the
eight factors which have been chosen in this research were the restrictive factor in
various stage of maize growth in the natural conditions. Based on the report of Cebal-
los-Silva et al, the spatial data input, extraction, analysis and visualization functions
of GIS were used to establish the national spatial database of climate, topography and
soil. MCE procedure in this research was useful to evaluate the suitable areas for
maize. As the first phase of MCE, the factors were selected based on agronomic
knowledge of local experts and reviews of existing literature. And then the Pair-wise
comparison matrixes in the context of Analytical Hierarchy Process were made to
obtain the weights and confirmed to be a useful approach. Finally, five suitability
levels of maize were divided using the method of GIS-based MCE crossing this the
 Delineation of Suitable Areas for Maize in China 399

land use/cover map, calculate the plow land of every levels. After use the technique of
whole plastic-film mulching on double ridges, the threshold of some natural condition
for restriction of maize decreased and that lead to the areas were extent.
The GIS based MCE allowed us use more database of spatial to evaluation the suit-
able levels of maize as different significance. The weights was obtained in this paper
can be used in many similar research of maize. The feedback process of checking the
results by local agronomic experts was involved, and results could be adjusted in light
of their experience.
The results of evaluation for natural condition showed that this method was reliable
and reasonable. Expert system based on the research results will be constructed and
connected with the internet to facilitate the work of decision-makers and farmers.
However, the identified variety-suitable areas were proposed at a theoretical maxi-
mum, the microclimate and micro topography of the specific areas should be consid-
ered in the actual production. Decision-making process to select adequate crop
patterns could be based on other issues such as: production supports (by local and
federal governments), marketing, technological level, economic evaluation, in addi-
tion to local cultural traditions, which are very important also. This factor could be
used in the further research.

5 Conclusion
In this research, the MCE approach was applied to identify the suitable level and area
for maize in the condition of natural and use the technique of whole plastic-film
mulching on double ridges within GIS environment. The results confirmed that the
methodology used was adequate to construct and integrate spatial databases of cli-
mate, soil, topography and land use. The interpolated factor maps of temperature,
precipitation, elevation, soil pH, soil texture class and land use information were cru-
cial in identification of suitable areas for maize. The technique was more useful for
the arid and semiarid area to increase the yield of grain, especially for the north-west
of China. Crop mapping based on the results will be constructed and connected with
the internet which facing the government and farmers to adjust agricultural structure
according to market conditions.

Acknowledgments
This work is financial supported by the ISTCP for Construction of an Information
Platform/module in Eco-agricultural Assessment and Management (EAM)
(2010DFA31450) and National Science Fund for Talent Training in Basic Science
(J0630644).

References
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nents of value. Agricultural Ecology 10(2), 8689 (2002) (in Chinese)
 DEM Simulation and Analysis of Seeds Supply by the
Vibrating Seed Box of Magnetic Cylinder Seeder

Xiuping Shao, Jianping Hu, Yingsa Huang, and Fa Liu

Key Laboratory of Modern Agricultural Equipment and Technology, Ministry of

Education&Jiangsu Province, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
shaoxiuping858@gmail.com

Abstract. Regarding the vibrating seeds box of magnetic cylinder seeder as the
research subject and making simulation and analysis for the motion law of
seeds which supplied by seed box base on DEM (Discrete Element Method).
Researching the mechanism of the seed supply and analyzing the condition of
seed supply by the vibration of seed box, when the frequency change from
10Hz to 50Hz and horizontal and vertical amplitude of the seed box are 0.5mm.
The results shows that the vibrating frequency has greater influence on the seed
supply; seeds cant be supplied when the vibrating frequency less than10Hz;
seed can be supplied best and seeds thickness nearly the cylinder wall is highest
when the vibrating frequency equal to 40Hz.

Keywords: Seed Box, Discrete Element Method, Seed Supply, Vibration,

Frequency.

1 Introduction
Magnetic cylinder seeder can realize the seeding of vegetables, flowers and other
small seeds [1]. Its important working assembly is the vibrating seed box which
relied on vibrator to supply seeds continuously and stably to the cylinder wall, so the
vibration parameters directly affect the property of seeder. There are complex inter-
relationship collision and friction in the motion of the seeds, which kinematics and
dynamics relationship is quite complex, that the traditional continuum mechanics
cant analyze the actual movement of seeds [2] [3]. This paper using discrete element
method, studying the seed supply situation under the condition of seed box vibration,
which provided theoretical basis for the further research of magnetic cylinder seeder.

2 Structure and Working Principle of Magnetic Cylinder Seeder

The structure of magnetic cylinder seeder is shown in fig.1, including cylinder, drive
shaft, permanent magnet, seed box, vibration exciter etc.
Powder coated seeds are placed in half-open vibrating seed box, the open side
nearly close to the cylinder wall to prevent seeds falling down; Seeder wheel drives
by shaft and makes one way rotating, permanent magnet mounts on the rotating shaft,
the magnetic head mounts on the channel of the cylinder and rotates with the cylinder.
When the magnetic head turns to the region of seed-filling, the magnetic head adsorb

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 401408, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
402 X. Shao et al.

1.Cylinder 2.Permanent magnet 3.Drive shaft 4.Seed 5.seed box

6. Longitudinal vibration exciter 7.Seed plate 8.Transverse vibration exciter

Fig. 1. The structure of precision magnetic cylinder seeder

one seed and continue rotates with cylinder, when it turn to the downside of cylinder
roller, the seed falls down then one time metering completely.

3 Contact Force Model and Parameter Definition

Contact force model is the core of DEM, the simplify model is always used for calcu-
lation during DEM simulation due to much more complex structure particles. The
linear viscoelastic contact model has been widely used in the research of the agricul-
tural machinery [4~6], so adopting the linear viscoelastic contact model as the contact
force model of seedseed and seed-seeder elements.
The normal force of liner viscoelastic model [7]:

Fn = kn n cn n . (1)

F n : The normal force between two contact particles;

k1k 2
k n : The normal contact stiffness coefficient, kn = ;
k1 + k 2
k1 , k 2 : The contact stiffness coefficients of two contact particles;
n : The normal overlap of two contact particles;
C1C2
Cn : The normal viscous damping coefficients, Cn = ;
C1 + C2
C1 , C2 : The normal viscous damping coefficient for two contact particles;
n : The normal contact relative velocity.
Tangential contact force is:
Fs (t ) = Fs (t t ) K s s t c s s . (2)
 DEM Simulation and Analysis of Seeds Supply by the Vibrating Seed Box 403

Fs (t) : The tangential force between two contact particles at time t;

t : The time step;
K s : The tangential contact stiffness coefficient.
All the parameter needed in the simulation are got from experiment, the details are
shown as table 1.
Table 1. Parameter used in DEM analysis

Seed type Coating rapeseed (iron 20%)

Particle diameter/mm 3.5
Poisson's ratio of particle 0.3
Shear modulus of particle/Pa 4.65x108

Particle density/Kg qm3 2.1x103

Coefficient of restitution in seed-seed 0.2
Static friction coefficient in seed-seed 0.4
Rolling friction coefficient in seed-seed 0.06
Coefficient of restitution in seed-seeder elements 0.4
Static friction coefficient in seed-seeder elements 0.11
Rolling friction coefficient in seed-seeder elements 0.02

4 Simulation Results
According to the actual experiment, when the seed box amplitude was 0.5mm, meter-
ing requirement can be satisfied. During simulation experiment, 0.5mm was selected
for the horizontal and vertical amplitude. And simulated the seed supply situation and
the movement law of the seeds under the vibration frequency was 10~50Hz.
During the Simulation, cylinder diameter was 100mm, the rotation speed was
20r/min, the size of the seed box was 170 x 60 x 50 mm (length x width x height).
1500 seeds were generated with a normal distribution, which average diameter equal to
3.5mm and the variance was 0.05. Once the filling completed, the seed box started to
make a simple harmonic oscillation with the vertical and horizontal direction. There
can be clearly shows that influence of frequency for motion of seed supply according
to the simulation result. The duration time of numerical simulation was 3 seconds.

4.1 The Motion Law of Seeds

During the vibration process, seeds always kept the moving condition with friction
and collision. When the vibration frequency was low, the seeds moved slowly to the
cylinder wall direction, and no longer moved forward when seeds moved to the cer-
tain condition. Meanwhile the seeds can only peristalsis with the seed box and unable
to be supplied for the seeder, as shown in Fig.2; When the vibration frequency was
high, the impetus force that took seeds moved towards to the roller was bigger than
404 X. Shao et al.

the friction force, so seeds moved to the roller direction at a certain speed, and formed
a accumulative in the roller wall edge, until seeds movement were steady. At this
moment, the seeds would be supplied to seeder stably, as shown in Fig.3.

Fig. 2. Seed supply diagram (f=10Hz) Fig. 3. Seed supply diagram (f=40Hz)

a t=0.3s

b t=0.5s

c t=1.5s
Fig. 4. Instantaneous velocity vector of seeds movement (f=50HZ)
 DEM Simulation and Analysis of Seeds Supply by the Vibrating Seed Box 405

In order to understood the motion of seeds supply situation deeply, this paper simu-
lated the vibration process of seed box when frequency was 50Hz. Fig.4 shown the
instantaneous velocity vector chart of the seeds movement when the vibration fre-
quency was 50Hz. It can be seen clearly from the figure that the seeds were influ-
enced by both l horizontal and vertical direction amplitude, and moved towards to the
cylinder and upward directions.
It can be seen from fig.4(a) that after the seed box vibrated 0.3s, the majority seeds
moved towards the roller direction by a certain speed; it can be seen from Fig.4(b)
that after the seed box vibrated 0.5s, partial seeds contacted and collided with the
roller wall, and had a tendency to rebound, enabled these seeds collided once more
with the seeds which were moving towards the cylinder direction, there formed a
disordered area that the spacing from the roller was 50mm; fig.4(c) showed that, after
seed box vibrated 1.5s, the seeds movement basically tends to be stable, with merely
creeping motion along with the vibration of the seed box, now seeds in seed box
achieved a steady situation for seeds supply.

4.2 Frequency Effect on Seed Supply Situation

Seeds moved towards to the and finally form a certain altitude along the edge of cyl-
inder wall. In this paper, the accumulation height on the cylinder wall edge H was
used as the indicator quality of seed supply, as shown in Fig.5.

Fig. 5. Seeds accumulation height diagram

The vibration frequency of the seed box was respectively set at 10Hz, 20Hz, 30Hz,
40Hz, 50Hz, simulated the movement process of the seeds along the cylinder wall
edge. The simulation result was shown in Fig.6. It can be seen from the figure that the
vibration frequency influenced the seeds movement obviously. When the vibration
frequency of the seed box was set at 10Hz, the seeds accumulation height was nearly
0, therefore the seed supply were defeated; with the increase of the vibration fre-
quency the accumulation height along the roller wall edge also increased; when the
vibration frequency of the seed box was 40 Hz, seeds accumulation height was larg-
est, at this condition seed supply got the best state.
For particular described the condition of seed supply by the vibration of seed box,
set a small selection that lengthhighweight was 10mm15mm30mm along the
edge of cylinder wall, as shown in fig.7.
Analyzed the quantity of seeds of this selection in different moment when the vi-
bration frequency of seed box was 10Hz, 20Hz, 30Hz, 40Hz.
406 X. Shao et al.

Fig. 6. Seeds accumulation heights under different frequencies

Fig. 7. Small selection along the edge of cylinder wall

As shown in fig.8, seeds entered the small selection along the edge of cylinder wall
after seed box vibrating for a period of time; after some time the quantity of seeds in
the selection reached a plateau ,and the time turned short with the vibration frequency
increased; after the quantity of seeds reach a plateau, the quantity of seeds has a
greatly difference between different frequencies; the larger of the frequency, the more
the seeds in the selection, and the better of the condition of seed supply.

Fig. 8. Seeds total number in small selection under different times

 DEM Simulation and Analysis of Seeds Supply by the Vibrating Seed Box 407

5 Conclusion
Made the vibration seed box of precision magnetic cylinder seeder as research object
in this paper, the seed motion law and supply with different frequencies base on DEM
were numerical analysis, such conclusions were derived:
1. Using DEM can easily and accurately simulate seeds motion law in the vibration
seed box.
2. At the beginning of the vibration, seeds moved toward to cylinder with a certain
speed; when seeds contacted with the cylinder, part of them rebounded and collided
with the behind seeds which moved to the cylinder wall, then raised a disturbance
area within 50mm leave from the cylinder wall; seeds campaign achieved a smooth
situation again and only did upward or downward reciprocating movement, then the
seed provided in the seed box became to stabilized.
3. Vibration frequency has great influence on seed accumulate height nearly the
cylinder roller edge. Seed accumulate height nearly the cylinder roller edge go up
with the vibration frequency increased. The seed box cant supply seed when vibra-
tion frequency was lower than 10Hz and the best supply seed with the vibration fre-
quency equal to 40Hz.
4. The seeds reached the edge of the cylinder roller wall after a period of vibration;
the time required for achieving stability of the seed near the cylinder wall was propor-
tional to the vibration frequency, moreover the more the seeds due to higher fre-
quency, the better for the seed supply situation.

Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by eleventh five-year-plan national scientific &
technological supporting project (2006BAD11A10) and agricultural mechanization in
three agriculture projects, Jiangsu province (NJ2009-41).

References
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Vibrated Bed of Precision Vacuum Seeder. Transaction of the Chinese Society for Agri-
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technique 29, 4765 (1979)
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 Design and Experiment of Onboard Field 3D
Topography Surveying System

Mingming Guo, Gang Liu, and Xinlei Li

Key Laboratory of Modern Precision Agriculture System Integration Research, Ministry of

Education, China Agricultural University
guomingming666666@163.com

Abstract. Laser-controlled land leveling system can obviously improve the

planeness of the field and enhance the efficiency of irrigation. The 3D topog-
raphic information was needed for project design and evaluation of laser land
leveling. In order to obtain the topographic information efficiently, an onboard
field 3D topography surveying system was developed. The surveying system
consisted of a measuring laser receiver, a GPS receiver, a controller and a hy-
draulic system. Besides topographic measurement, the system could also achieve
laser land leveling. The measuring laser receiver was used to obtain the elevation
and the GPS receiver was employed to obtain the longitude and latitude data. The
data was fused in the controller to get the 3D topographic information. Field
experiments were carried out in different speed and compared with the data from
the fixed-point surveying method. The result showed the surveying system had a
good consistency with the fixed-point surveying method in slower speed.

Keywords: Laser-controlled Land Leveling, Topographic Surveying, GPS.

1 Introduction

The application of laser-controlled land leveling technology can achieve high-precision

agricultural land leveling and improve the field micro-topographic condition obvi-
ously. Therefore, the irrigation efficiency and irrigation uniformity can be increased,
resulting in water saving and yield increasing[1]. Before and after Laser-controlled
land leveling operations, the 3D topographic information was needed in order to de-
velop a reasonable engineering design and evaluation of land leveling[2]. There were
many surveying devices for measuring in engineering such as GPS, theodolite, total
station, portable computer, etc. [3]. The accuracy and efficiency of measurement can be
significantly improved by GPS and laser technology. In cooperation with the Ministry
of Land and Recourses, a set of relatively efficiency and low cost portable field meas-
urement system based on GPS and laser was developed by Research Center for Preci-
sion Agriculture of China Agricultural University in 2006.The height measurement
error was less greater than 4cm, making up the great error of the GPS system in height
measurement [3, 4]. But the portable measurement system can only be applied for high
precision topographic survey in a small area. A lot of time and manpower will be taken
as to a large field and the efficiency will be decreased. Therefore, this study developed

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 409416, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
410 M. Guo, G. Liu, and X. Li

a new type of onboard field 3D topography surveying system, providing a kind of

effective solution to obtaining the 3D topographic information automatically and sav-
ing manpower in large field. At the same time, the system was integrated with function
of laser-controlled land leveling, improving the quality and efficiency of ground op-
erations [5].

2 System Analysis and Design

A modular and integrated design concept was adopted. The system was divided into four
separate parts: laser measurement system, GPS receiver, controller and hydraulic sys-
tem. The structure was shown in Figure 1. Laser measuring receiver will receive the
laser signal and send to the controller after treatment. Controller, as the controlling
terminal and information processing platform, was responsible for gathering the infor-
mation of GPS horizontal coordinates and elevation information of laser measuring
receiver, display and storage, controlling the hydraulic system according to the position
signal of receiver. Hydraulic control system will control the raise and lower of leveling
bucket according to the output signal of the controller, realizing land leveling operation.

Fig. 1. Structure of onboard field 3D topography surveying system

3 System Implementation

3.1 Design of Measuring Receiver

Laser measuring receiver was an important part of onboard field 3D topography sur-
veying system. Laser transmitter fired laser beam to form a base level above the
working plane. Signal was produced and sent to the controller after the laser measuring
receiver received real-time weak low-frequency laser beam.
The working principle of the laser measuring receiver was shown in Figure 2.
Combanation filter was composed of red organic glass and interference filter. Red
organic glass was used as the in-light window, which could greatly reduce the back-
ground light into the laser measuring receiver. Interference filter was used at the laser
measuring receiver to further reduce the background light. Photo-electric cells were
used to transform light signal into electrical signal. The low-noise preamplifier and
main amplifier based on integrated amplifier were used to amplify the weak electrical
signal effectively. The wave shaping circuit was employed to achieve better signal
 Design and Experiment of Onboard Field 3D Topography Surveying System 411

conditioning from spike pulse signal to digital TTL signal. The widening circuit was
used to stretch the pulse width in order to be processed by the follow-up circuit more
easily by the controller [6].

Fig. 2. Principle of measuring laser receiver

In order to achieve the requirement of effective laser signal receiving angle to 360 ,
the research formed rational design of spatial distribution of the cells, which was shown
in Figure 3. 128 pieces of dimension 20mm 5mm photo-electric cells were divided
into 32 layers and 4 rows. In each receiving layer, adjacent photo-electric cells were
fixed vertically at the same height on two metal holders merged in square shape and can
meet the requirement of effective laser signal receiving angle to 360 [7].
Each column of adjacent photo-electric cells were installed at an interval of 2mm
in order to get the vertical measurement range to 70.2cm, while 32 pieces of
photo-electric cells composed 32 groups of signals, corresponding height degree scale
to 63, meeting the requirement of precision measurement on elevation information.

Fig. 3. Distribution of photo-electric cells in horizontal direction

3.2 The Option of GPS Receiver

Considering the effect of the speed to the accuracy of GPS, the research set GPS port on
standard of RS232 form. Different GPS measurement equipment, such as GPS OEM
board, high precision RTK DGPS receivers can be chosen to meet different require-
ment of measurement accuracy.

3.3 Controller

Controller was the monitoring and operating center of onboard field 3D topography
surveying system. The paper designed a controller with two modes of measurement and
land leveling. The functions of the modes were shown as follows:
(1) Measurement mode: receive and parse the GPS data, receive signal from the laser
measuring receiver and calculate the relative elevation, display 3D information, data
storage, indicate relative position of the receiver with LED indicator and LCD screen;
412 M. Guo, G. Liu, and X. Li

(2) Land leveling mode: control hydraulic system to achieve the raise and lower of
the leveling bucket according to the signal of the laser receiver, instruct the relative
position of the receiver, achieve modes witching from manual to automatic.

3.3.1 Design of the Controllers Hardware

The research adopted ARM7 as CPU for the controller and the hardware circuit was
shown in Figure 4. In measurement mode, the controller fused the data gathered from
laser measuring receiver and GPS OEM board so as to get the 3D information of the
topographic measurement point, stored date using U disk storage module, indicated the
state of the system through LCD screen. In land leveling mode, the controller switched
the signal from laser measuring receiver into control signal to hydraulic system and
dominated the raise and lower of the leveling bucket, realizing land leveling.

Fig. 4. Hardware circuit diagram of controller

3.3.2 Design of the Controllers Software

The controllers software needed to handle 5 projects: GPS data reception and proc-
essing, real-time elevation information processing, real-time LED indicating and LCD
display, data storage and hydraulic system control. The diagram of the system task was
shown in Figure 5.

Fig. 5. Diagram of system task

 Design and Experiment of Onboard Field 3D Topography Surveying System 413

3.4 Design of Hydraulic System

Hydraulic system was mainly used to control the movements of the leveling bucket in
order to achieve land leveling. The hydraulic control system accepted signals from the
intelligent controller and would supply oil to raise or lower the leveling bucket auto-
matically to maintain the laser receiver on right position [8]. The hydraulic system
required quick response speed and high control precision, so it was a major problem to
matching the system to the controller. The desired rate at which the bucket raise and
lower would depend on the operating speed. The faster the ground speed the faster the
bucket would need to adjust. A remote relief valve was used before the control valve;
the pressure setting on this valve would change the raise/ lower speed. The principle of
hydraulic pressure controller was shown in Fig.6.

1-oil box, 2-oil pump, 3-hydraulically operated direction control valve, 4- solenoid directional
control valve, 5-overflow valve, 6-solenoid lower-control valve, 7-speed adjusting valve,
8-single direction valve 9- hydraulic ram

Fig. 6. Principle of hydraulic pressure controller

4 Field Experiment

4.1 Experiment Materials and Methods

In April 2010, at Experimental Station of China Agricultural University, a field at the

length of 70m and width of 60m was chosen and East Red 754 tractor was selected as
traction power.3D topographic survey experiments were taken respectively in speed of
20km / h and 10km / h. The experiment selected AgGPS132 as the GPS receiver and
applied portable 3D topographic survey system developed by the Precision Agricul-
ture Center of China Agricultural University as a comparison. The test placed the
antenna of GPS and radio station on the leveling bucket with magnetic sucker in order
to receive differential position information. The laser measuring receiver was installed
at a suitable location on the mast of leveling bucket for the purpose of receiving laser
signals.
414 M. Guo, G. Liu, and X. Li

4.2 Experiment Results

The relative elevation of ground statistics eigenvalues measured by the portable survey
system from fixed-point and two-vehicle speed were shown in Table 1. Compared with
fixed-point measurements, the maximum relative elevation difference obtained from
fast speed(20km / h) and slow speed (10km / h) reached to 3.7cm and 1.5cm respec-
tively. The minimum difference reached to 1.6cm and 0.5cm respectively. The average
deviation attained to 0.6cm and 0.5cm, while the standard deviation got a small devia-
tion. As the difference between the number and the location of measurement points, it
was difficult to analyze statistical data rigorously at the same point and the onboard
state measurements. But to the whole landscape, the small difference of standard de-
viation can be reflected from the 3D topographic map in Figure 7. The difference on
elevation at the edge of the field was mainly caused by large bumps when the tractor
steering to the place, resulting in laser signal exceeded the range of laser measuring
receiver and lost the measuring points.

Table 1. Experiment results

Statistics Max(cm) Min(cm) Mean(cm) Standard

eigenvalue error(cm)
Fixed-point 137.0 105.0 116.7 4.67
measurement
Slow-speed 138.5 105.5 117.2 4.57
onboard
measurement
Fast-speed 140.7 106.6 117.3 4.51
onboard
measurement

a b c
(a) Fixed-point measurement (b) Slow-speed onboard measurement (c) Fast-speed onboard
measurement
Fig. 7. Comparison of 3D topographic map for field survey by fixed-point and in different
moving speeds
 Design and Experiment of Onboard Field 3D Topography Surveying System 415

The relative elevation of ground Statistics eigenvalues from Table 1 showed that the
maximum relative elevation difference was 2.2cm and the minimum relative elevation
difference was 1.1cm, while the average value and standard error were approximate,
which meant the measurement in different speed had a big influence on extremum and
little effect on characteristics of the overall landscape. Even so, the influence of speed
to the measurement result can be seen from Figure 8. It was a Statistical chart of per-
centages of the absolute difference >2cm between elevations and their average values.
It was clear that the percentage accounted in fast speed was bigger than in the slow
speed. This showed that the measurement result got from fast speed had much more
discrete data and the accuracy in slow speed was greater than fast speed.

Fig. 8. Statistical chart of percentages of the absolute difference >2cm between elevations and
their average values under two moving speeds

5 Conclusion
This paper presented a new type of onboard field 3D topography surveying system. The
experiment result indicated that the influence of the tractors speed to the measurement
accuracy was obvious and the measurement accuracy in slow speed was greater than in
the fast speed. Different speed should be adopted according to the field condition when
doing measurement with onboard field 3D topography surveying system. Slow and
uniform speed was important to guarantee the measurement accuracy.

Acknowledgement
This research is sponsored by the project 2008BAB38B06 and 2009BAC55B01. All of
the mentioned support is gratefully acknowledged.

References
1. Rickman, J.F.: Manual for laser land leveling, pp. 15. Indian Council of Agricultural Re-
search, New Delhi (2002)
2. Li, Y., Xu, D., Li, F.: Application of GPS Technology in Agricultural Land Leveling Sur-
vey. Transaction of the CSAE 21(1), 6670 (2005)
416 M. Guo, G. Liu, and X. Li

3. Chen, Y.: Research and Development on Field Topography Measurement Equipment based
on GPS and Laser Techniques. China Agriculture University, Beijing (2006)
4. Zhang, M., Chen, Y., Jia, W.: Design of 3D Topographic Information Measuring System.
Journal of Jilin University: Engineering and Technology Edition 37(6), 14511454 (2007)
5. Yang, Z.: Research and Development on Field Topography Survey System based on GPS
and Laser Techniques. China Agriculture University, Beijing (2008)
6. Lv, Q.: Improvement and Experimentation of Laser Controlled Land Leveling System.
China Agriculture University, Beijing (2007)
7. Lin, J.: Research and Development on Receiver and Controller for Laser Controlled Land
Leveling System. China Agriculture University, Beijing (2004)
8. Si, Y., Liu, G., Yang, Z.: Development and Experiment on laser land Leveling System.
Journal of Jiangsu University: Natural Science Edition 30(4), 6974 (2009)
 Implementation of Agro-environmental Information
Service System Based on WebGIS

Lin Peng1,2, Linnan Yang2,*, and Limin Zhang2

1
College of Computer Engineering and Science, Shanghai University, 200072
Shanghai, P.R. China
2
College of Basic Science & Information Engineering,
Yunnan Agricultural University, 650201 Kunmin, P.R. China
dapengjiao@163.com, lny5400@sina.com, limin0789@126.com

Abstract. Faced to the present agro-environmental information features, there

exist several difficulties to acquire and control the agricultural environment in-
formation, such as the scattered information with spatio-tempel traits, the
methods of quantification and the huge data amount. This paper constructed an
agro-environmental information service system based on the spatial database,
computer network and geographic information system (GIS) technology. This
system was applied in Jianshui County, Yunnan to implement the system func-
tions including the collection, storage, analysis, visual output and intelligent
evaluation. The system with these functions applied technical support for Ji-
anshui county to improve the abilities both in local agricultural products and
environmental protection. And it provided a precedent for other Counties in
Yunnan to construct agricultural environmental information system.

Keywords: WebGIS, Agricultural environment, Information service system,

Spatial database.

1 Introduction
Both of the qualities and the quantities of agricultural products are the most important
aspects for farmers, agricultural technicians and managements. In modern agricultural
processes, how to improve the products qualities is much more increasingly come
into peoples attention than to improve the quantities. And the qualities of the
agricultural products include many strict standards such as pollution-free food stan-
dards and green food standards etc. In order to meet these standards, the basic step
is to monitor and protect agricultural ecology environment because there is impos-
sible to gain any high quality agricultural products from heavy polluted air, soil and
water.
Any environment protection measure would be blind if there is no monitor to
gain plenty of quantification environment information. Only though the environ-
ment monitoring to acquire appropriate environment information data could
understand the reasons why the pollutions created and the regularities that the pollu-
tions changed. Then these reasons and regularities are significant for agricultural

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 417427, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
418 L. Peng, L. Yang, and L. Zhang

technicians and managements to formulate practical environment protection plans.

Thus, contemporary computer technologies were be used frequently to obtain tem-
poral and spatial ago-environmental information in different scales. But since agri-
cultural environment information is scattered and indirect, it is difficult to use the
obtained information data fully to promote environment protecting level [1].
And all of these problems are particularly realistic in Yunnan Province, which is
located in the southwest of China. The land in Yunnan is varied from mountain on
Yungui Plateau at the altitude of 6740 meters to valley at the altitude of 76 meters.
The prominent disparity of altitude arouses multiple land forms and complex cli-
mates. This unique geographical environment imposed diversification on Yunnan
agricultural structure, and increased the difficulties in environment monitoring for
agricultural workers, technicians and managements.
This paper aimed at obtained environment monitoring data from 2005 to 2009 in
Jianshui County, Yunnan designed and implemented a new agro-environmental in-
formation service system based on WebGIS. Firstly, the relative agro-environmental
information data were aggregated and classified such as atmosphere information, soil
information, heavy metal information in soil, irrigation water information. Secondly,
the agro-environmental information service system was designed based on the tech-
nologies including computer, spatial database, network, and geographical information
system (GIS). Compared with the used information service system this new system
implemented inquiry, modification, addition and deletion etc. operations on mass en-
vironmental information data, and applied the local farmers directly, visually and
comprehensively agro-environmental information service. The new system integrated
agro-environmental information data and corresponding evaluation model to imple-
ment intelligent evaluations on the environmental pollution levels including air,
water, soil and soil fertility.

2 System Design

2.1 System Development Methodology

First, attribute database was built based on collected data such as environmental qual-
ity standards, atmosphere data, fertility data of soil, heavy metal data of soil, irrigation
water data and so on according to the investigation in Jianshui.
Second, spatial database was built according to the administrative map of Jianshui
and some spatial data such as land form data, monitoring spot data, pollution elements
data in soil and so on. And profile the corresponding digital map of these spatial data
at the same time.
Third, a multi-index evaluation model was developed based on the above attribute
database and spatial database to analyze the contamination degree of the air, water,
soil and the soil fertility level. The evaluation model was integrated into WebGIS
Components and could be used by consumers. The technique flow diagram of the
system development was illustrated in Fig.1.
Implementation of Agro-environmental Information Service System Based on WebGIS 419

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Fig. 1. Technique flow diagram of the system development

2.2 System Development Platform

The agro-environmental information service system is built on the network technical

architecture, so this paper integrated the network and GIS technology to develop and
implement a practical agro-environmental information service system in Jianshui,
Yunnan.
SuperMap IS.NET was chosen to be the development platform in the new informa-
tion service system, because the function and structure of SuperMap IS.NET
WebGIS platform could satisfy the system development requirements which should
be completed with compatibility, expansion, generalized data exchange format. And
SuperMap Deskpro5 was chosen to be the plotting software to draw electronic map to
improve the equipment compatibility because both of the SuperMap IS.NET and Su-
perMap Deskpro5 are the products from the same software company. At the same
time, since the system would face the challenge of mass data storages and operations,
SQL Server 2005 was used as system database development tool to solve the expan-
sion and integration difficulties of the system database.

3 The Implementation of the System

3.1 System Structure

Architecture. B/S/D (Browser/Service/Database) three-layer architecture was used to

implement the design and development of the system expandable, make the system
module components reusable, and make the system services independent.
420 L. Peng, L. Yang, and L. Zhang

Fig. 2. Architecture diagram of the system

(1) Database Layer

SQL server database software was used as supporting software in database layer. All
the designs included five spatial databases. They were spatial database of production
resources information, spatial database of soil fertility information, spatial database of
soil pollution information, spatial database of irrigation water information and spatial
database of climate information spatial database.

(2) Service Layer

SuperMap IS 2008 was used in Service layer to support the map generation and man-
agement functions.

(3) Browser Layer

IE6.0 or above version was adopted to be the browser to develop the website. Web
controls were used to invoke both of the services in the Service Layer and the User
Interface. Browser layer has the functions of browsing map, editing map, spatial
Analysis, query statistics, etc.

Network Structural. Network structural designing mainly resolved two problems:

(1) How to access different server

(2) How to meet the requirements of different access pressure.
Implementation of Agro-environmental Information Service System Based on WebGIS 421

Fig. 3. Network structure diagram of the system

3.2 The Data Arrangement

Data analysis. There were two types of data in this system, vector data and raster
data. The data design and the analysis were showed in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4. Data analysis diagram of the system

422 L. Peng, L. Yang, and L. Zhang

With the assistance of Jianshui Agricultural Bureau, chose 10 villages in 3 towns,

they are Linan, Miandian and Puxiong in Jianshui, to be the investigation sites.
Then, the agro-environmental information, which included atmosphere data, irriga-
tion water data and soil data in these 10 villages were collected according to national
environmental requirements on agricultural products base. Among these national
standard, this system adopted GB5084-92 national standard on farm irrigation water,
GB 3095-1996 national standard on atmosphere, and GB15618-1995 national stan-
dard on soil.
The collected data mainly includes geospatial information data and attribute
data.

(1) Geospatial information data

The geospatial information data is stored in eoo format based on the administrative
region map in Jianshui at 1: 50000.

(2) Attribute data

The attribute data included main environmental information from 2005 to 2009, such
as air data, irrigation water data, soil data, planted area data and other basic data.
These data were provided by the Jianshui Agricultural Bureau from Status Survey on
Agro- environmental in JianShui.
The soil database sample was showed in table 1.

Table 1. Air pollution Index data

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Implementation of Agro-environmental Information Service System Based on WebGIS 423

Table 2. Water pollution Index data

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The soil heavy metal database sample is showed in table 3.

Table 3. Soil pollution Index data

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Database design. The database in this system was divided into two parts: spatial da-
tabase and non-spatial database. Spatial database was stored in sde database with
SQL Server format. And the special layer information in the spatial data included
administrative region map, contour map, land utilization map and geomor-phological
map in Jianshui.
Non-spatial database contained four types of ago-environmental information: atmos-
phere database, soil database, soil heavy metal database, irrigation water database.
Among these databases, there were 9 field names in atmosphere database; they
were average geo-temperature, average air-temperature, lowest air temperature, high-
est air temperature, average wind speed, average relative humidity, sunshine duration,
evaporation and precipitation.
424 L. Peng, L. Yang, and L. Zhang

There were 14 field names in soil database; they were PH value, organic horizon
(g/kg), total nitrogen(N)g/kg, available nitrogen(N)mg/kg, total phosphorus(P)g/kg,
available phosphorus(P)mg/kg, total potassium(K)g/kg, quick-acting potassium(K)
mg/kg, slow-acting Potassium(K)mg/kg, exchangeable magnesium(Mg)g/kg, avail-
able molybdenum(Mo)mg/kg, available zinc(Zn)mg/kg, available manganese(Mn)
mg/kg and available boron(B)mg/kg.
There were 6 field names in soil heavy metal database; they were copper, lead,
mercury, cadmium, chrome and arsenic.
There were 17 field names in irrigation water database; they were PH value, cad-
mium, lead, copper, zinc, mercury, arsenic, chrome, dung coliform group, fluoride,
chloride, petroleum, COD, cyanide, total phosphorus, volatile phenol and salt.

3.3 Function Design

Function Design in this System contained 6 main function modules: graphics opera-
tion function, spatial data orientation function, environmental data query and analysis
function, attribute data maintenance function, processing function on the monitoring
data and intelligent evaluation function.

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Fig. 5. Functional structure diagram of the system

(1) Graphics operation function.

Jianshui map could be operated with any common browsers. The system could realize
zoom in, zoom out, pan, fix zoom, full screen display, roaming, Hawkeye, guidance
and other functions.
Implementation of Agro-environmental Information Service System Based on WebGIS 425

(2) Spatial data orientation function.

The spatial orientation function could be achieved in electronic map by click, mar-
quee selecting or other query operations.

(3) Data query and analysis function.

The accurately or fuzzy query could be achieved both on spatial data and attribute
data. And all users could gain detail information of the selected objects by mouse
click or marquee on the electronic map.

(4) Maintenance function.

The system databases could be edited remotely by the system administrators though
background operation, which included adding or deleting entity objects and layers,
modifying the space position and attribute data of the entity objects and other
functions.

(5) Processing function on the monitoring data

This new system carried out detailed statistical analysis functions on the obtained
spatial and attributes data by WebGIS system. Such as shortest path analysis function,
distance and area measurement function, statistical graph generation function of the
attribute data and others.

(6) Intelligent evaluation function.

The pollution degree of the ago-environment factors (air, water, soil and soil fertility
etc.) could be evaluated intellectually according to the corresponding national
standards.

Fig. 6. The interface of running intelligent evaluation function

426 L. Peng, L. Yang, and L. Zhang

J J

Fig. 7. The interface of rendering image of mercury content in soil pollutant

4 Conclusions

This paper introduced the designing methods and implication of the agro-
environmental information service system based on WebGIS in Jianshui county,
Yunnan in details. The relative environmental data were converged together includ-
ing atmosphere data, soil data, soil heavy metal data, farm irrigation water data etc.
in the new system and it offered the costumers a brief and direct interface to obtain
valuable agro-environmental information and geospatial information in Jianshui.
Besides providing the information inquiring, this system achieved spatial inquire,
analyze, and plotting functions between the graphics and attribute data. And also,
the new system could accomplish intelligent evaluation on environmental pollution
levels, including air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution and soil fertility
levels.
The new agro-environmental information service system was applied success-
fully in Jianshui County. Local agricultural worker, technicians and managements
could obtain agricultural or environmental information accurately and directly in
time by the system. And the system design process offered other Counties in
Yunnan a valuable method and a precedent to build suitable agro-environmental
information service system.

Acknowledgments. The findings and the opinions were partially supported by a pro-
ject of Natural Science Foundation of Yunnan Province Design and implemen-
tation of county agro-environmental information service system based on WebGIS,
NO. 2008ZC050M. This work was supported by Shanghai University, China and
Yunnan Agricultural University, China.
Implementation of Agro-environmental Information Service System Based on WebGIS 427

References
1. Yan, L.F., Xie, Y.S.: The Study on the County Land Information System. Soil and Water
Conservation Science and Technology in Shanxi 1, 1012 (2004)
2. Rao, W.M., Zhang, J.S., Xiao, H.S.: Reviews on Present Situation of GIS Application in
Agriculture. Yun Nan Geographic Environment Research 16, 1317 (2004)
3. Li, Z.P., Li, M., Wu, M.: Design and Realization of Digital Pipeline System based on
WebGIS. Computer Engineering and Applications 45, 7072 (2009)
4. Wang, P.S., Zou, Z.R., Weng, Y.K.: Research and Implementation of Flood Prevention
and Dispatching System Based on WebGIS for the Yangtze River Valley. Geomatics &
Spatial Information Technology 32, 118120 (2009)
Design and Implementation of Automatic Control System
for Rice Seed Tape Winding Units

Hongguang Cui, Wentao Ren*, Benhua Zhang, Yi Yang, Lili Dai, and Quanli Xiang

College of Engineering, Shenyang Agricultural University,

Shenyang, 110866, P.R. China
cuihongguang7763@163.com, renwentao1958@yahoo.cn,
benhuazhang@163.com, tianya@163.com, dadailili@163.com,
xiangquanli1020@163.com

Abstract. In order to adapt to the requirements of the development for precision

agriculture technology, making the rice seed tape planting technology has been
widely used. The paper-making improved the design on the rice seed tape twist-
ing machine especially the seed tape winding units. It proposed seed tape wind-
ing automatic control system based on STC90C514AD to realize the rotating
speed adjustment of the seed tape disk, used an angular displacement sensor
real-time detecting on the disk diameters during the winding process. The sys-
tem can make the rotating speed reduce when the diameters increase. The ex-
perimental results show that the machine performs well. Coefficient of variation
of the seed rope linear velocity was 4.64%, the tension uniformed during the
seed tape winding process. The working efficiency of the machine is 360m/h. It
shows that the machine and the control system meet the overall design require-
ments well.

Keywords: The rice seed tape, breaking force of seed tape, winding machine,
sensor detection.

1 Introduction
The rice direct sowing technology with seed tape based on non-woven (abbreviation
is the rice direct sowing technology with seed tape), was a new technology of rice
direct sowing proposed in recent years. The technology works into two steps. Firstly,
it drops the rice and other materials in PLA non-woven, makes up the seed tape disk
in factories. Secondly, it lay the rice seed tape in the ditches according to the require-
ments of agriculture by using the direct sowing machine which work ditch, lay the
seed tape, over the earth and repression in one time. This technology could realize the
working of the rice seed tape twisting unrestrict of the soil and other conditions in
space, unconstrain of the farming season in time. It has the effect of cost-saving and
efficiency-increasing, that can realize simplification and lightness on the works in the
fields [1], [2].

* Corresponding author

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part IV, IFIP AICT 347, pp. 428436, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Design and Implementation of Automatic Control System 429

Wentao Ren and his group studied this technology since 2005, had achieved pre-
liminary results. The machine that the group manufactured could make up the seed
tape disk [3]. It has the advantages of simple structure, low cost and easy operation.
But the seed tape breaks easily and the hill distances accuracy is lower by using this
machine during the producing because of the constant rotating speed of the seed tape
disk, while the diameters of the disk increasing continuously and the tensions on the
seed tape are bigger and bigger. Jun Zhou and his group studied a machine for pro-
ducing precision seed tape with paper for rice direct sowing based on PLC controller
and five motor-driven [4], [5]. The hill distances, the numbers of seeds per hill and
the tensile strength of the seed tape improved. However, the machine has disadvan-
tages of high cost and single material twisting. Because of the motor and the shaft for
winding moved up and down with the under beam, there is a large inertia force, so it
causes uniformity of the twisting on the winding disk.
According to the problems existed, this paper has improved the design on the rice
seed tape twisting machine, particularly the winding units of it. It designs a two-way
spiral camshaft driven by the seed tape disk shaft, to realize seed tape uniform recip-
rocating winding. It proposes the automatic control system based on STC90C514AD
to realize the rotor speed adjustment of the seed tape winding disk, apply an an
gular displacement sensor real-time detecting the disk diameters during the winding
process.

2 Materials and Methods

It selects spun-bonded non-woven fabric made of polylactide (PLA) as the tape mate-
rial with width 20mm and density 40g/m2, which produced in the Jiangyin gaoxin
chemical fiber CO., LTD. In Shenyang area, the parameters of the rice seed tape di-
rect sowing technology are: the rice variety is Shendao 7, amount is about 0.03g per
hill, seeds distance is 30mm, the fertilizer selected is granular DAP, amount is about
0.04g per hill, the distance between the fertilizer and the seed is 15mm. The theoreti-
cal linear velocity of the rice seed tape is 0.1 m/s, the twisting numbers of the seed
tape is 67 per meter. In order to get convenient storage and realization of direct sow-
ing mechanize operated in field, the disk of the twisting should be standard (inner
diameter is 100mm and outer diameter is 310mm), seed tape uniform cycloidal wind-
ing in disk.

2.1 Working Principle of the Rice Seed Tape Twisting Machine

The working principle of the rice seed tape twisting machine is shown in Figure 1.
The hardware of the machine consists of non-woven feeding mechanism, binder
brushing mechanism, seed sowing mechanism, fertilizer sowing mechanism, materials
locating mechanism, twisting mechanism, drying mechanism, seed tape disk winding
mechanism, seed tape fracture testing mechanism and so on. The software of the
machine consists of MCU control system, computer monitoring and recording system
and so on.
430 H. Cui et al.

Non-woven has been made in disk shape (1) by its manufacturer, pulled by the
winding mechanism and passed through non-woven rollers (2), so that the non-woven
is flat to avoid distort or wrap. During the non-woven went on continuously, it passes
binder brushing mechanism (3, 4, 5) covered, the binder machine is driven by binder
motor (5), the binder is made by modified maize starch [4]. The non-woven with
binder over it enters into the V-supporting board (25) and becomes the V-cross sec-
tion, which can carry seeds and fertilizers that ensure they will not fall off from the
non-woven.
Rice seeds and fertilizers dropped in the holes of the synchronous belt (24) by
seeding from the horizontal plate seed metering device (7) driven by motor (6) and
cell wheel feed for fertilizer (10) driven by motor (11), through the seed transmitting
tube (21) and the fertilizer transmitting tube (22) respectively. After the synchronous
belt has been carried on, they have the same linear velocity with non-woven, at that
time the materials dropped on the non-woven passed by through the hole of the V-
supporting board (25).

1 non-woven disk 2 non-woven rollers 3 binder 4 binder brushing rollers 5 motor for

binder 6 motor for seed metering device 7 horizontal plate seed metering device 8 rice

seeds box 9 fertilizers box 10 cell wheel feed for fertilizer 11 motor for fertilizer 12

bearing of U-rotating frame 13 hair dryer 14 seed supporting roller 15 U-rotating frame

16 rice seed tape 17 seed tape steering roller 18 steering cylinder 19 motor for secondary

seeding 20 secondary seeding driving pulley 21 seed transmitting tube 22 fertilizer trans-

mitting tube 23 secondary seed supporting board 24 secondary seeding synchronous belt

with holes 25 V-supporting board 26 stepper for U-rotating frame
27 two-way spiral

camshaft 28 seed tape guiding block 29 photoelectric sensor 30 seed tape break detection

device 31 diameters of seed tape disk detection device 32 seed tape disk 33 step motor for

the seed tape disk 34 seed tape guiding ring

Fig. 1. Working principle of the rice seed tape twisting machine

 Design and Implementation of Automatic Control System 431

The parts of the non-woven which carried seeds and fertilizers come into being the
seed tape had twisting numbers by the action of the U-rotating systems (12, 14, 15,
17) driven by motor (26) and the steering cylinder (18). The hair dryer (13) dries the
binder in the tape. And then the seed tape passes though the guiding ring (34), in the
action of the two-way spiral camshaft (27) driven by the seed tape disk shaft. Eventu-
ally the seed tape winding uniform on the disk with the space required. And then the
seed tape winding on the disk (32) has driven by step motor (33) which in the auto-
matic control system that shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3.

2.2 Analysis of the Parameters of the Automatic Control System

As it is shown in Figure 1, during the seed tape winding, the diameters of the seed
tape disk increasing when the turn numbers of the seed tape increasing. In order to
obtain a stable linear velocity of the seed tape, the automatic control system has been
designed, which consists of seed tape disk diameters detection device (31) and
STC90C514AD. It changes the rotating speed of step motor (33), realizes the rotating
speed of the disk reducing when the diameters increase. It avoids the seed tape broken
because of the seed tape linear velocity constant, and assures the tensions uniform in
the process of the seed tape rolling.
The working principle of the automatic control system for linear velocity of the
seed tape is shown in Figure 2. It consists of U-rotating twisting mechanism, seed
tape winding guiding mechanism, seed tape breaking detection mechanism, automatic
control system for the seed tape disk winding and so on. The automatic control system
for the seed tape disk winding consists of seed tape disk radius detecting roller, seed
tape disk radius detecting pendulum, angular displacement sensor, MCU, step motor
driver and the seed tape disk.

n2

R0
R
r

a
l

4 seed tape disk ra-

1 seed tape 2 seed tape disk 3 seed tape disk radius detection roller
dius detecting pendulum 5 angular displacement sensor
Fig. 2. The principle of the automatic control system for linear velocity of the seed tape
432 H. Cui et al.

During the process of the seed tape winding, the calculation model of the seed tape
linear velocity on the disk is,
2 n2
v = ( R0 + R ) (1)
60

In the formula (1), v-the linear velocity of the seed tape, m/s. R0-initial radius of the
seed tape disk, m. R-increment for the radius of the seed tape disk, m. n2-rotating
speed of the seed tape disk, r/min.
It can be known from the formula (1) that, only when the rotating speed (n2) of the
seed tape disk meets the formula n2 = R0 n0 ( R0 + R) , the linear velocity of the seed
tape is stable and the tension of the seed tape is uniform (n0-initial rotating speed of
the seed tape disk, r/min). Therefore, the key of the design is accuracy and timely
detection of the disk radius and turning them into electrical signals to transmit to the
control system.

By applying DS36-V/A angular displacement sensor to detect the seed tape radius
(R+ R), using the system calibration, the regression equation of the seed tape disk
radius is,
V = 0.057 0.035 (2)

In the formula (2), V-output voltage of the angular displacement sensor, V. -

angular of the radius detecting pendulum, .
Analysis of variance results shows that the equation regression coefficient R>0.95.
It shows that the detection system has good linearity and high precision.
The relationship between the angular of the radius detecting pendulum and the ra-
dius of disk is,

a 2 + l 2 ( R0 + R + r ) 2
cos = (3)
2al

In the formula (3), a-centre distance of the angular displacement sensor and the seed
tape disk, m. l-length of the radius detecting pendulum, m. r-radius of the seed tape
disk radius detecting roller, m.
It uses 57BYGH306 step motor and DL-023MDC step motor driver to achieve the
rotating speed adjustment of the seed tape disk. The rotating speed of the step motor
depends on the pulse frequency, step angle depends on the microstep of the step mo-
tor driver. When the step motor driver in the input pulse of 200Hz, it is in the concus-
sion zone, easy to damage the internal components. So apply pulse of 350Hz as the
low frequency starting point. In order to satisfy the step motor driver input pulse, it set
transmission ratio of 4:1 (that is n2 / n1 = 4 / 1 ) gear-driven to the seed tape disk. It
has,
60 f
n1 = (4)
360o
 Design and Implementation of Automatic Control System 433

In the formula (4), -step angle of step motor, . f-pulse frequency of step motor

driver, HZ. n1 rotating speed of step motor, r/min.

2.3 Working Principle of the Automatic Control System for Linear Velocity of
the Seed Tape

Working principle of the automatic control system for linear velocity of the seed tape
is shown in Figure 3. It is a control system of the constant value. Initial value of the
linear velocity (v0) is set from the keyboard of the MCU. Through the MCU operat-
ing, it drives the step motor work in the rotating speed of n0 and produces an initial
voltage value (V). Compare V with the Vt , which is converted from the feedback

device of the seed tape radius detection, and get V. After AD conversion, amplifica-
tion and calculation of the MCU, it outputs frequency (f) to step motor driver to
change the rotating speed of the step motor, adjusts the rotating speed of the seed tape
disk, outputs actual linear velocity (vm) of the seed tape. The radius of the seed tape
disk (R) increased, when the numbers of the seed tape winding on the disk increasing.
The value of R is detected by the feedback device of the seed tape radius detection to
output voltage value (Vt) and compared with initial voltage value to complete the
process of the automatic control system. The automatic control system communicates
with host computer through the RS232 bus to realize data acquisition, storage, and
comparison analysis and so on.

data acquisition system of host computer

MCU

Initial
2S n 0 V V f Step R 2S n2 vm
value of R0 A/D K CPU Winding R
the linear 60 motor mechanism 60
velocity v0
Vt
feedback device of the seed tape radius detection

Fig. 3. Working principle of automatic control system for linear velocity of seed

3 Results and Discussion

The prototype test of the hardware system has been done to verify the accuracy of the
automatic control system. Contrast curves of the theoretical rotating speed and actual
rotating speed of the seed tape disk are shown in Figure 4.
It can be seen from Figure 4 that the rotating speed of the seed tape disk present
ladder form decreases with the time increasing during the winding process. The rea-
son is that the rotating speed of the seed tape disk decreases with the seed tape disk
radius increasing, while the radius of the seed tape disk increases only after the seed
tape winding fully one layer on the disk, which changes the equivalent to a step sig-
nal. The time of one layer spending is different in a constant linear velocity, so the
changes of the rotating speed of the seed tape disk and the time into the relationship
of ladders.
434 H. Cui et al.

21.00

rotating speed of the seed tape 19.00

disc shaft /r/min 17.00 theoretical rotating speed
15.00 actual rotating speed
13.00

11.00

9.00

7.00

5.00
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000
working time of the seed tape disc /s

Fig. 4. Contrast curves of theoretical and actual rotating speed of the seed tape disk

Descriptive statistics of the actual seed rope linear velocity has been listed in table
1. After comparative analysis with the theoretical linear velocity (0.1m/s), the changes
of the actual linear velocity is little, it meets the requirements of design.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics of the actual seed rope linear velocity

Linear Std. Minimum Maximum Coefficient

velocity mean deviation of variation
/m /m /m /m /%
0.101 0.0047 0.092 0.109 4.64

4 Conclusions
(1) It has designed rice seed tape twisting machine in this paper. The machine consists
of non-woven feeding mechanism, binder brushing mechanism, seed sowing mecha-
nism, fertilizer sowing mechanism, materials locating mechanism, twisting mecha-
nism, drying mechanism, seed tape disk winding mechanism, seed tape fracture
testing mechanism and so on. The machine can drop seeds and fertilizers on the spun-
bonded non-woven fabric made of polylactide (PLA) and made into seed tape disk.
(2) It has designed a two-way spiral camshaft driven by the seed tape disk shaft to
realize seed tape reciprocating winding in the disk, when the diameters of the disk
bigger, the rotating of the spiral camshaft slower, which ensures the seed tape disk
uniformity of winding. That realizes the constant speed of the seed tape.
(3) It has studied an automatic control system for linear velocity of the seed tape in
this paper. The system consists of seed tape disk radius detecting roller, seed tape disk
radius detecting pendulum, angular displacement sensor, MCU, step motor driver and
the seed tape disk. It overcomes the shortcomings of the first-generation prototype
such as the seed tape breaking easily because the diameters of the disk increase con-
tinuously and the tensions on the seed tape are bigger and bigger. The experimental
results show that the machine performs well. The actual rotating speed slowed in
 Design and Implementation of Automatic Control System 435

ladder figure when the diameters of the disk increased. Analysis by the SPSS, the
linear velocity mean was 0.101m/s, the Std. deviation was 0.0047, the coefficient of
variation of the actual seed rope linear velocity was 4.64%. It has no fracture during
the process of twisting working, it meets the design requirements. The system also has
advantages of low cost and suitable for promotion and application.

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Chinese)
 Design and Implementation of Crop Potential Model
System Based on GIS and Componentware Technology

Hao Zhang1, Li Ding1, Guang Zheng1, Xin Xu1, Lei Xi1,*, and Xinming Ma1,2
1
College of Information and Management Science, Henan Agricultural University,
Zhengzhou 450002, China
2
College of Agronomy, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou 450002, China
zhanghaohnnd@126.com, hnaustu@126.com

Abstract. Based on SuperMap IS.NET and the empirical models about crop
potential output, the paper firstly designed the model system of crop potential
output by using componentware method based on distributed computing archi-
tecture under network environment. Secondly, the paper implemented crop po-
tential model components by using componentware technology. Finally, with
the abstract mechanism of interface, the paper integrated crop potential output
models and loosely coupled model components with SuperMap GIS. The re-
sults show that the model system as a component container about crop potential
output model integrated empirical and mechanism models and provided a dy-
namic management for crop potential output models and dynamic methods call,
which solved the issues of integration and expansion, and the system has the
characteristics of wide applicability and good independence, which provides
ADM and technical support for the construction of major grain-producing areas,
crop production management and potential mining.

Keywords: Componentware, Crop potential output, GIS, UML.

1 Introduction
Currently, digital model on crop production system is the foundation and the core of
the digital agriculture, and is also the bridge linking the planting digitization, intelli-
gentization and precision[1-4]. The significance of crop potential output model lies in
the quantitative analysis and evaluation for the factors role to the whole crop produc-
ing stage, and explains the factors impact to crop potential output in detail. Crop
potential model has advantages of strong explanatory power, wide application and
easy to quantify and be controlled.
With the development of crop potential output evaluation model, componentware
and GIS, GIS-driven software development methods and componentware technology
have been widely used in various types of GIS application system. It is effective to
reduce the coupling GIS with model system and improve the maintainability and inde-
pendence by using componentware technology[5-6]. In this case, the paper adopted the

*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 437445, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
438 H. Zhang et al.

componentware method to build a strong extension and low coupling crop potential
model system based on SuperMap IS.NET 2008, accomplished crop production infor-
mation management and potential analysis, and provided technical support and deci-
sion-making for managing crop production and mining crop potential.

2 Data Source and Research Method

2.1 Data Source

Research data includes meteorological data, soil data, socio-economic data and crop
production data. Meteorological data includes daily average temperature, daily maxi-
mum temperature, daily minimum temperature, rainfall and sunshine hours, provided
by the weather bureau of Henan Province. Soil information includes soil texture, soil
type and soil nutrients, provided by the county soil station or compiled through Henan
TuRang Dili[7]. Socio-economic data includes producing condition, economic condi-
tion and producing level. Crop production data includes crop varieties, planting re-
gion, annual crop area, yield per hectare, annual total output and multiple crop index,
collected from the statistical yearbook of Henan Province.

2.2 Research Method

Crop Potential Output Evaluation Process. First, based on the process and the
method of crop potential output evaluation[8-9], the paper collected and collated
attribute data, such as Meteorology, soil and social production, and spatial data at 30
counties in Henan Province, to integrate space and attributes database. Second, the
paper built the model components at all levels based on crop potential output model
about light, temperature, water and soil and realized the model system of crop poten-
tial output. Finally, the paper quantitatively calculated crop potential output through
mechanism model.

Crop Potential Output Mechanism Models. The frequent methods of crop potential
output included mechanism model and empirical model[10-12] at present. The latter
was complicated and had the disadvantage of more inputted parameters leading to be
difficult to spread, but the former was simple and easy to popularize. So, the paper
used mechanism model of light, temperature, water, soil and social-economic factors,
designed crop potential output model components, and constructed a crop production
potential model system. Crop potential output model included computing and analysis
models of crop potential output. Computing model included natural and social re-
source calculation. Computing model of natural resource included solar radiation
model, photosynthetic potential model, temperature potential model, climate potential
model and soil potential model. Computing model of social resource was used to
quantify social factors contribution, such as producing condition, economic condition
and producing level. The daily and total solar radiations were calculated during crop
growth according to reference [13]. The potential output of photosynthesis, tempera-
ture, climate and soil was calculated according to reference [14-18]. Similarly, Analy-
sis model of crop potential output included natural and social resource analysis, and
the analysis approaches included spatial analysis and time analysis.
 Design and Implementation of Crop Potential Model System 439

3 Design of Model System

3.1 System Architecture

Crop potential output model system consisted of system tool, system data, potential
calculation and potential evaluation. System tool was responsible for system data
management and made up of data editing components and model components for
generating meteorological data of previous and current years. System data included
the input database and the output database. The input database was made up of re-
gional data, meteorological data, soil data, varieties data and crop cultivation and
harvest data, which provided data-driven function for computing model components
of potential output. The output database was made up of potential coefficient data,
total potential data and thematic evaluation data, which provided data-driven function
for model verification and potential distribution evaluation model component.
Crop potential output computing component was made up of the standard parame-
ter library of crop species, regional parameter library of crop species, metadata and
model file library.
Driven by the input database, system generated a set of crop potential output
model views. Driven by model management, models were imported and exported, and
model parameters were adjusted according to local conditions. Driven by the suitable
potential model, crop potential output coefficients and total potential output were
calculated and exported into the output database. Driven by crop potential evaluation
components, crop potential output thematic analysis and the credibility of potential
models were realized. Fig.1. shows the architecture of crop potential output model
system.

Fig. 1. System architecture

3.2 Design of Crop Potential Model Component

Crop has different growth characteristics and crop potential output was affected by
multiple factors. So, the paper used computer technology to calculate crop potential
and input all relevant data, such as climate conditions, soil conditions, crop species
440 H. Zhang et al.

and other data and parameters. Based on the analysis to wheat, maize, cotton and
other potential output model, the constructed model component should have the char-
acteristics of abstract and polymorphism, which could cover a variety of crop poten-
tial output model. The paper built the corresponding model components by using
componentware technology to screen the difference in the calculation process. In crop
model components, the sub-model should be refined as far as possible to build an
autocephalous atom component.
In addition, model components' integration and expansion should be considered
with other agricultural production system, so the interface technology was used to
highly abstract model components and build a unified data interface. Crop potential
output model system was made up of various types of crop model components,
such as crop species interface, potential computing interface, and potential evaluation
interfaces.

Design of Crop Potential Model Interface. According to the empirical models of

crop potential output, system model components consisted of the interface and class
of photosynthetic potential, temperature potential, climate potential, soil potential, and
socio-economic potential. In view of photosynthesis potential associated with solar
radiation, solar radiation object was designed as a attribute in photosynthetic potential
class, and solar radiation class was also associated with photosynthetic potential class.
Crop potential output interface was provided from crop potential output model
system, and was responsible for calculating photosynthesis, temperature, climate, soil
and socio-economic potential coefficient and total potential. Photosynthesis,
temperature, climate, soil and society sub-interfaces and classes were derived from

Fig. 2. Model component interface of crop potential output

 Design and Implementation of Crop Potential Model System 441

Fig. 3. The integrated potential model components

442 H. Zhang et al.

crop potential output interface. Five classes at all levels of the potential output,
potential coefficient and the total amount were derived from the corresponding sub-
interface.
Taking into account the relationship among models and the integration of different
models at all levels, interface technology was used to design coupled models loosely
in crop potential output model system. Fig.2. shows the model component interface of
crop potential output. For example, photosynthetic potential output class was associ-
ated with solar radiation interface, and solar radiation class was integrated into the
photosynthetic potential class to obtain solar radiation. Solar radiation class realized
the interface, regardless of which type of solar radiation class for calculating the total
solar radiation, as well as temperature potential class, climate potential class, soil
potential class and social potential class. Using interface abstraction mechanism could
greatly improve the scalability of crop potential output model system.

Design and Integration of Crop Potential Model Subcomponent. Crop potential

model subcomponents included photosynthetic potential component, temperature
potential component, climate potential component, soil potential and social potential
component. Taking into account the characteristics of multi-crop and multi-model,
interface technology was used to effectively integrate all levels of models for improv-
ing model systems scalability and maintainability. Fig.3. shows the integrated poten-
tial model components.

4 System Implementation and Application

4.1 System Implementation

The container component of crop potential model system provided the potential
model interface for different crop production management and dynamic function
calls, imported all kinds of crop potential models, and retained the further capacity for
expansion interfaces to integrate other agriculture information system.
Taking wheat and maize production in Henan Province as example, the meteoro-
logical data, soil data and crop cultivation and harvest data of all cities in Henan Prov-
ince were inputted into the model system, the potential yield of wheat and maize was
quantitatively estimated through the calculating model subsystem, and the potential
distribution of wheat and maize at all cities was qualitatively analyzed through the
evaluation model subsystem, which provided the decision-making and technical sup-
port for building the core area of crop in Henan Province.

4.2 System Application

The system has been applied to crop production management in Henan Province. The
system is running well, and effectively estimates and predicts crop potential output.
Fig.4. shows the interface of crop potential calculation. Fig.5. shows the interface of
crop potential analysis.
 Design and Implementation of Crop Potential Model System 443

Fig. 4. The interface of crop potential calculation

Fig. 5. The interface of crop potential analysis

5 Conclusion

Crop potential output model system was built by using componentware technology
based on GIS, and crop potential was calculated and quantitatively analyzed. The
results show that the system has the characteristics of wide applicability and good
independence, which provides ADM and technical support for construction of major
grain-producing areas, crop production management and potential mining. The model
system could be extended to other crop potential calculation and also combined with
other software system, such as soil productivity evaluation system, agriculture fertili-
zation expert system and crop production early warning system.
444 H. Zhang et al.

It is necessary to strengthen the function of crop potential model management, im-

prove the component management and enrich the model types of crop potential prac-
tically to increase productivity in the model system, such as crop growth simulation
models, nutrient dynamics and balanced fertilization models and crop output benefit
models.

Acknowledgments. This work is supported by "Eleventh Five-Year" national

scientific and technological support and major project plan: "High-yield Crop Science
and Technology Engineering" (Contract Number: 2006BAD02A07-4), specific
industry research sponsored by ministry of agriculture (Contract Number: 20083028)
and 863 plan(Contract Number: 2006AA10Z271). Sincerely thanks are also due to
the National Engineering Research Center of Wheat for providing the data for the
study.

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2. Zhao, C.J., Wu, H.R., Yang, B.Z., Sun, X., Wang, J.H., Gu, J.Q.: Development Platform
for Agricultural Intelligent System Based on Techno-Componentware Model. Trans.
CSAE 2, 140143 (2004)
3. Cao, W.X., Zhu, Y.: Crop Management Knowledge Model. China Agriculture Press, Bei-
jing (2005)
4. Xi, L., Ma, X.M., Li, F.C., Liu, H.B., Ren, Y.N., Li, Y.H.: Design and Implementation of
Crop Growth Simulation System Based on Techno-Componentware Model. Jour. Hen.
Agri. Uni. 3, 317320 (2005)
5. Zhang, H., Li, F.C., Ma, X.M., Gao, R., Xia, B., Lu, Z.M.: Design and Realization of GIS-
Based County Testing Soil for Wheat Formulated Fertilization System. Jour. Hen. Agri.
Uni. 5, 566569 (2008)
6. Zhu, Y., Cao, W.X., Wang, S.H., Pan, J.: Application of Soft Component Technology to
Design of Intelligent Decision-Making System for Crop Management. Trans. CSAE 1,
132136 (2003)
7. Wei, K.X.: Henan TuRang Dili. Henan Science and Technology Press, Henan (1995)
8. Zhang, H., Xi, L., Xu, X., Gao, R., Ma, X.M., Yin, J.: Evaluation System of Wheat Natural
Potential Productivity at County Scale Based on GIS. Trans. CSAE 12, 198205 (2009)
9. Zhou, Z.G., Meng, Y.L., Cao, W.X.: Knowledge Model and GIS-based Crop Potential
Productivity Evaluation. Scie. Agri. Sini. 6, 11421147 (2005)
10. Bai, L.P., Chen, F.: Status and Evaluations on Research of Crop Production Potential in
China and Abroad. Crops 1, 79 (2002)
11. Xu, C.D., Gao, X.F.: Crop Productivity Potential Model Applied in China. Jour. Arid.
Land. Res. Envi. 6, 108112 (2003)
12. Gu, D.Y., Liu, J.G., Yang, Z.Q., Yin, J.: Reviews on Crop Productivity Potential Re-
searches. Agri. Rese. Arid. Area. 5, 8994 (2007)
13. Zheng, G.Q.: MAIZESIMA Model to Simulate Maize Growth and Development.
Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing (1999)
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Press, Beijing (1985)
 Design and Implementation of Crop Potential Model System 445

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jian Province. Jour. Fu. Agri. Fore. Uni.: Natu. Scie. Edit. 2, 255258 (2002)
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Northwestern Shandong. Chinese Jour. Agro. 4, 510 (2004)
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Effective Coefficient in the Alluvial Plain. Jour. Agri. Uni. Hebei. 4, 5356 (2002)
 Design and Realization of a VRGIS-Based Digital
Agricultural Region Management System*

Xiaojun Liu, Yuou Zhang, Weixing Cao, and Yan Zhu**

Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Information Agriculture,

Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China
Tel.: 025-84396565, Fax: 025-84396672
liuxj@njau.edu.cn, yanzhu@njau.edu.cn

Abstract. In order to realize the digitalization and visualization of information

management in agricultural-region, a VRGIS-based digital agricultural region
management system (VDARMS) was developed with SuperMap 2008 as the
platform of spatial information management, VRMap 3.0 as the driver of scene,
and integrating with the existing knowledge model for crop management. This
system realized the functions as file management, spatial handling, information
query, data analysis, cultural management plan design, virtual simulation, and
system maintenance, etc. Case studies of the system were carried out in Heheng
village of Jiangyan city and Qinglong village of Nanjing city, Jiangsu province,
China, the application results indicated that VDARMS accorded with the de-
velopment of modern agricultural spatial information management, realized
standard, digital management and visual display of agricultural information, and

greatly promoted the development of digital agriculture technology.

Keywords: VRGIS, agro-region, knowledge model for crop management, in-

formation management, virtual simulation.

1 Introduction

Along with the development of information and computer technologies, digital agri-
culture has been an effective method for many countries to promote the skills of agri-
cultural production and improve the capacity of agricultural competition (Liu, 2005;
Song et al., 2007; Zhou, 2009). Agricultural information management system is one of
the core technologies in the technological system of digital agriculture. Up to now,
correlative researches were reported at home and abroad, for example, Shane et al.
(2001) in Kansas State University developed a field-level geographic information
system based on object-oriented programming concept. Ma et al. (2007) established
a spatial information management system of digital agriculture by using ComGIS

*
Project supported by the National High-Technology Research and Development Program of
China (No. 2006AA10A303).
**
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 446455, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Design and Realization of a VRGIS-Based Digital Agricultural Region Management 447

technology. Liu et al. (2006) designed and realized a WebGIS-based system for agri-
cultural spatial information management and aided decision-making with
Brower/Server mode as distributing network structure and WebGIS as spatial infor-
mation management platform. These systems were mostly developed based on GIS,
had the functions as information query, spatial analysis and aided decision- making.
However, geometrical and topological information in the third dimension (vertical
direction) were disappeared for using 2D showing mode in expressing spatial infor-
mation, so the realistic world cannot be exhibited perfectly.
Virtual reality geographic information system (VRGIS) is one of the pop research
domains in geographic information system (GIS) and virtual reality (VR). As the in-
tegrating combination of GIS and VR, VRGIS has the functions as spatial information
management of GIS and virtual visualization of VR, user can observe, immerge and
communicate in the virtual environment (Deng et al., 2002). Recently, several cor-
relative researches based on VRGIS were reported in the domains of urban layout,
forest resource management and tour resources management, moreover, a series of
virtual simulation systems were developed (Jiang et al., 2008; Zou et al., 2006; Liu et al,
2006; Wu et al, 2008). Although these systems realized the functions as 3D wandering,
data management and information query, but couldnt realize the spatial information
analysis and decision support. Therefore, the object of this paper is to develop a
VRGIS-based digital agricultual region management system by integrating the tech-
nologies of VRGIS, crop management knowledge model, database and decision sup-
port system (Cao, 2008). The system aims to realize the functions such as digitalization
management for agro-region information, aided decision-making for crop cultivation
and visualization simulation display, furthermore improve the efficiency and effect of
information management and display in agro-region.

2 Design of System

2.1 Design of System Structure

Based on the theory of system engineering, software technology, research target and
technology characteristic, the system was composed of three parts: user layer, opera-
tional logic layer and basal data layer (Fig. 1).

2.1.1 Basal Data Layer

The Basal Data Layer Managed Elementary Data and 3D Model Data.
Elementary data: included spatial and attributive data. The spatial data included the
data as road, watershed, building and field in agro-region. The attributive data was
composed of elementary attributive data and geographic attributive data. The first one
consisted of agricultural resource data that driving model run and scene constructing
parameters, such as meteorological data, soil data, variety parameter data and terrain
creating parameters, etc; the second one was the data that described spatial characters,
such as position, area, aspiration information of building, crop type, yield and variaty
information, etc, these data were connected with spatial data by correlative code.
448 X. Liu et al.

User layer
Information query
File management Virtual simulation
Data analysis
Spatial handling System maintenance
Cultural plan design

Operational logic layer

Crop management
GIS platform knowledge model 3D virtual platform

Spatial information Design for crop Virtual simulation of

management management plan agro-region

Basal data layer

Elementary data DEM DOM DM

Fig. 1. Framework of system

3D model data: included digital elevation model (DEM), digital orthograph model
(DOM) and digital model (DM). DEM was used to simulate the variable status of
terrain by digital vector and grid formats (Huang et al., 2001). DOM was the digital
image to express the 3D models textures (Hu, 2007), DM was the 3D model of ground
object with complicated structure by 3D modeling software (such as 3DS Max),
moreover it was the foundation of 3D virtual scene.

2.1.2 Operational Logic Layer

The operational logic layer consisted of spatial information management module, plan
design module for crop cultivation and virtual simulation module of agricul-
tural-region, three modules were integrated based on data level and COM components.
The first module could realize information query, data analysis, display of thematic
map and maintenance by GIS platform. The second module could realize the decision
support for agricultural production management based on existing crop management
knowledge model, result data were transferred to GIS platform and 3D virtual platform
to fulfill the display of thematic map and virtual scene. The third module could realize
the display and alternation of 3D virtual scene, alternation between 2D digital map and
3D scene on the 3D virtual platform.

2.1.3 User Layer

Taking Windows as system interface, the system could communicate with user by
menu, toolbar, list table, map and 3D virtual scene, etc. By clicking the mouse or
keyboard, user could operate the functions such as file management, spatial handling,
information query, data analysis, crop cultural plan design, virtual simulation and
system maintenance, etc.
 Design and Realization of a VRGIS-Based Digital Agricultural Region Management 449

2.2 Design of System Function

In order to realize the digitalization and visualization of information management in
agricultural region, and supply the convenient alternation, the functions of file man-
agement, spatial handling, information query, data analysis, cultural plan design, vir-
tual simulation and system maintenance were designed in this system (Fig. 2).

Map management
File management
VRGIS-based digital agricultural region management system

Scene management

Map handling
Spatial handling
Spatial data measure
Scene handling
Buffer analysis
Spatial information query
Information query Stack-up
Attributive information query
Statistical analysis
Data analysis Visual analysis

Cultural plan design Variety selection

Scene automatic creation Sowing/transplanting
Alternation between map
Virtual simulation Density/basal seedling
and scene
Scene change Fertilizer and water
management
Spatial data maintenance
System maintenance Attributive data maintenance
Scene parameter maintenance

Fig. 2. Functional chart of system

3 System Realization

3.1 Basal Data Disposal

3.1.1 Construction of Spatial Database

The original spatial data of agricultural region were acquired from RS images and GPS
coordinates by manual vectorization, disposed data were stored into spatial database by
spatial data engine of GIS. SuperMap 2008 software can easily realize the operations as
data browse, data edit, information query, result output, spatial analysis and 3D mod-
eling for its good alternating interfaces and convenient handling. Furthermore, all kinds
of spatial objects and RS image data can store into database or file by spatial data
engine of SuperMap SDX+. Based on all these virtues, we selected SuperMap Deskpro
2008 software to design and develop the spatial database of system.
The attributive data of agricultural region were gathered by collecting historical data
and field survey, in which the geographic attributive data were stored into the spatial
450 X. Liu et al.

database, and the elementary attributive data were stored into the attributive database
via Microsoft Access 2007.

3.1.2 DEM Disposal

DEM were the models used to simulate change status of terrain wave by digital vector
and grid formats. These data were disposed by grid simplified algorithm to control the
level of detail (LOD) process, and form the different detail level of terrain data.

3.1.3 DOM Disposal

DOM was composed of disposed digital navigation photo and satellite RS image, these
data could be used to optimize the texture of 3D models and control background status
of terrain by geometrical rectification and inlay.

3.1.4 DM Making
DM were the 3D models with complicated structural characteristic, which were made
by 3DS Max software, such as the models of building, road and field, etc. In order to
make VDARMS have a better performance, models must be developed based on little
triangle faces by polygon modeling function of 3DS Max software, additionally, vivid
texture picture would be stuck onto the surface of models.

3.2 Construction of 3D Virtual Scene

The main work in the virtual simulation module of agricultural region was concentrated
on setting up 3D virtual scene, so the constructing procedure and fidelity of 3D virtual
scene would directly affect the quality of system. Recently, there are many good 3D
virtual simulation platforms at home and abroad, by comparing the platforms and
considering the actual condition of agricultural region, VRMap 3.0 was selected as the
scene driver of VRGIS which supplied key technologies as management of mass data,
display of advanced simulation, communication among different platforms and data-
base driver. In the procedure of constructing scene, the program could automatically
create 3D virtual scene by using correlative parameters inputted by user in the attribu-
tive database (Table.1), and showed high reusability and flexibility.

Table 1. Parameters of scene creation

Parameter type Parameter name Plug name

Terrain creating Scene name, terrain texture name, Terrain creating plug
parameters maximum and minimum longitude,
maximum and minimum latitude
Object importing Coordinate, object name and rotation, Standard importing
parameters agro-region name, model name, conjunct and exporting plug
code, numbers of transverse and
longitudinal models, degrees of transverse
and longitudinal excursions
Background creating Sky radius, bottom color of sky, top color Standard creating plug
parameters of sky, texture picture name of sky,
texture picture name of ground
Light creating Type, coordinate, angle Standard creating plug
parameters
Camera adding Type, name, coordinate, angle Standard creating plug
parameters
 Design and Realization of a VRGIS-Based Digital Agricultural Region Management 451

3.3 Alternation between Digital Map and Virtual Scene

Each object from agricultural region was distributed a code to be distinguished each
other and make for managing and querying spatial information. These were stored into
spatial and attributive databases via conjunct code, and used to realize the alternation
between digital map and virtual scene. This function was designed under the query
menu of virtual simulation module. The acting procedure was: (1) stored the code into
the scene as the name of correlative 3D model; (2) acquired the name of 3D model by
VRMap 3.0 SDK engine; (3) queried the information of correlative spatial object by
SuperMap SDX+ engine, realized the function of real-time alternation.

3.4 Change of Crop Landscape

The landscapes of crops show different forms at different growth stages and varieties.
Considering the characters of crops in different growth stages, changing large-scale
crop landscapes was realized by selecting the main growth stages to carry out the re-
placement for 3D models of fields. The acting procedure was: (1) first of all, added all
the fields into the VRMapSelectionSet. (2) secondly, got the name, coordinate, rota-
tion, zoom-adaption and remotion of one field object by IVRMapPMObjectDisp. (3)
finally, replaced the 3D model of field with the obtained information by CreateP-
MObjectFrom3DS, and then transferred to another field until all the fields were
changed.

3.5 System Development

The VRGIS-based digital agricultural region management system was developed on

the computer with Intel(R) Core (TM) 2 Duo CPU, 1G memory and Windows XP
Professional operating system(Version: Chinese). By applying Visual Basic 6.0 to
design the interface of system, SuperMap Deskpro 2008 to design spatial database,
Microsoft Access 2007 to disign attributive database. The 3D models were set up on the
platform of 3DS Max 2009 software, the modules of spatial information management
and crop management plan design were developed by using the components of Su-
perMap Objects 2008 and existing crop management knowledge model, while the 3D
virtual scene and the module of virtual simulation of agricultural region were estab-
lished by VRMap 3.0 software.

4 System Application

Case studies of the system were carried out in Heheng village of Jiangyan city and
Qinglong village of Nanjing city, Jiangsu province, China. The executing procedure
was: Firstly, the spatial and attributive databases were constructed with Google Earth
images, digital photos and data resources via vectorization and tabulation. Secondly,
the 3D models of building, road and field in the agro-region were made by 3D modeling
software. Finally, all the data were imported into system. The application results in-
dicated that the structure framework and design idea of VDARMS accorded with the
452 X. Liu et al.

development demand of modern agricultural information technology, realized the

standard management and convenient query of information in agro-region, prescription
design for crop management, and alternation between map and scene. At the same time,
the function of virtual simulation also realized the automatic constructing and wan-
dering of 3D virtual scene for rice and wheat in different growth stages (Fig.3-Fig.6).

Fig. 3. Main interface of VDARMS

Fig. 4. Alternation between map and scene in Heheng village

 Design and Realization of a VRGIS-Based Digital Agricultural Region Management 453

Fig. 5. Prescription map of total nitrogen of rice in Qinglong village

Fig. 6. Virtual scene of rice jointing stage in Qinglong village

5 Discussion
In order to realize the digitalization and visualization of information management in
agricultural-region, a VRGIS-based digital agricultural region management system
was developed with SuperMap 2008 as the platform of spatial information management
and VRMap 3.0 as the driver of scene, and integrating with the existing crop model
454 X. Liu et al.

resources. The system had the functions as file management, spatial handling, infor-
mation query, data analysis, prescription design for crop cultural management, virtual
simulation and system maintenance, etc. Case studies of the system were carried out in
Heheng village of Jiangyan city and Qinglong village of Nanjing city, Jiangsu prov-
ince, the application result indicated that it accorded with the development of modern
agricultural spatial information management, realized the standardization, digital
management and visual display of agricultural information. The results provided a
digital and visual platform for the construction and management of new countryside,
exceedingly promoted the development of digital agriculture.
Comparing with the existing agricultural spatial information management systems
and virtual simulation systems(Shane et al., 2001; Ma, 2007; Liu et al., 2006; Jiang et
al., 2008; Zou et al., 2006; Liu et al., 2006; Wu et al., 2008), the system has the fol-
lowing characters: (1) the display of spatial information is not only in the nonfigurative
2D space, but also in the dynamic and communicated 3D space, user can apperceive the
real world by a intuitionistic manner; (2) by setting the parameters for the construction
of scene and using the function of plug, the system can automatically and quickly
construct the 3D virtual scene of agro-region. The weakness of costing much time in
establishing 3D virtual scene and fixed applied object was overcame, and exceedingly
promoted the reusability of virtual simulation technology. (3) the alternation of digital
map and virtual scene eliminated the wildering sense in wandering 3D virtual scene,
effectively showed the integrity of 2D digital map and the visualization of 3D virtual
scene, and perfectly annotated the spatial information of agro-region.
However, on account of the integration between GIS and VR based on data level,
additional studies should be undertaken on the same data structure to realize the ab-
solute integration; Further, considering the limitations of 3D GIS and computer tech-
nologies, the system should be updated by VRMap 4.0 or higher version of 3DGIS
software to improve the efficiency of system running.

References
1. Liu, W.: The Origin and the Initial Practice of the Digital Agriculture. Agriculture Network
Information 8, 2123 (2005) (in Chinese)
2. Song, Z., Zhang, J.: Study Progress and Development Trend of Digital Agriculture. Mod-
ernization Agriculture 5, 14 (2007) (in Chinese)
3. Zhou, Y.: 3S Technique and Digital Agriculture. Bulletin of Surveying and Mapping 5,
6971 (2009) (in Chinese)
4. Shane, R., Naiqian, Z., Taylor, R.K.: Development of a Field-Level Geographic Information
System. Computer and Electronics in Agriculture 31, 201209 (2001)
5. Ma, Q., Zhang, B., Zhang, C.: Developing and Studying of Spatial Information Management
System of Digital Agriculture Based on COM GIS. Computer System Application 4, 8689
(2007) (in Chinese)
6. Liu, X., Zhu, Y., Yao, X., et al.: WebGIS-Based System for Agricultural Spatial Information
Management and Aided Decision-Making. Transactions of the CSAE 22(5), 125129
(2006) (in Chinese)
7. Deng, H., Wu, F., Yin, C.: Virtual Reality Geographic Information System (VRGIS)-a New
Field of the Research of GIS. Application Research of Computers 9, 3335 (2002) (in
Chinese)
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8. Jiang, J., Wen, X., She, G.: Research and Application of VRGIS in Forest Resources
Management. Forest Research 21, 134137 (2008) (in Chinese)
9. Zou, J., Zou, Z., Zhou, C., et al.: Study on Large-Scale City VR Simulation System and its
Realization. Journal of System Simulation 18(8), 21992202 (2006) (in Chinese)
10. Liu, J., Yu, H., Han, Y., et al.: Development of Tourist Area Virtual Simulation System
Based on VRMap. Journal of System Simulation 18(1), 130133 (2006) (in Chinese)
11. Wu, H., Zhong, X., Zhao, C., et al.: Realization of the Dynamic Interactive 3D Virtual
Wandering System in the Rural Community Based on VRML. Transactions of the
CSAE 24(2), 176180 (2008) (in Chinese)
12. Cao, W.: Digital Farming Technology. Science Press, Beijing (2008) (in Chinese)
13. Huang, X., Ma, J., Tang, Q.: An Introduction to Geographic Information System. Higher
Education Press, Beijing (2001) (in Chinese)
14. Hu, Z.: Implementation of Shenzhen Private House 3D Demonstration System. Geomatics
and Spatial Information Technology 30(3), 133135 (2007) (in Chinese)
 Design and Simulation Analysis of Transplanters
Planting Mechanism

Fa Liu, Jianping Hu, Yingsa Huang, Xiuping Shao, and Wenqin Ding

Key Laboratory of Modern Agricultural Equipment and Technology,

Ministry of Education&Jiangsu Province, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
liufa1020@126.com

Abstract. A new-style transplanters planting mechanism was designed, which

was composed of Planetary Gear, Planetary Carrier, Connecting rod, Groove cam
and Planting arm. Built the kinematics model and determined the main parame-
ters which influenced the Plant-arms locus by analyzing of the Kinematic
model. Created the 3D Model in PRO/E and imported it into the Kinematics
simulation software ADAMS, analyzing Groove-cams offset angle, Connect-
ing-rods length and its impact on the Plant-arms kinematics locus. The effect
laws of the structural parameters on the Plant-arms locus were obtained through
analyzing the Plant-arms locus, which got by changing the groove cams hori-
zontal offset angle ranging from 0 to 20, the sum of Connecting-rods length
ranging from 130mm to 150mm, and the subtract of Connecting-rods length
ranging from 15mm to 25mm. The analysis results are of theoretical significance
to the dimension synthesis and optimization design.

Keywords: Transplanter, planting mechanism, ADAMS, Groove cam,

Plant-arms kinematics locus.

1 Introduction

Raise seedling and transplant can increase crop production in every unit area, and make
upgrowth ahead of time, which can withstand gale, harmful rain, low temperature, and
other nature disaster. Besides, it also saving seed. Seeds are usually grown under the
film by farmer in many place, because it is useful to improve the soil temperature, keep
moisture and restrain weeds.
The nacelle-type and dibble-type transplanting mechanism are good mechanism for
transplanting film, but they are not convenient and safe to directly drop seedling and
they are easy to leave out seedling when the machine are operated and their work ef-
ficient are low when seedling are transplanted over the larger areas. Now a simple and
credible type of transplanting mechanism was designed, which was easy and convient
to be operated and adjusted. the efficiency of the machine was much more greatly
improved. There was less seedling to leave out in work progress. The three dimension
model of the transplanting mechanism was establish in pro/e software. The relationship
between the planting arms locus and structural parameters was analyzed by the me-
chanical simulation software ADAMS in this paper.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 456463, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Design and Simulation Analysis of Transplanters Planting Mechanism 457

2 Kinematic Analysis of the Planting Mechanism

2.1 Structure and Working Principle of Planting Mechanism

A transplanters planting mechanism was shown in Figure 1, which was composed of

planetary gear, planetary carrier, link, groove cam and planting arm. The numbers of
sun-wheels teeth was twice times that of the planetary gears teeth. The cam groove
was divided into two parts and a angle-off between the two part. Planting arm, fixed on
the connecting rod 2, moved with the connecting rod 2.

1. central gear 2.planetary carrier 3.planetary gear1 4. Planetary gear2

5.connecting rod1 6.connecting rod2 7.roller 8. Groove cam 9.planting arm

Fig. 1. Planting mechanism structural chart

2.2 Transplanters Planting Mechanism Kinematics Equations

The initial position of planting bodies was shown in Figure 1. The Cartesian named
xO1y established as shown in fig.1. The Coordinate equation of the planetary gears
center O2 is:
x O2 = l1 cos( 0 + t )

y O2 = l1 sin( 0 + t )
458 F. Liu et al.

The Coordinate equation of the connecting rods endpoint A is:

x A = xO2 + l2 cos( 0 + t )

y A = yO2 + l 2 sin( 0 + t )

The Coordinate equation of planting arms endpoint B is:

xB = x A + l3 cos

yB = y A + l3 sin
The Coordinate equation of planting arms endpoint D is:

xD = xB + cos( + 2 )

y = y sin( + )
D B
2
The rate equation of the planetary gears center O2 is:

v xO 2 = l1 sin( 0 + t )

v yO 2 = l1 cos( 0 + t )
The endpoint A of the connecting rod 1 rate equation is:

v x A = v xO2 + l 2 sin( 0 + t )

v y A = v xO2 + l2 cos( 0 + t )

The rate equation of the planting arms endpoint B is:

v x B = v x A + 2 l3 sin

v y B = v x A + 2 l3 cos
The rate equation of the planting arms endpoint D is:

vxD = vxB 2 sin( + 2 )

v = v + cos( + )
yD xD 2
2
 Design and Simulation Analysis of Transplanters Planting Mechanism 459

i
2 =
0the initial angle between the planetary carrier and the horizontal
0the initial angle between connecting rod 1 and the horizontal
the angle between connecting rod 2 and the horizontal

CBD
l1
the length of the planet carrier
l2 the length of the connecting rod 1
l3 the length of the connecting rod 3
the angular velocity of the planet carrier

3 Virtual Prototype Model of the Planting Mechanism

The planting mechanisms three-dimensional model was established and assembled in

the pro/e and then transmited it into the mechanical simulation software Adams. The
Planting mechanisms Virtual Prototype Model was established in the mechanical
simulation software Adams as in Fig.2.

Fig. 2. The Planting mechanisms Virtual Prototype Model

460 F. Liu et al.

4 Kinematics Simulation
4.1 Planting Mechanisms Simulation in Different Structural Parameters
The shape of the planting arms locus was the chief factor to effect the function of the
transplanter. The groove cams horizontal offset angle, the sum of Connecting-rod
length and the subtract of Connecting-rod length were the main factors to effect the
Plant-arms locus by analyzing the transplanters planting mechanism kinematics
equations. So we built the Virtual Prototype Model of the Planting mechanism in the
different structural parameters of the groove cams horizontal offset angle, the sum of
Connecting-rod length and the subtract of Connecting-rod length. The Planting arms
locus were got by the different Virtual Prototype Models simulation as in Fig.3, Fig.4
and Fig.5. Structural parameter values in Table 1.

Table 1. Structural parameter

A
B C
(groove cams
(sum of (subtract of
horizontal offset
Connecting-rod length) Connecting-rod length)
angle)
1 0 0mm 120mm
2 5 10mm 130mm
3 10 20mm 140mm
4 15 30mm 150mm
5 20 40mm 160mm

Fig. 3. Planting arms locus in different groove cams horizontal offset angle
 Design and Simulation Analysis of Transplanters Planting Mechanism 461

Fig 3, Fig4 and Fig 5 is the planting arms locus in different structural parameters
respectively.
100

50

A3B1C3
0
A3B2C3

-50 A3B3C3
height
(mm)
-100 A3B4C3

A3B5C3
-150

-200

-250

-300

-350
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
length(mm)

Fig. 4. Planting arms locus in different subtract of Connecting-rod length

50
A3B3C5
A3B3C3

A3B3C2 A3B3C4
0
A3B3C1

-50
height
(mm)
-100

-150

-200

-250

-300

0 50 100 150 200 250 300

length(mm)

Fig. 5. Planting arms locus in different sum of Connecting-rod length

462 F. Liu et al.

4.2 The Simulation Results of Planting Mechanism Were Analyzed in Different

Structural Parameters

The shape of the planting arms locus was determined by the width of planting arms
locus, the height and the deflection angle. So we selected the width of planting arms
locus, the height and the deflection angle as the evaluation criteria of planting arms locus
in this paper. The locus of the planting arms was got by the simulation of the planting
mechanisms virtual prototype model was in different structural parameters. Shown in
Table 2.
athe width of planting arms locus. The planting distance was influenced by the
value of a.
bthe height of planting arms locus. The Planting Depth was influenced by the
value of b.
cthe deflection angle of planting arms locus, It was the angle between the hori-
zontal and the line connecting the lowest point and the highest point of the locus. The
stability of catching seedling were influenced by the value of c.

Table 2. Simulation results analysis

Structural Results Indicator value

parameters Fig. Width(a) Length(b) Declination()
A1B3C3 93 276 0
A2B3C3 97 281 0.6
A3B3C3 Fig.3 97 292 3
A4B3C3 96 315 4.4
A5B3C3 98 335 7.9
A3B1C3 25 315 4.5
A3B2C3 49 300 1.9
A3B3C3 Fig.4 97 292 3
A3B4C3 138 326 9
A3B5C3 183 336 12
A3B3C1 94 256 4.5
A3B3C2 93 286 5.8
A3B3C3 Fig.5 97 292 3
A3B3C4 93 330 4.4
A3B3C5 94 360 5.6

As is shown in Table 2, Fig.3 shows a set of curves of a width of about 97mm, a

height ranging from 276mm to 335mm and a declination angle ranging from 0 to 7.9.
Fig.4 shows a set of curves of a width ranging from 25mm to 183mm, a height ranging
from 292mm to 336mm and a declination angle ranging from 1.9 to 16. Fig. 5 shows
a set of curves of a width of about 94mm, a height ranging from 256mm to 360mm and
a declination angle ranging from 3 to 5.6.
 Design and Simulation Analysis of Transplanters Planting Mechanism 463

5 Conclusion
(1) The width of planting arms locus depends on the subtract of Connecting-rod
length. With the subtract of Connecting-rod length increasing, the width of planting
arms locus became wider and wider.
(2) The height of planting arms locus depends on the sum of Connecting-rod length,
the subtract of Connecting-rod length and the groove cams horizontal offset angle.
With the sum of Connecting-rod length, the subtract of Connecting-rod length and the
groove cams horizontal offset angle increasing, the height of planting arms locus
became larger and larger.
(3) The deflection angle of planting arms locus depends on the groove cams horizontal
offset angle and the subtract of Connecting-rod length. With the groove cams horizontal
offset angle and the subtract of Connecting-rod length increasing, the deflection angle of
planting arms locus width of planting arms locus became wider and wider.

Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by the three agricultural machinery project of
Jiangsu Province for 2008.

References
[1] Wang, W., Dou, W., Wang, C.: Parameter Analysis of the planting Process of 2ZT-2 Beet
Transplanter. Transactions of the Chinese Society for Agricultural Machinery 40(1)
(2009)
[2] Li, Q., Wang, Z.: Main structure parameter and analysison planting apparatus with twin
conveyer belt. Transactions of the Chinese Society for Agricultural Machinery 28(4),
4649 (1997)
[3] Dong, F., Geng, D., Wang, Z.: Study on block seedling transplanter with belt feeding
mechanism. Transactions of the Chinese Society for Agricultural Machinery 31(2), 4245
(2000)
[4] Li, Q., Lu, S., Li, L.: Experimental study on a slideway parting-bowl-wheel transplanter.
Transactions of the Chinese Society for Agricultural Machinery 32(2), 3033 (2001) (in
Chinese)
[5] Feng, J., Qin, G., Song, W., et al.: The kinematic analysis and design criteria of the dib-
ble-type transplanter. Transactionsof the Chinese Society for Agricultural Machin-
ery 33(5), 4850 (2002)
[6] Zhou, D., Sun, Y., Cheng, L.: Design and analysis of a supporting-seedling mechanism
with cam and combined rocker. Transactionsof the Chinese Society for Agricultural Ma-
chinery 34(5), 5860 (2003)
[7] Yu, G., Zhao, F., Wu, C., et al.: Analysis of kinematic property of separating-planting
mechanism with planetary gears. Transactions of the Chinese Society for Agricultural
Machinery 35(6), 5557 (2004) (in Chinese)
[8] Li, Y., Xu, L., Chen, H.: Improved design of spade arm in 4YS-600 tree transplanter.
Transactions of the CSAE 25(3), 6063 (2009) (in Chinese and English abstract)
 Design and Simulation for Bionic
Mechanical Arm in Jujube Transplanter*

Yonghua Sun, Wei Wang**, Wangyuan Zong, and Hong Zhang

Zibo in Shandong, Lecturer, Mechatronics

Tel.: 0997-4683859 13031270332
sunyoghua@sina.cn

Abstract. In this paper an automatic bionic mechanical arm of jujube trans-

planter has been designed and simulated with Pro/E and ADAMS software. The
device can achieve the work of clampingsendingsetting the sapling and
support the sapling to guarantee it perpendicularity in setting process. Design
the structure of manipulator utilizing the simulation of hand working. There is
5-DOF at the manipulator to achieve simulating. Constitute dynamics mathe-
matical model and estimated inseminate error of bionic manipulator. The three
dimensional model of the manipulator was build up and simulated by using
Pro/E software. Then up build the virtual prototype and kinetics simulation in
ADAMS software and chalk up the dynamics parameter curve of clamping
force etc. This manipulator will establish theory and practice foundation to the
cyber-identify and cyber-supervise of sapling translating.

1 Introduction
Mechanical arm have been designed for jujube transplanter aiming at the outside di-
ameter and characteristic of tree form, to meet new requirement in south Xinjiang,
featured with new planting mode that called lower stem and high-density. It is de-
signed by simulating the supporting mechanism of human hand. This new design can
improve planting stability and planting efficiency, under the help of the support from
mechanical arm. The mechanism is the core component of the transplanter that di-
rectly affects the quality of seedlings planted.

2 Working Principle and Structure

The bionic mechanical arm is composed by structures of upper and lower splint (5, 7),
link (4), spring (3), roller (2, 8) and link (1) and pin etc. There is five-freedom except
the rollers that can let the manipulator realize the opening, closing, turning as well as
other operations.
*
Project Funding: Subsidized by Sinkiang Science and Technology Supporting Projects
(2009zj19)
**
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 464471, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Design and Simulation for Bionic Mechanical Arm 465

Fig. 1. Structure Diagram of Bionic Mechanical arm

1. Chain-Element 2.First Roller 3.Spring 4.Link 5.Upper Splint 6.Sapling 7.Lower Splint
8.Second Roller

Fig. 2. Schematic Diagram of Bionic Mechanical Arm

In working, chain-element (1) link to the driving chain and moving at a certain
speed. The first roller (2) and second roller (8) run in each orbit. The manipulator is
supported by the second roller (8). The first roller (2) able to automatic control the
opening and closing of upper splint (6) is located at the obit with variable size and
fitted to spring (3). Figure 1 is location of spring at the state of compression and now
the manipulator will keep current state for a minute until completed sapling planted.
Then the upper splint (6) will detach the sapling with opening angle by spring force
as the change in size of guide and wait for the next operation. Figure 2 shows the
working principle. The opening angle of hand is controlled by a long slot between
guide and strut. Parallel mobile is main movement of link (4) which attach to the rele-
vant parts of lower splint by hinge pin.
466 Y. Sun et al.

3 Motion Mathematical Models

There will be a little offset error to sapling`s right location in actual planting process
because of linker in structure according to the working principle of the bionic me-
chanical arm. Hypothesis the diameter of sapling be handed is d, and the distance that
link moving down is h, now, the dip of upper splint is . Ideally, the field angle is
between the two hand splint if there is no movement of lower splint. Ideally, the field
angle between two splints is =- If considering the dip of lower splint as the
structure factor. That is the error angle is =-.

Fig. 3. Working Locus of Manipulator

Fig. 4. Error Coordinates in Sapling Planted of Manipulator

Define the original point o as the coordinate origin to analysis the offset of sapling
planting. Establish the coordinates shown in Figure 4. The coordinate sapling planted
is (x1,y1) in ideally and the actual coordinate is (x2,y2) after considering the coordi-
nate error if hypothesis the original point as (-Ox,-Oy) after migrated. We can get the
follow mathematic model according to its trajectory.
 Design and Simulation for Bionic Mechanical Arm 467

The coordinate sapling planted in ideally:

x1 = d cot
2
y1 = d

The actual coordinate:

d cos( + / 2)
x2 = sin( / 2) Ox

d sin( + / 2)
y2 = + Oy
sin( / 2)
The mathematic model of sapling planted error in actually:
d cos( + / 2)
x = ( x2 x1 ) = d cot( / 2) sin( / 2) + Ox

y = y y = d sin( + / 2) d + Oy
sin( / 2)
2 1

x, y were sapling planted error in x, y direction.

4 Dynamic Simulation Analysis

4.1 Virtual Prototype Design Based on Adams

Figure 5 shows the virtual prototype designed in ADAMS which comes from the
three-dimensional model of bionic mechanical arm established in PROE. Set up the

Fig. 5. Modeling of Virtual Prototype

468 Y. Sun et al.

Fig. 6. Dynamic Simulation of Virtual Prototype

attribute as materials of various parts as stainless unity and so on. Set the connect sets
between the parts and load the property of spring such elastic stiffness coefficient as
K=800 and the damping coefficient as C=0.5. Then to exert the force F in the
connecting rod end and set the running time as 0.03s and the step as 50, and then
operate it to perform the dynamic simulation for the prototype. Afterward, we will
obtain a motion state diagram likes Figure 6.

4.2 Kinematics and Dynamic Simulation Analysis

Change the size of the force F in connecting rod end at the same kinematics time and
measure the angle caused by compression force on the spring, field angle of the upper
and down hand splint and sapling planted position error. Then get the variation curve
of various spring force F, field angle-1 and error angle-2 respectively in the time of
t=0.03s. Follow the Figure 7, Figure 8, Figure 9.

Fig. 7. Variation Curve of Spring Force in Time on Different Force F

 Design and Simulation for Bionic Mechanical Arm 469

Fig. 8. Variation Curve of Field Angle of Plant Holder`s Hand on Different Force F

Fig. 9. Variation Curve of Planted Error on Different Force F

Select the preloading as 0.2~0.3N according to the curve analysis of each parame-
ter mentioned above and its operating characteristics and requirements. Now the field
angle can meet the demand for planting seedlings and have a little error. Therefore,
the hand field angle 30 able to be the limit position to improve the relative motion
quantity of the link.
Analysis the position change, velocity and the acceleration of the load component
force in X direction at the time that exert the force 0.3N in connection rot as the pre-
load force and get the variation curve as Figure 10. The load component force is more
stable in the intermediate section. Analysis the elastic, change speed and amount of
compression of compression spring and get the variation curve as Figure 11.

Table 1. Kinetic Parameters in Prescriptive Time on Different Force

Kinetic
F(spring) Angle-1 Angle-2
Parameters N
PreloadingN
0.1 5.948 32.71 22.71
0.2 4.758 29.27 13.55
0.3 3.569 26.40 7.119
0.4 2.379 24.17 2.978
470 Y. Sun et al.

Fig. 10. Variation Curve of Preload in X Direction

Fig. 11. Variation Curve of Elastic of Compression Spring

5 Conclusions
In this paper, automatic mechanical arm which imitates human hand to support sap-
ling is designed by using new operation principle of the manipulator. Analysis and
establish mathematical model of the planted error to meet requirement of the jujube
transplanting demand for lower-density inseminate mode. Design the corresponding
structure of the manipulator use of above mathematical model. Build modeling in
PROE, introduce it into ADAMS and establish virtual prototype in it. Do the simula-
tion experiment for primary related parameters of the prototype and draw the corre-
sponding variation curve. The clamping force to sapling is not much according to the
curve analysis of each dynamic parameter of the virtual prototype of planted manipu-
lator, so it can realize base on the elastic of spring. Furthermore, clamping force can
be adjustable according to the diameter of the sapling, with the adaptive ability of
spring during the working process.

References
[1] Zhang, M., Li, S.: Optimum Planting Depth to Poplar Mechanical Afforestation in Su-
barid Sand, vol. (4), pp. 45. Jilin Forestry Science and Technology, Changchun (2004)
[2] Dong, Q., Han, L.: Cultivation Techniques for High Yield of Jujube in Sandy. Inner
Mongolia Forestry Investigation and Design, vol. (4), pp. 8384. Forestry Survey & De-
sign Institute, Hohhot (2008)
 Design and Simulation for Bionic Mechanical Arm 471

[3] Li , J., Xiao, H., Hu, Z.: Kinematics Simulation of Mechanical Arm Based on ADAMS.
Machine Tool & Hydraulics (8), 206209 (2009)
[4] Feng, S., Xie, J., Zhu, W., Ma L.Z.: The Motion Control Study of The Automatic Trans-
planting Robot. Machinery Design & Manufacture (3), 166168 (2008)
Design for Real-Time Monitoring System of High Oxygen
Modified Atmosphere Box of Vegetable and Fruit
for Preservation

Zhanli Liu1, Congcong Yan1, Xiangyou Wang1,* and Xiangbo Han2

1
School of Agriculture and Food Engineering,
Shandong University of Technology, P.R. China
2
College of Computer Science and Technology,
Shandong University of Technology, P.R. China
wxy@sdut.edu.cn

Abstract. According to the disadvantages of traditional box for preservation,

including low oxygen and high carbon, a new control system of high oxygen is
designed. This paper presents the design and implementation method in this
system. The system combines traditional PID control with fuzzy control which
can adjust parameters of the whole system automatically. The box can control
the dynamic content of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and monitor nitrogen flow,
temperature and humidity real-timely so that preservation time can be pro-
longed. It also can collect and keep the data of the dynamic content of oxygen
and carbon dioxide which suits for fruit and vegetable for preservation. The
former environment can be reappeared when need. The system works steadily
and has strong functions.

Keywords: High oxygen; Modified atmosphere box; Real time monitor; Design.

1 Introduction
Day, the British scholar for the first time made clearly the application of high-oxygen
(>70% O2) in modified atmosphere packaging of fresh-cut vegetables and fruits in
1996. Domestic and foreign research of high-oxygen (21%-100% O2) on the effect of
postharvest gradually increased, and the treatments of high oxygen are expected to
play an important role in fruit and vegetable storage[1]. Research has shown that
high-oxygen treatment of fruits and vegetables can reduce the respiration and ethylene
production, slow their browning, and improve the preservation effects[2-4]. The ap-
plication of high-oxygen or even pure oxygen modified atmosphere technology on
fruit and vegetable preservation has aroused close attention. So it is necessary to make
a study of a reliable and stable high oxygen modified atmosphere control system for
further development of high-oxygen fresh-keeping equipment. However, the impact
mechanism of the high oxygen on the postharvest physiology and quality is not in-
depth, so it severely limits the development of high oxygen storage[5]. Thus, most of

*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 472475, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
Design for Real-Time Monitoring System of High Oxygen Modified Atmosphere Box 473

high oxygen experiments lack of accurate monitoring of oxygen, carbon dioxide,

nitrogen flow rate, temperature and humidity, and can not control stably the environ-
ment of high oxygen. In this paper, the self-made high oxygen experimental apparatus
were studied, and a data acquisition system and related test equipment were devel-
oped providing a scientific basis for high oxygen modified atmosphere theory.

2 Experimental Device of High Oxygen Modified Atmosphere Box

Central processing section formed by a microprocessor is the heart of the whole
control system, which completes the functions of data acquisition and processing,
keyboard and display processing and system control. Temperature and humidity
transmitter is mainly to measure gas concentration of the tested environment, and out-
put the standard current signal corresponding to the surrounding gas concentration after
the signal processed by the internal data processing. Gas flow meter part is mainly to
measure the volume of the input nitrogen. It can select 4-20mA output, level output, or
pulse output module according to needs. Analog multiplexer switch is mainly to turn
the switch channel between separate ways analog and A/D converter, allowing one
way analog signal input to the A/D converter in a specific period of time, and it can
achieve the purpose of time-conversion to reduce the number of A/D converter and
reduce costs. Current transfer voltage circuit is used to change the transmitter and flow
meter standard output current signal into the corresponding voltage signal and conduct
the follow-up signal processing. The role of sample retainer is used to maintain analog
signal voltage of the A/D converter input constant during the conversion period, then
ensure a higher conversion precision, and greatly increase the collection frequency of
data collection. Some data memory stores the measured data immediately and pre-
serves the measured environmental data for long-term. And data can be transferred out
to external memory by a data interface, facilitating accurate analysis. Optical isolation
part completes the isolation and amplification from weak signal to strong signal. The
conversion of manual control and auto-control can be set by Panel.
In the case of automatic failure or manual intervention (for example, using the
manual control can quickly reach steady state before reaching the set high oxygen
concentration), some manual control part can control all of the conditioning systems
of the atmosphere storage environment. Program memory is used to store system
procedures. Solenoid valve is used to control nitrogen access.

3 Working Principle of High Oxygen Modified Atmosphere Box

The concentration of oxygen and carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity of box are
measured by the corresponding transmitter. Transmitter output signal is transmitted to
the microprocessor after a series of treatments, and compared with the set initial val-
ues, when any kind of gas concentration is below the set value, appropriate instructions
will be issued by the microprocessor, then the electric value corresponding is opened
with the gas to let that kind gas in. By controlling the opening of the electric valve to
control the air flow rate, when the concentration closes to the set value, the microproc-
essor controls the corresponding procedure to reduce the opening to prevent the exces-
sive ventilation and avoid its concentration exceeding the set value. When the value of
474 Z. Liu et al.

any gas concentration is higher than the set alarm value, the system alarms, and the
corresponding unit of the micro-processor will give appropriate instructions, so that the
corresponding electric valve of the gas will be closed, and the nitrogen valve will be
opened, by inletting into constant flow of nitrogen the concentration of this gas will be
reduced. When the concentration of this gas closes to the set value, the micro-
processing time relay control valve will close for 10 seconds, leaving some buffer time
to avoid excessive nitrogen filled. Then process it according to the measured actual
situation. The gases coming out from nitrogen generator, oxygen, and carbon dioxide
bottles pass into the inlet pressure regulator box, and then pass into the test box. The
gas cylinder export pressure of the nitrogen generator, oxygen and carbon dioxide
bottles can be set much higher, and then adjust the inlet air pressure to the required.
This can avoid failing to reach the export settings when the cylinder pressure is insuffi-
cient, and the pressure can be precisely adjusted by the intake air pressure tank.

4 Data Acquisition System

Oxygen sensor is most important one of all the sensors of the system, and it has a very
big impact on the system, so its selection is of great importance. It must meet the fast,
reliable and accurate measurement of the oxygen concentration. Now commonly used
oxygen sensor is electrochemical sensors. According to the principle, CO2 sensor can
be divided into electrochemical CO2 sensor and infrared CO2 sensor, the former is
cheaper, but the accuracy is lower, and life is shorter, and preheat time is longer than
the latter. Compared to carbon dioxide transmitter, carbon dioxide sensor is low
precision, poor linearity, less function, and also needs to set up a dedicated signal
processing devices for filtering and V/I conversion for processing, so the costs are
increased. In view of the advantages of the transmitter, we use the transmitter (with
imported high-grade infrared sensor) to replace the specialized sensors.

5 Experimental Debugging
Agaricus bisporus were used as the materials to test the stability of the high oxygen
experimental box. The concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide were set

Fig. 1. Change trends of oxygen in box

Design for Real-Time Monitoring System of High Oxygen Modified Atmosphere Box 475

Fig. 2. Change trends of carbon dioxide in box

respectively to 75% and 25%, and stabilized at a predetermined value (fig. 1 and
fig. 2). From the results, the high oxygen modified box can real-time control the
dynamic contents of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Acknowledments. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (No. 30871757).

References
[1] Zheng, Y.H.: Superatmospheric oxygen and postharvest physiology of fresh fruits and
vegetables. Plant Physiol. Comm. 38(1), 9297 (2002)
[2] Li, P.X., Wang, G.X., Liang, L.S., et al.: Effects of high oxygen treatments on respiration
intensity and quality of DongZao jujube during shelf-life. Transactions of the Chinese
Society of Agricultural Engineering 22(7), 180183 (2006)
[3] Escalona, V.H., Verlinden, B.E., Geysen, S., et al.: Changes in respiration of fresh-cut
butterhead lettuce under controlled atmospheres using low and superatmospheric oxygen
conditions with different carbon dioxide levels. Postharvest Biology and Technology 39,
4855 (2006)
[4] Conesa, A., Verlinden, B.E., Arts-Hernndez, F., et al.: Respiration rates of fresh-cut
bell pepper under superatmospheric and low oxygen with or without high carbon dioxide.
Postharvest Biology and Technology 45, 8188 (2007)
[5] Liu, Z.L., Wang, X.Y., Zhu, J.Y., et al.: Progress in effects of high oxygen on postharvest
physiology and quality of fresh fruits and vegetables. Transactions of the Chinese Society
for Agricultural Machinery 40(7), 112118 (2009)
 Design of Agent-Based Agricultural Product Quality
Control System

Yeping Zhu, Shijuan Li, Shengping Liu, and E. Yue

Laboratory of Digital Agricultural Early-warning Technology of Ministry of

Agriculture of China, Institute of Agricultural Information, CAAS,
100081 Beijing, China
{zhuyp,lishijuan.spliu,eyue}@mail.caas.net.cn

Abstract. Aiming at the problems existed in agricultural product quality con-

trol, management and traceability such as the considerable influence of human
factors, weak ability of handling emergencies and lacking of support of intelli-
gent key technologies, this study explores the application of agent theory,
method and technique to solve the problems of process control, traceability, in-
telligent information watching and information technology application to emer-
gency reaction conditioned on the general characteristics from production to
circulation. In this study agent application and development method will be put
forward. By means of investigating its communication and cooperative mecha-
nism, we design the agent-based universal system framework for quality control
of agricultural product. According to production and processing characteristics
of different agricultural products, corresponding controlling unit and condition
are increased to adapt to the special aim.

Keywords: Agent, Agricultural product, Quality control.

1 Introduction
As the important problem which concerns the masses most, food safety affects
peoples health and life, involves the economic healthy development and social stabi-
lization. How to control and manage food safety effectively has been becoming a
research focus in recent years. The watching and effective management to product
flow of farm produce can not only settle the problems of quality control and informa-
tion delivery existed in every link such as production, processing, transportation,
storage and sales, but also protect native agricultural product market and food safety.
Europe began quality monitor and control in stockbreeding long ago. After the study
and evolvement year by year, now relative perfect system has been come into being
[1-3]. Since 21st century china gradually strengthened the study on food safety con-
trol method and system. A series of relative standards and guides have been estab-
lished. Zheng Fengtian and Zhang Yongjian et al proposed that china must set up food
safety system [4, 5]. Ye Yongmao considered the compellent food safety standard
system should be constituted by means of reforming food safety management and
operational mechanism and enhancing food safety legislation [6].

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 476486, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Design of Agent-Based Agricultural Product Quality Control System 477

The author ever studied bee production quality traceability and developed software
system [7, 8 9]. In the process of agricultural product quality control and traceability,
man-made factors play an important role. Being lack of intelligent key technologies,
although some technologies such as sensor, radio frequency identification and image
recognition had been adopted in information collecting [10-15], database manage-
ment, query and analysis still are the main method in agricultural product quality
control. So there are no enough technologies involved in quality control to reply
emergency. The difficulties existed in information collection, tracking and control for
the small agricultural product, which need to be blended such as foodstuff and bee
production, demand the corresponding information technologies as support to settle
the key issues and reduce the effect of man-made factors. In this paper a method to
control agricultural product quality with the characteristics of perceptivity, intelli-
gence and cooperation will be studied. It provides technology support and universal
resolution for control and traceability of such agricultural products as grain, bee prod-
uct, vegetable and fruit etc., which are small, distinctly characteristic of dispersive
production and need to be combined processed.

2 Status and Analysis of the Study

The concept of agent was promoted in the end of 1970s, and the study of its methods
and implementations has been developed in an active period. As one research domain
of the distributed artificial intelligence, agent theory and technology have aroused a
great deal of attention because multi-agent system (MAS) plays an important role in
modern computer science and its application. In a multi-agent system any agent needs
to communicate and cooperate with the other agents. Its behavior and decision vary
with the other agents and conversation rules. The universal language-behavior theory
formal language is used to make the agents in communication understand their re-
spective inner state and purpose [16-25].
The application of MAS technology in agriculture is less than that in other fields.
Liu Huimin at Capital Normal University studied multiple collaborative approaches
based on the analysis of MAS technologies and theories, promoted an implementation
plan for the MAS coordination mechanism based on Web Services technology to
provide effective method and implementation technology [26]. Through the analysis
on agricultural expert system and its characteristics, Yang Yan put forward the design
project of web-based agricultural expert system. Xue Ling at Peking University and
Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences applied agent to the study on modern
agricultural economic management and decision-making system, provided the struc-
ture and components of Agriculture Economy Intelligent Decision Support System
(AEIDSS), analyzed the implementation method of classifier-based agent, and discus-
sed the work principle of dynamic analysis, evaluation, forecasting and optimization
under multi-agent communication and cooperative environment. The author also
designed the Agent-based Cooperative Analysis and Decision Support System for
Regional Agricultural Economic Information [27-30].
478 Y. Zhu et al.

With the issue of Food Safety Law in 2009, china governments and departments
all levels increased the construction of agricultural standard system and the control
power of agricultural product market, and a multitude of production bases for high
quality agricultural products have come into service [31-37]. China, as a large country
for production area and yield, not only is a production country for agricultural prod-
ucts, but also is a consumption country. So how to make the best of existing agricul-
tural information network and comparative advanced technologies to provide
information service of agricultural products quality, safety, standard and trademark
etc. in order to boost the information construction and control method study of agri-
cultural products quality safety is important and impendent. Building agricultural
products traceability system is an inevitable trend for world agriculture, and traceabil-
ity system has been becoming an important development direction.
No study directly concerns the agent application on agricultural products quality
safety and control except only a few reports about key technology and quality inspec-
tion method. Dmytro Tykhonov et al described a kind of multi-agent imitation model
for trust tracking game. Trust tracking game simulated the game player, was a re-
search measure to collect the human behavior data in the food supply chain with the
characteristics of asymmetry food quality and safety information [38]. Dr Eleni
Mangina and Ioannis Giavasis provided a multi-agent system to supervise gellan gum
production, which included online data collection, forecasting the future benefit by
capturing historical data automaticly [39]. Moises Resende-Filho mentioned a sort of
commission surrogacy model to encourage food safety tracking system. His study
indicated the more reliable tracking system make the dealer attach more importance to
food safety; the inapposite tracking system couldnt inspirit the dealer to use the safe
material in food industry [40]. Zhu Li and Wang Haiyan used the theory and principle
of HACCP to discuss how to build food safety quality control system in food supply
chain of Chain Supermarket [41]. Deng Ning et al tried to apply the core concept of
agent on supply train risk control system, and proposed the framework mode to effec-
tive manage supply chain risk [42]; From the angle of quality guarantee Xiao Yuan
and Liang Gongqian analyzed the conflicts among enterprises in supply chain, put
forward the quality supervision mechanism. Multi-agent technology was applied to
modeling for quality supervision system, and the system structure was provided [43].
Li Feng studied how to collect economically the real-time information of transporting
goods and send to the back-end server (logistics information system). Radio Fre-
quency Identification (RFID) was used by mobile front end subsystem to retrieve
information of goods in automatic fashion, and the corresponding agents fulfilled the
data processing and delivery. Back-end server also was built on mobile agent. This
can not only ensure the customization of information collection, but also increase the
system opening [44].
The increased demand on innovating food safety and quality control method offers
a chance for agent technology with characteristics of sociality, autonomy, intelligence
and mobility. MAS technology provides a method and measure for collaboration
integration to guarantee quality, offers a feasible scheme for running quality supervi-
sion system successfully. Appling agent technology to study agricultural product
quality safety and control method has far-reaching meaning on food safety and citizen
health, at the same time will provide a new research method.
 Design of Agent-Based Agricultural Product Quality Control System 479

3 Design of Agent-Based Agricultural Product Quality Control

System
First of all, lets analyze the traditional flow of production, processing, sales, quality
tracking and traceability for agricultural product (Fig. 1). In quality traceability data-
base is the kernel technology.
Figure 2 shows agent-based agricultural product quality control flow which core is
the agent cooperation and intelligent control.
The information delivery, task assignment and cooperation in whole system are on
the control of information management agent and task management agent.

Fig. 1. Traditional flow from production to sales of agricultural product and quality traceability

Agent-based agricultural product quality traceability ensures the quality control

from the source of supply chain. Production information agent, purchase information
agent, processing information agent, sales information agent, circulation information
agent guarantee the communication with each node on supply chain and the respon-
siveness and veracity of information collected. System will feed back the correspond-
ing behavior to task management agent according to traceability demand. Task
management agent communicates with each agent concerned and delivers the results
to consumer. Agent-based agricultural product quality traceability and control is
480 Y. Zhu et al.

bestowed with unique advantages. It can realize the real-time information collection
and intelligent processing, make purchase, dealer and enterprise obtain the product
and industry information so as to adjust their management, offer related traceability
information to the consumer.

Fig. 2. Agent-based agricultural product quality control flow

3.1 System Architecture

The multi-agent system to control agricultural product quality through the whole
course includes several agents such as information management agent, task manage-
ment agent, tracing and traceability agent, market analysis and forecast agent, logistics
management agent, instant event monitoring agent, emergency treatment agent and
data mining agent and so on.
System architecture is based on multi-agent management platform. Agent-
oriented thinking mode and cooperative evolvement theory replace the traditional
structural design and object oriented design methods. System is composed of five
parts i. e. user, communication and task sales, task resolving, information manage-
ment and basic information (Fig. 3). Each part includes many agents which do their
own work.
 Design of Agent-Based Agricultural Product Quality Control System 481

Fig. 3. Architecture of agent-based agricultural product quality control system

3.2 Function Design of System

User management agent. Interface agent accepts the task requests from users and
delivers to task management agent. The results from multi-agent system are sent back
to interface agent through task management agent. User interface agent creates differ-
ent interface including drawing, table, text and figure depending on the different
tasks.

Information management agent. Information management agent is responsible for

collecting and managing the information from production to sales for example infor-
mation modification, storage and delivery.

Task management agent. After receiving the requests from users, task management
agent assigns distinct tasks to different agents for instance information analysis, pro-
duction information collection task, tracing and traceability, logistics management,
market analysis, instant event monitoring, emergency treatment. These agents fulfill
482 Y. Zhu et al.

the information collection, analysis and time arrangement in agricultural production.

For example, when emergency takes place, task management agent will call emer-
gency treatment agent which gives reaction and information prompt and makes assis-
tant decision on emergency.

Task resolving agent. Task resolving agent consists of many agents. When user or
other agent sends out task or cooperation requirement, task resolving agent searches
and call the relevant agents, then submits task request. If the agent receiving task is
idle, it will accept the task and begin to address the task. The results will be returned
to task resolving agent by communication and task management agents.
These collaboration agents include:
Information analysis agent. Which makes out statistical analysis and creates various
graphs and report forms.
Agricultural product tracing agent. It is responsible for the information collection,
filtration, treatment, storage, earmark and bar code creation of the whole supply chain
from production to processing to table.
Agricultural product traceability agent. Which searches for each tache of the whole
supply chain aiming at the different demands of consumer, enterprise and govern-
ment, for instance whether each tache accords with respective standards or not.
Market analysis and forecast agent. It analyses market information and comes into
being market forecast with various methods. If there is a great discrepancy between
the two forecast results, one result or several results will be provided to predict market
dynamic by means of consultation, competition and ratiocination.
Logistics management agent. It administers the logistics information and dispatch.
Instant event monitoring agent. On the one hand, it deals with the information from
interface; on the other hand, it supervises the abnormity with each sector on supply
chain, analyzes whether an emergency occurs or not. If system thinks an abnormal
event or emergency has taken place, the early-warning will be sent out and communi-
cation starts.
Emergency treatment agen. It classifies the emergency for example quality safety,
quantity safety, abnormal fluctuation of market and so on. Then the corresponding
agent will be called to analyze and search the response plan. If there is not response
plan, system gives an alarm to ask for human intervention. Otherwise the response
plan will be called to deal with the emergency. At the same time, system will give the
assistant decision.
Data mining agent. It makes data mining and learning on the basis of collecting a
large of information. It promotes the intelligence of agent, needs human intervention
and certification.

3.3 Communication Language and Standard between Agents

In order to guarantee the veracious cooperation between agents we must standardize
their communication manner. Communication of multi-agent has been built on the
Agent Communication Language (ACL), and follows ACL standard of the Founda-
tion for Intelligent Physical Agents.
 Design of Agent-Based Agricultural Product Quality Control System 483

In cooperation process matching conditions include communication action, mes-

sage parameter and parameter expression and so on. Every agent has special matching
format and combination. Only the message instruction suiting the format completely
can be recognized by target agent and implemented.

3.4 Cooperation among Multi-agent System

Cooperation embodies the sociality of agent, and is a main predominance of multi-
agent system. In agent-based agricultural product quality control system, we take cer-
tain unqualified product as example. After receiving task requirement, interface agent
calls communication agent to deliver the task to task management agent. Task resolv-
ing agent analyses the massage from task management agent, then sends out news to
data management agent in order. Data management agent looks up the data concerned
and sends out to emergency treatment agent. Emergency treatment agent runs the rela-
tive models to create a suit of assistant decision scheme, and then calls the other agents
to consult. Finally interface agent will receive the plan and data used, which maybe is
an assistant decision scheme or a warn-earning message. Each agent can be activated at
any moment. Many agents can realize consultation and competition.

3.5 System Development and Application

We chose Java language to develop system on Windows operation platform in order
to guarantee the universality and transferability of multi-agent system.
Agents with various function were constructed by means of exploiting principal
part and interating softwares. For the function modules such as collection, monitoring
and analysis of bee product information, we made best use of former programme to
encapsulate, transfer and build the corresponding function agent. The reuse and share
of the research materials on our hand can save workload effectively. The functions
such as decision-making and emergency response need the cooperation, consultation,
communication and competition among agents to reach the practical results. Commu-
nication of multi-agent had been built on the TCP/IP protocol. The most popular
agent communication language--KQML (Knowledge Query Manipulation Language)
had been used to exchange messages among agents so the cooperation and collabora-
tion decision-making was realized.

4 Conclusion
This study on agent-based agricultural product quality control method will provide
elementary way and information technology tool for building quality control, supervi-
sion and traceability system as well as information platform, will reduce the amount
of development work greatly, will increase the ability to answer for the quality safety
problems, can offer a tool of information supervision, control and coopration for
whole supply chain, will help to realize the digitilization and intelligent management
for agricultural products.

Acknowledgments. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (Grant No. 60972154) and the National Science & Technology Pillar
Program (Grant No. 2009BADA9B02).
484 Y. Zhu et al.

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 Design of ETL Process on Spatio-temporal Data and
Study of Quality Control*

Buyu Wang1, Changyou Li1, Xueliang Fu1, Meian Li1, Dongqing Wang1,
Huibin Du1, and Yajuan Xing2
1
Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot, 010018, P.R. China
2
Inner Mongolia Fengzhou Vocational College, Hohhot, 010018, P.R. China
bywang05@163.com

Abstract. In order to use the space-time data mining technology to conduct op-
eration research in WuLiangSuHai Eutrophication, the water quality sensor pa-
rameters of heterogeneous data which reflect the characteristics should set up a
spatial data warehouse through ETL process, and water quality sensors for qual-
ity control of spatial and temporal data plays a vital role in building an effective
analytical environment. The paper designs the ETL process from the data and
water quality sensors artificial duty and other heterogeneous data sources spa-
tial data, and proposes data quality control strategy based on the incremental
frequency rule engine and the space the inverse distance weighting on the
Combination. Experiments show that the incremental frequency rule engine
could more effectively find the missing sensor data and abnormal, Space in-
verse distance weighting method can find the missing data and outliers in the
errors within the allowed interpolation processing, ETL procedure is effective
and feasible.

Keywords: Sensor data, Frequency increment rule engine, Inverse distance

weighted method.

1 Introduction
At present, the integrated analysis and process of water quality services have been
investigated using the spatial data mining techniques [1], [2], [3]. In particular, some
work has studied multi-eutrophication services of water environments based on the
heterogeneous data sources [4]. The pre-requisite for the investigation of eutrophica-
tion related services is to establish a data warehouse including the water-quality data
characterized by a variety of eutrophication attributes. The design of the ETL (Ex-
tract, Transform, Load) procedure plays a key role to establish such an effective
analysis environment.
ETL process design, many scholars from the conceptual model, conceptual model
to logical model of the transformation of both done a lot of research work [5], [6].

*
The research is supported by Chinese Natural Science Foundations (50969005,40901262) and
by Specialized Research fund of High Education for Inner Mongolia (Njzy08046).

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 487494, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
488 B. Wang et al.

Abnormal data, some scholars have proposed the use of rules engine to detect, and
made the related theoretical research work, but did not give a specific implementation
strategy [7]. Deal with the problem of missing data values, some academics have
suggested the use of inverse interpolation method, the weight-related research and in
the field of meteorology has been successfully applied [8].
In this paper, three aspects of the work done. Designed with the characteristics of
lake water quality data ETL process. A comprehensive consideration of water quality
parameters of water eutrophication factor weighting inverse method interpolation.
Designed based on the Drools rule engine kernel dynamic incremental realized
abnormal test data volume.

2 Design of the ETL Process with Heterogeneous Data Sources

2.1 Heterogeneous Data Sources

In order to study the issues related to the water eutrophication, data source, on which
the analytic environment is established, should consist of two kinds of data: the data
of water quality eutrophication and the data representing the key elements of eutro-
phication. In this paper, the data source mainly includes the following two parts: the
water-environment monitoring data and the data manually collected in the Wuliang-
suhai Lake. The water-environment monitoring data is collected by the on-line water-
quality sensors in the Wuliangsuhai wireless sensor network, and the time granularity
of the data sampling is once per 15 minutes, which is conducted in each monitoring
station in the Wuliangsuhai Lake. The manual collected data comes from the re-
searchers who collect the related data on the spot in summer, and the associated time
granularity is once per day, the sampling space varies each day. Obviously, the data is
inconsistent with the manually collected data in terms of time granularity and space
granularity.

2.2 Design of the ETL Process

The ETL process provides data for data warehouse. Therefore, the quality of the ETL
process relates to the success or failure of the establishment of data warehouse. The
ETL processes adopt different strategies and implementation methods for dealing
with different data sources. This paper proposed the design of the ETL process which
can unify the heterogeneous data sources varying with time granularity and space
granularity. The proposed ETL process is as follows.
Firstly, the cleaning of the heterogeneous data is performed with the strategy of
data quality controlling introduced next. Secondly, the data uniformity of space
granularity is achieved as follows: extract the monitoring data of the sensors located
in the sampling stations which are near to the man-made sampling points in terms of
latitude and longitude. Following this, the data uniformity of time granularity is
achieved as follows: superimposing and fitting of 96 sensor groups of data of 96 sam-
pling times over 24 hours. Thereby, the transformation of data is completed. Finally,
the consistent data is loaded in the data warehouse.
 Design of ETL Process on Spatio-temporal Data and Study of Quality Control 489

3 Data Quality Control

3.1 The Missing or the Abnormal of Water Quality Data

The issues related to the data quality of water-quality sensors mainly are manifested
in the two following aspects. One aspect is that WSN is affected by the quality of the
communication signal in the data acquisition and transmission. As a result, the sam-
pling data may be missing in some time intervals. The other is that the electrical sig-
nal noise and man-made factors may lead to the sampling data abnormal during the
process of sensor monitoring. This paper investigates how to deal with the data miss-
ing and the data abnormal, which is essential for the control on data quality in the
ETL process.

3.2 IWQPW Interpolation

For k points of sensor data in some sampling period employed in the procedure of the
data uniformity, the missing and abnormal data may result not only from the parame-
ters of water-quality sensors, but also from the signal strength which may varies with
the sampling frequency over one hour. This paper took into account the signal
strength and the factors of time period and sampling frequency, and proposed the
IWQPW (Inverse Water Quality Parameter Weighting) interpolation method to cope
with the issues mentioned above.
Definition 1. Assume that the starting instant is t0, and a group of data is manually
collected data over 24 hour period. Accordingly, 96 groups of water-quality sensor
data have also been collected, which are indexed by a sequence of integer numbers.
Each index corresponds to the related sampling instant.
Definition 2. Assume that the data record is a group of manually collected data, the
96 corresponding sequential groups of data is RD = {d1 , d 2 , , d 96 } . For any
d i (1 i 96) and d j (1 j 96 and i j ) in RD, if their indices are x and y respec-
tively, the sequential distance between two sampling point is calculated as x y .

Definition 3. Let M (x, y, z, t) be an arbitrary interpolation point in the sample space,

N (xi, yi, zi, ti) be an arbitrary point in 96 sequential sampling values. The sequential
weight of the sampling point N, Wi, t is defined as:
1
wit = (1 k 96) (1)
l lk

Where l indicates the sequential position of the interpolation point, lk indicates the
sequential position of the sample point.
Definition 4. IWQPW (Inverse Water Quality Parameter Weighting) is a spatial tem-
poral sequence interpolation method with the comprehensive consideration of the
weight of water quality parameters and the sequential weight. IWQPW takes the
distance as weight between the interpolation point and the midpoint of the sample
490 B. Wang et al.

space for weighted average calculation. The sample point is assigned a larger weight
if it is nearer to the interpolation point and with a short sequential distance. Assume
that a monitoring station is a basis. There are n samples in the 96 sequential sensor
sampling space. Let zi be the value collected of water quality, z be the value of water
quality to be estimated as follows:
n n
z = ( zi wi ) / wi (2)
i =1 i =1

3.3 Dynamic Incremental Rule Engine

3.3.1 Dynamic Incremental Rule Engine Overview

The rule-based engine technology originates from the rule-based expert system. It has
been becoming a popular research topic recently that the application of this technol-
ogy to the ETL process for the control of data quality. Due to the hidden of the ab-
normal data collected by water quality sensors, it is not easy for non-professionals to
tell the abnormal data. This paper proposed to exploit the rule-based engine technol-
ogy to deal with the issue that how to make the outlier detection rules dynamic incre-
ment with the accumulation of expert experiences and the development of related
disciplines. However, the following two issues appeared in the application of this
technology to the detection of outlier in the sensor spatial data.
Existing data-cleaning methods based on the rule engine can only process a data
record. However, the sensor parameter data is closely related to the data from time
and space. Thus, one record data is not sufficient to identify the outliers. Therefore,
it is necessary to consider all these related data together.
It is not flexible of existing cleaning methods based on the rule engine to process
the rule file. The historical versions of the domain-expert rule files cannot be made
full use. Especially, it is impossible for the existing rules to self-learn and update
continuously.
This paper investigated the method for the detection of outliers in the sensor parame-
ter data based on the rule engine technology in order to cope with the above two is-
sues, and proposed a new engine technology of dynamic incremental rules.

3.3.2 The Architecture of the Dynamic Incremental Rule Engine

The designed dynamic incremental rule engine is Drools rules engine as the rules of
the nuclear, through plug-in components, to achieve the continuous dynamic growth
rule and incremental updates. The architecture of the dynamic incremental rule engine
includes:
Rule generation interface. Graphical user interface (GUI) is exploited to edit the user
rules and the plan of the rule conversion. In GUI, the rule is represented using custom
XML files.
Rule-related job dispatcher. The dispatcher is used to dynamically adjust the priority
of the rules and the sequence of the rule conversion.
 Design of ETL Process on Spatio-temporal Data and Study of Quality Control 491

Rule converter. The rule converter takes the responsibility of the conversion of the
custom XML rules to the rules supported by Drools. That is, the converter transfers
the object-oriented rules to the Drools-supported rules.
Rule-version controller. With the rule-version controller, the user rules are managed
in a centralized manner. The rules with old versions are also regulated. The system
maintains a record list regarding the rule usage of each individual user with specific
role(s). The personalized interface thus is provided to different users.
Runtime database. The database is used for data persistent storage, which is shared
by the other components.
Code generator. The generator produces the code according to the rules, and returns
the data anomalies stamp. There are two kinds of return data. One is the PL/SQL
code; the other is Java code. The generated code, as input, sends to the module of data
layer.
Data layer modules. Data layer modules receive the code, and determine which op-
eration should be performed according to the abnormal stamp. If it is necessary, the
interpolation module is called. Then, the persistence operation is performed.

3.3.3 A Sample of the Rule File

This dynamic incremental rule engine designed to use a custom XML file to represent
the objects of the rules, call the Java API code embedded in the rules file, rules
through five steps to achieve the dynamic and incremental update capability, in detail
Process described below.
Import the classes used in the code, nested the classes in <java:import> tag;
Describe data set schema. The original data set is divided into the current data set
and the other data set, differentiated by the attribute tag, i.e., type. The sample
fragment is as follows for the definition of the data set.
<java:receive name='sensorDataset'>
<java:ds name='currentdataset' type='current'>
<parameter name='sensor'>
<class>sensorDataset</class>
</parameter>
<parameter name='struct_sensor' type='srcstruct'>
<! The structure of data set descriptions >
<col name='col1'>
<matched column value='time'></matchedcolumn>
<datatype value='Date'></datatype>
<datalength value=7><datalength>
</col>
<col name=col2> </col>
</parameter>
</java:ds>
</java:receive>
Define the function of object operators. The operations are defined between the
objects in the set of abstract source data and the objects in the set of training data.
492 B. Wang et al.

The specific function definition is included in the <java:functions> tag. The sample
fragment is as follows:
<java:functions>
public int positonInOtherDataset(currentdataset,
otherdataset, itemtocompare)
{
//Return the position of the specified field of the
//current data set in the other data set ordered by
//the related values
}
</java: functions>
Define the specific rules. The Boolean expressions are used to describe the rule
conditions, which consist of the class, the data sets and the operator functions de-
fined in the above, the sample fragments is as follows:
<rule-set>
<rule name="rule1" salience="10">
<java:condition name1='cond1' cleanitem='phx'>
isMaxValue (currentdataset, otherdataset, "phx")
equals the value of a return code
</java:condition>
</rule>
</rule-set>
Define an operation. The described operations are performed when the Boolean
expression of the rule condition is true.The sample fragment is as follows:
<java:consequence>
<!Mark the outliers>
markExceptionData (data sets,outlier row,outlier
column);
</java:consequence>

3.4 Quality Control Strategy

The process of data cleaning is the most critical part of quality control of water-
quality-sensor data, which includes two parts: the interpolation processing of the
missing data in water quality monitoring and the detection processing of the outlier.
First of all, the missing values of sensor water-quality data are interpolated using
IWQPW method. Then, the outlier detection is run using the dynamic incremental
rule engine with the input of the processed data set and the rules edited by water ex-
perts. Following this, the space interpolation is performed on the outliers using
IWQPW method again. Finally, the achieve data set get into the follow-up processing.

4 Experimental Design and Analysis

The purpose of the experiment is to verify the accuracy and reliability of IWQPW
interpolation, as well as recall ratio and precision ratio of DIRE rule engine. Recall
ratio is calculated as the ratio of the number of detected outliers over the number of
 Design of ETL Process on Spatio-temporal Data and Study of Quality Control 493

statistical outlier. Precision ratio is defined as the ratio of the correct number of de-
tected outliers over the number of detected outliers.
The test set A consists of the four sampling spaces indexed by 1, 2, 3 and 4 respec-
tively. Each sampling space is constructed based on the test sampling space of the real
data records of PH, ORP and oxygen content collected in April in the Wuliangsuhai
Lake. Then, the test set B is obtained through elimination of the uncompleted record
and outliers in the four sampling spaces in the set A under the guidance of related
experts.
Experiment 1. Under the guidance of related experts, the statistical number of out-
liers is achieved manually for each sampling space in the test set A. The number of
outliers is also obtained from the DIRE rule engine with the input of each sampling
space. Thereby, recall ratio and precision ratio can be calculated. Experimental results
are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Detection of outliers in sensor data with the rule engine

No. Number outliers Number detected Correct number Recall ratio Precision ratio
1 364 345 337 94.7% 97.7%
2 253 237 229 93.7% 96.6%
3 377 344 319 91.2% 92.7%
4 423 389 377 92.0% 96.9%
5 340 309 298 90.9% 96.4%

Experiment 2. The purpose of this experiment is to compare the ratio of interpolation

accuracy using three following methods. From the test set B, we remove normal data
4 times with the quantities of 105, 150, 245 and 400, respectively. Then, three inter-
polation methods, i.e., IDW, Kriging and IWQPW are used individually for data in-
terpolation within the allowable range of the error (0.62). The experiment results are
shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Accuracy of different interpolation methods for sensor data

Interpolation of the average accuracy

Measuring the number of missing values
IDW Kriging IWQPW
105 79.2% 77.7% 99.6%
150 77.3% 78.2% 96.2%
245 66.0% 66.9% 95.4%
400 70.3% 70.5% 90.0%

The experiment results show to some extent that our proposed method is useful in
practice and effective. The results also show that our methods strongly rely on the rules.

5 Conclusion
The objective of this paper is to deal with the issues related to the quality control of
water-quality sensor data. The ETL process is first proposed in order to establish data
494 B. Wang et al.

warehouse. In addition, the quality control strategy is proposed which combines

IWQPW method with the dynamic incremental rule engine. Thereby, it can be clean
up that the missing values and outliers. The future work is to investigate further uni-
versal interpolation methods and the self-learning capability of the rule engine.

References
1. Chen, Q., Mynett, A.E.: Integration of data mining techniques and heuristic knowledge in
fuzzy logic modelling of eutrophication in Taihu Lake. J. Ecological Modelling 162, 55
67 (2003)
2. Lenat, D.R.: Water Quality Assessment of Streams Using a Qualitative Collection Method
for Benthic Macroinvertebrates. J. Journal of the North American Benthological Society 7,
222233 (1998)
3. Neal, C., Robson, A.J.: A summary of river water quality data collected within the Land-
Ocean Interaction Study: Core data for eastern UK rivers draining to the North Sea. J. Sci-
ence of the Total Environmen. 251, 585665 (2000)
4. Codd, G.A.: Cyanobacterial toxins, the perception of water quality, and the prioritisation
of eutrophication control. J. Ecological Engineering 16, 5160 (2000)
5. Vassiliadis, P., Simitsis, A., Skiadopoulos, S.: Conceptual modeling for ETL processes. In:
5th ACM International Workshop on Data Warehousing and OLAP, pp. 1421. ACM,
New York (2002)
6. Simitsis, A.: Mapping conceptual to logical models for ETL processes. In: 8th ACM Inter-
national Workshop on Data Warehousing and OLAP, pp. 6776. ACM, New York (2005)
7. Loshin, D.: Rule-based data quality. In: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Confer-
ence on Information and Knowledge Management, pp. 614616. ACM, New York (2002)
8. Sun, Y., Kang, S., Li, F., Zhang, L.: Comparison of interpolation methods for depth to
groundwater and its temporal and spatial variations in the Minqin oasis of northwest
China. J. Environmental Modeling & Software 24, 11631170 (2009)
Design of Fuzzy Drip Irrigation Control System Based on
ZigBee Wireless Sensor Network

Xinjian Xiang

College of Automation & Electrical Engineering,

Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, Zhejiang, P.R. China
hzxxj@sina.com

Abstract. To improve agricultural water resources utilization, crops auto-

matic, locate, time and appropriate drip irrigation is a good choice. In this
paper, an automatic control drip irrigation system based on ZigBee wireless
sensor network and fuzzy control would be introduced. System uses CC2430
for wireless sensor network node design, collecting soil moisture, temperature
and light intensity information and sending the drip irrigation instructions by
the wireless network. System put this three soil factors input fuzzy controller,
created fuzzy control rule base and finished crop irrigation time fuzzy control.
This paper mainly describes systems hardware structure, software design and
working process. The system with the characteristics of economical, reliable
communications and high accuracy control, could improve agricultural drip
irrigation water using efficiency and the automation level.

Keywords: Drip irrigation, ZigBee wireless sensor network, Fuzzy controller,

Drip irrigation automation.

1 Introduction
Agricultural water low use efficiency, shortage and waste are big problem of currently
development of irrigated agriculture. Drought is the major environmental stress fac-
tors for crop growth, which is more than all other factors sum up[1]. Drip irrigation
is a system that directly supply filtered water, fertilizer or other chemical agents to
soil with slow and regular drip through the trunk, branch and capillary on the emitter
under the low-pressure. Its utilization of water could up to 95%, Drip irrigation is
an important technology in irrigated agriculture and the ideal solution to resolve
the effects of drought. Over the years, most of our drip irrigation system controlled
by manually experience without real-time data collection and analyze, drip of arbi-
trary is large. Thereby, study of automatic drip irrigation system has a great signifi-
cance.
Implementation of irrigation automation requires as following [2-3]:
1) the accurate collection of crop water requirement;
2) the remote information transmission technology for water demand information
and the control;
3) drip irrigation control decision-making.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 495501, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
496 X. Xiang

Many researches carried out at home and abroad. However, there is still clearly
insufficient with 2) and 3) for application:1) Currently most of drip irrigation control
systems work with serial bus or field bus technology, the wiring inconvenience and
high cost, longer time-consuming make it is hard to promote in practice [4]. 2)
Automatic drip irrigation as a complicated system, Irrigation decision-making af-
fected by soil, crops and the environments multi-sensor information. There is still a
lack of appropriate control strategies [5]. In recent years, with the development of
wireless information transfer technology, ZigBee wireless network with its low-
power, low cost, low rate, close, short latency, high-security features get attention
in agricultural production. Scholars begin to study the drip irrigation system with
wireless technology. However, in these drip irrigation systems, ZigBee wireless
sensor network is mainly used for collecting soil, crop or environmental information,
providing drip irrigation decision-making. Information collection and automatic irri-
gation control integrated system based on ZigBee technology is rarely. Fuzzy control
for the many complex and difficult to establish accurate mathematical model system
control provides a solution, its study about drip irrigation only consider the soil
moisture information as fuzzy inputs, neglected crops and environmental information,
which cause the decision-making is not accurate enough.
To this end, a design of fuzzy drip irrigation control system based on ZigBee wire-
less sensor network is provided. The system consists of low-power wireless sensor
network node with self-composed ZigBee network formation, avoiding the incon-
venience of wiring and poor flexibility shortcoming, achieving continuous online
monitoring of soil moisture. System uses soil moisture, temperature and light in-
tensity information for fuzzy decision-making, and completes the fuzzy control of
drip irrigation automation. It would improve irrigation water use efficiency, ease the
growing tension of water resources conflicts and provide a good growing environ-
ment for the crop.

2 System Hardware Design

2.1 System Composition

System based on ZigBee wireless network, is made up of drip irrigation system, ZigBee
wireless network nodes and monitoring center. Due to real-time monitoring information
of soil moisture, temperature, light intensity and the crop water use law, implement of
automatic drip irrigation with fuzzy control strategy, as shown in Figure 1.

2.2 Drip Irrigation System Design

For drip irrigation requirements, throttle, filters, and pressure gauge should be in-
stalled at the water source. System use PVC 32 mm for main pipe, PE 20 mm for
branch, with pressure compensation emitter, one plant with a drip emitter embedded
in the branch. Front-end of branch connected solenoid valve with 24 V DC, flow
rate of 2.3L / h, and pressure gauge. Branch spacing can not be too small for pre-
venting interference between lines caused by water infiltration, and initial set line
spacing to 1 m. Soil moisture sensor buried under the roots of the plant near the
surface, light intensity sensors and temperature sensors fixed to the side of the pole
 Design of Fuzzy Drip Irrigation Control System 497

on the plant. Sensor signals input CC2430 to constitute the measurement of soil mois-
ture ZigBee wireless sensor network node. Each solenoid valve coupled to the
CC2430 ZigBee module circuit, composed of drip irrigation control wireless sensor
network node.

2.3 ZigBee Wireless Network Node Design

ZigBee wireless sensor network using star network topology. Node is divided into
three categories: sensor node, controller node and routing node. In the design, three
kinds of nodes all use TIs CC2430 as a common core module, and different expan-
sion modules, as shown in Figure 2. CC2430 with strong function and rich on-chip
resource, only need few external components can be achieved with the signal trans-
ceiver functions, which made the hardware design for three kinds of nodes are very
simple, reliable and practical.

2.3.1 Design of Zigbee Wireless Sensor Network Node for Soil Moisture
Measurement
Sensor nodes connected with the soil moisture sensors is used to read and transfer
sensor information. Soil moisture sensor nodes spatial arrangement will be opti-
mized according to crop type, soil type, terrain conditions and reliable signal trans-
mission requirements. It includes Soil moisture sensors STHO01, digital temperature
sensor DS1802B and photosensitive resistance P9003. STHO01 soil moisture sensor
measurement accuracy of 3%, range 0 to 100%, output signal 4 ~ 20mA, operating
voltage 12V DC, stabilization time after power 2 s, can meet the requirements of real-
time monitoring. The output signal change to 0 ~ 5 V voltage through the high-
precision resistor, then converted into digital signal by the CC2430 AD module, soil
moisture can be determined from different voltage amplitude. STHO01 should be
buried in the ground, the location and drip irrigation start time is close to the data
accuracy and time. General crop root depth of 10 ~ 20 cm, Drip Irrigation humid
time of 5 min-30 min, thus burying depth of the sensor is set to 15CM, open time
is set to 20min after drip irrigation. Signal reception and transmission by the an-
tenna. Each sensor node is powered by solar cells, and the battery voltage is moni-
tored at any time, once the voltage is too low, the node will send a low voltage alarm
signal, then the node run into sleep mode until it is fully charged.

2.3.2 Design of ZigBee Wireless Network Drip Control Node and Routing Node
Control node is connected with the irrigation control panel to control the
open/close head of drip irrigation and valve through Timer based on fuzzy control
strategy. In addition, the control node has the interrupt response capability to deal
with control commands from the computer. As the irrigation control panel and elec-
tric control valves use electricity supply, so does the control node. Between the core
module and the irrigation control panel using optocouplers in order to avoid strong
electrical interference.
Systems routing nodes create a multi-hop network in self-formation. Sensor nodes
distributed in the monitoring area, sent the collected data to the wireless routing
node nearby, then routing node selects the best route according to the routing
algorithm to establish the appropriate routing list. Routing node connect with base
station for address allocation, management, monitoring, signal transmission and
498 X. Xiang

reception between the sensor node and control node. The routing node sends a data
read command to sensor node every 20 min, and upload the receive data through the
serial port to the base station computer.

Fig. 1. System diagram

Fig. 2. Structure of wireless sensor network node

3 System Software Design

3.1 Fuzzy Control Strategy Design

The crops water requirement is related to soil moisture index, meteorological condi-
tions (radiation, temperature, etc.), crop type and growth stage. Therefore, the
system chooses soil moisture, temperature and light intensity as the fuzzy control-
ler input. Fuzzy controller input for soil moisture (WH), temperature (WT) and
 Design of Fuzzy Drip Irrigation Control System 499

light intensity (WL), the output for the irrigation time (WT), as shown in Figure 3. In
order to ensure appropriate accuracy, four variables are defined five linguistic vari-
ables: very light (VL), light (L), middle (M), heavy (H), very heavy (VH). In the
choice of membership function (MF), triangular MF is simple, computationally effi-
cient, especially for applications that require real-time implementation of the occa-
sion, so the system using triangular MF fuzzy: translate the variables exact value
into fuzzy linguistic variable value in the appropriate domain, that determine in-
put/output range and the domain of fuzzy linguistic variables. Fuzzy Reasoning:
knowledge-based reasoning by a certain mechanism, get the fuzzy output value from
the fuzzy input. Inference rule is summarize by experience get "IF-THEN" state-
ments express, such as experience, when the soil moisture below the lower limit,
indicated that the soil is extremely dry at this time regardless of the level of other
inputs, crops need a lot of irrigation, written in fuzzy reasoning Rules that "ifWT is
VL thenWT is VH". In practice, different situations also need to adjust the rules, and
gradually create the best irrigation scheme. Ambiguity: According to the results of
fuzzy reasoning by multiplying the scale factor, get the exact output amount needed
to control the system. In this system, the center of mass defuzzification method is
used to obtain the irrigation control valve opening time.

Soil water
potential Fuzzy controller

Fuzzy Reasoning Irrigation output

Farmland
evapotranspiration

Fuzzy control rule base

Fig. 3. Structural principle of fuzzy controller

3.2 Node Software Design

In the irrigation control system, monitoring data and control commands are trans-
mit in the wireless sensor nodes, wireless control node, the wireless routing nodes
and the monitoring center. Sensor nodes and control nodes turn on the power, ini-
tialization, and get in sleep after the establishment of links. When the routing node
receives an interrupt request, activate the sensor nodes and control nodes, send or
receive packets, continue into hibernation after processing, waiting for a request to
activate again. In the same channel, only two nodes can communicate through the
competition to get the channel. Each node periodically in sleep and monitor mode,
taking the initiative to seize the channel when the channel is idle, and retreat for
some time based on backoff algorithm to re-monitor channel state when the channel
is busy. In the programming design, system mainly uses interrupt method to com-
plete send and receive message.
500 X. Xiang

3.3 PC Monitoring Software Design

Monitoring software plays a vital role in this system, written using VC #, through
the monitoring software to achieve the ZigBee network monitoring, information ex-
traction, fuzzy control calculation and control output functions. First, the software
shows the topology of wireless networks, after confirmation system begin to receive
node sensor signal in scheduled, the signal can be displayed in two ways: numerical
display and curve display, collection steps can be set to 20min, then finish fuzzy
control calculation according to fuzzy control method, output control node signal
and control the electromagnetic valves switching time. The sensor signals and out-
put control signals can be timed automatically saved and exported to the interface
for observation and comparison.

4 Application and Validation

Systems initial test is in the vineyards drip irrigation. The vineyard uses fixed
ground drip irrigation system, each block with a main pipe and some branch comb
pipes, electric control valves installed at the end of the main channel, each electronic
control valve connect with a wireless sensor network controller node which control
the blocks drip time. In the experiment, four blocks are selected, around the block
controller node distance 70 ~ 120 m, while the sensor nodes are distributed in an
approximate square area around the block (each block containing 1 to 3 sensor
nodes), while the base station (router nodes) farthest away from the node 250 m. Ex-
periments show that nodes with distance of 200m, the single communication error
rate is less than 2%. System using repeated comprehensive judgments to improve
the reliability of communication. In addition, the electronic valve control accuracy,
and system run in good condition overall.

5 Conclusions
In this paper, an automatic control drip irrigation system based on ZigBee wireless
sensor network and fuzzy control had been proposed. System uses high-precision soil
moisture, temperature and light sensors with low-cost, low power ZigBee wireless
communication technology to monitor soil moisture on line, fuzzy control implemen-
tation of soil moisture and crop water use rules which are difficult to establish
accurate mathematical model for drip irrigation automation. The design avoids the
inconvenience of wiring, and improves the flexibility and maneuverability of water-
saving drip irrigation control system. Not only can effectively solve the agricultural
irrigation water use, ease the growing tension of water resources conflicts, but also
provide a better growing environment for the crop, give full play to the role of the
existing water-saving devices, optimal scheduling, improve efficiency, so drip irriga-
tion is more scientific, convenient, enhance the management level. The system also
supports remote setting of parameters and control for a variety of crops, can increase
crop yield, reduce the cost of agricultural drip irrigation, improve the drip irrigation
quality, has great value in applications.
 Design of Fuzzy Drip Irrigation Control System 501

Acknowledgement
This material is based upon work funded by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science
Foundation of China under Grant No. Y108268.

References
[1] Fang, X., Zhou, Y., Cheng, W.: The design of ireless intelligent irrigation system based
on ZigBee technology. Journal of Agricultural Mechanization Research (1), 114118
(2009)
[2] Xie, S., Li, X.: Design and implementation of fuzzy control for irrigating system with
PLC. Transactions of the CASE 23(6), 208211 (2007)
[3] Jin, Z., Xu, M., Wei, X.: Study and design of spraying irrigation automatic controller
based on fuzzy decision. Drainge and Irrigation Machinery 22(5), 2628 (2004)
[4] Jiang, M., Chen, Q., Yan, X.: Precision irrigation system based on fuzzy control. Trans-
actions of the CASE 21(10), 1720 (2005)
[5] Yang, X.: Research on power consumption in sensor network. In: Microcontrollers &
Embedded Systems, vol. (1), pp. 2729 (2006)
 Design of Greenhouse Environmental Parameters
Prediction System

Haokun Zhang and Heru Xue

College of computer & information Engineering,

Inner Mongolia Agricultural University,
Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, P.R. China
tonyzhhk@163.com

Abstract. This paper designs an environmental parameters prediction system

based on web for greenhouse. The system is designed using the MVC frame-
work, and includes monitoring module and prediction module. The system can
obtain the main environmental parameters from sensors, such as light, tempera-
ture, humidity, CO2 and so on. Based on mass and energy balance principle,
the prediction module of the system can predict the parameters of the green-
house environment each day. The system displays the measured real-time
data and the predicted data for the users to manage greenhouse easily. This
paper provides a specific method to realize an intelligent management system
for greenhouse.

Keywords: Greenhouse environmental prediction, Prediction model, MVC

framework, Intelligent management system.

1 Introduction

Solar greenhouse is a unique greenhouse structure in China, with low cost, low run-
ning cost, good insulation and high efficiency advantages. But the current level of
greenhouse environmental control is lower, and the greenhouse environmental control
is still a manual control-oriented. It is difficult to adjust to the best environment for
crop growth. This paper designs an environmental parameters prediction system real-
izing a function of remote monitoring and early warning. The system provides reliable
and accurate greenhouse environmental parameters for users to manage the green-
house.
With the development of the Internet and WWW technology, Web has become the
interactive interface for most software users. WWW is considered the most successful
information system. In particular the development of dynamic Web technologies hav-
ing come a long way, WWW is becoming the mainstream of various types of infor-
mation system development platform. Dynamic Web system structure is a three-tier
client/server model. In the three-tier system architecture, Web browser occupies client
layer, database server and other external service account the service layer, and occupy
the middle layer is the Web server and server extensions. Three-tier structure makes

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 502507, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Design of Greenhouse Environmental Parameters Prediction System 503

the dynamic Web browser users can access the existing database resources, and
enhances the system interactivity.
This paper designs a web-based system, which implements the B/S design pattern
and three-tier structure to shield underlying network and provides the users a friendly
and consistent interface.

2 System Designing
The environmental parameters prediction system is based on B/S design pattern of the
dynamic three-tier architecture of Web systems[1]. The users request to the server by
submitting a form in a browser. The server calls the data in the database after receiv-
ing the requests, and the results are returned to the users.
Using software engineering, the system is divided into different functional mod-
ules, according to the setting of the types of the greenhouse environmental parameters
and the processes and characteristics of greenhouse environmental parameters moni-
toring and prediction. The system implements functions of monitoring and predicting
the greenhouse environmental parameters and provides an interactive platform for
users. The structure of system is shown as fig. 1.

Fig. 1. System flow chart

The system includes the following functions:

Function of login and registration. Before using this system, users need to register
and login. After users submit the registration information successfully, the system
returns the registration information to the users. This function is designed to manage
the system for users.
Function of environment monitoring. This function implements transmission and
display of the environmental parameters and stores the parameters in the database.
The system sends the parameter data to the users browsers using the web server. The
function can show the environmental parameter data in a table and also can draw a
line chart of the data to users.
Function of environment prediction. The implement of this function is base on so-
lar greenhouse environment model, which uses mass and energy balance equations to
504 H. Zhang and H. Xue

describe the climate in the greenhouse. The function can predict the greenhouse envi-
ronmental parameters everyday. Input parameters need by this function submitted, the
prediction is calculated based on environmental prediction model, and the prediction
results is displayed in a table or a line chart to users.

3 System Implementation
In the development of the system, JSP technology and DAO technology are used. JSP
technology is based on Java, and can create dynamic Web pages supporting cross-
platform and cross-server. Following the object-oriented design, JSP programming is
easy and independent of web browsers[2-3]. In developing web information systems,
JSP technology is widely used.

3.1 MVC Architecture

MVC is a "Model-View-Controller" in the abbreviation. MVC applications always

have three parts, which are Model, View and Controller. Event leads to changes
coursed by Controller in Model or View, or changes both at the same time. If
Controller changes the data or properties of Models, all Views automatically update.
Similarly, if Controller changes the View, the View gets data from the Model to
refresh itself.

3.2 Access to Database

This system is designed to use Access desktop database. All operations on access
to database are packaged in a separated Java class named by DB.java, in which
all member functions are defined as static functions, such as Connection getConn(),
getStatement(Connection conn), getResultSet(Statementstmt, String sql) and so on.
The following statement can implement the access to database:
Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");
conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:odbc:
driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=path");
The path in the above sentence is the variable of the physical path of the data
file.

3.3 Implementation of Functions

3.3.1 Environment Monitoring

This function deals with the data get from sensors, and displays the data in web pages.
Implementation of the function depends on the deployment of sensors. After sensors
working successfully, greenhouse environmental parameters stored in the Access da-
tabase are obtained by this module. The system uses AUTO-22 greenhouse environ-
mental data collector. According to the need of the greenhouse environmental model,
twenty-one sensors are used. The attributes of the table created in the database is
shown as table 1.
 Design of Greenhouse Environmental Parameters Prediction System 505

Table 1. Meaning of the database table attributes

Attributes Meaning Attributes Meaning

temp1 inner surface temperature temp2 outdoor humidity 2#
of back slope 1#
temp3 outdoor horizontal solar temp4 Outdoor wind speed 4#
illuminance 3#
temp5 Outdoor environmental temp6 Outdoor wind direction 6#
temperature 5#
temp7 Inner surface temperature temp8 Inner surface temperature
of back wall 7# of second wall 8#
temp9 Outer surface temperature temp10 Outer surface temperature
of insulation 9# of first wall 10#
temp11 Outer surface temperature temp12 Outer surface temperature
of wall 11# of back slope 12#
temp13 Indoor environmental temp14 Indoor soil moisture 14#
humidity 13#
temp15 Indoor solar illuminance temp16 Concentration of CO2 16#
of soil surface 15#
temp17 Indoor temperature of air temp18 Crop canopy temperature
17# 18#
temp19 Inner surface temperature temp20 soil surface Temperature
of Translucent membrane 20#
19#
temp21 Deep soil temperature 21#

The system uses a JavaBean named Condition to set and get data from the database.
DAO of the system obtains data from the table in database and stores it in a list con-
sisted of objects of Condition. JSP pages read the list to display the data in browsers.
Query statement of access: sql=select top "+pageSize+" * from temp_humi_0
where id not in (select top "+(size)+" id from temp_humi_0 order by id asc.
The pageSize in above sentence is a variable to define the number of data item in
a page. The size variable presents (pageNo1)*pageSize.
To display the data in a line chart, this system needs JFreeChart, which is an open
chart drawing library on Java platform[4]. JFreeChart is programmed completely by
Java Language, and designed for the use of applications, applets, servlets and JSP.
The system needs the JFreeChart package to draw line chart. Add jfreechart-1.0.6.jar,
gnujaxp.jar and jcommon-1.0.10.jar in lib directory.
Procedure of generating chart in this system:
1). Create a dataset to include the data displayed in a line chart, which is stored in
database.
2). Create an object of JFreeChart to present the chart to be shown.
3). Output the chart.

3.3.2 Environmental Prediction

Calculating of each prediction module is developed by Matlab. With the component
of Matlab Builder for Java, package the function of prediction module calculated in
506 H. Zhang and H. Xue

Matlab into a Java component. This Java component can be called in JSP web system.
Taking the solar prediction module an example, package the file named shortwavera-
diation.m into a file named shortwaveradiation.jar. Including this new file in the pro-
ject, the system can call this prediction function.
Matlab Builder for Java (known as Java Builder) is an extension of Matlab Com-
piler. Java Builder packages Matlab functions into one or more Java classes. Matlab
functions are packaged into Java classes, and can be called by Java applications.
Implementation of environmental prediction function is based on greenhouse envi-
ronmental model[5]. The model integrates solar model, air temperature model, air
humidity model and CO2 Concentration model to build an overall prediction model
for greenhouse environment. The model needs local weather forecast information.
With the forecast information, indoor solar illuminance, air temperature, air humidity,
CO2 concentration, soil temperature and soil moisture can be realized.
By inputting values of cloud and local time, solar illuminance prediction function
calculates the total flux of solar radiationI o which has reached surface of the green-
house, and the total flux of solar radiation I which has reached the crop canopy.
The function also calculates solar radiation energy absorbed and reflected by crop
canopy Qr d- c , solar radiation energy absorbed by surface of soil Qr d- s , solar radia-
tion energy absorbed by inner and outer surface of back slope Qr d- r i and Qr d- r o , and
solar radiation energy absorbed by inner and outer surface of back wall Qr d- bi and
Qr d- bo .
Variables calculated in solar illuminance prediction function are needed in air tem-
perature prediction model. The model is based on thermal balance equations such as
indoor air thermal balance equation, indoor soil thermal balance equation, back slope
thermal balance equation, back wall thermal balance equation and so on. Take the
indoor air thermal balance equation as an example, the equation is

(1)

Greenhouse temperature prediction model can predict indoor air temperature, crop
canopy temperature, surface of soil temperature and so on. Greenhouse solar illumine-
nce prediction model can predict crop canopy flux of solar radiation. They are the
known conditions for prediction of greenhouse CO2 dynamic prediction model.
Mean values in hours per day of crop canopy flux of solar radiation, crop canopy
temperature, surface of soil temperature, air temperature, concentration of CO2, and
inner surface temperature of translucent membrane obtained by sensors, and measured
values each hour per day of outdoor temperature, outdoor humidity are the known
conditions for greenhouse air humidity prediction model. The function of prediction is
shown as fig. 2.
 Design of Greenhouse Environmental Parameters Prediction System 507

Fig. 2. Greenhouse environmental prediction model calculating flow chart

4 Conclusion
The system designed by this paper can provide high-precision data of changes of
greenhouse environmental parameters to greenhouse managers. The system realizes
remote monitoring and prediction via Web and provides an actual method to realize
precision agriculture. The system is an application system for greenhouse environ-
mental parameters prediction.
Acknowledgements. This study has been funded by Inner Mongolia Natural Science
Foundation Projects (Contract Number: 20080404).

References
1. Jin, S.: Study on remote control system for the greenhouse based on B/S model. Packaging
and Food Machinery 26(3), 1519 (2008)
2. Zhou, N., Fang, H., Li, J.: Design and Implementation of Intelligent Business Expanding
Expert System Based on JSP Technology. Guangdong Electric Power 20(3), 5766 (2007)
3. Sigrimis, N.: Computer integrated management and intelligent control of greenhouse. In:
Fourteenth 1999, IFAC World Congress, Beijing. PRC (1999)
4. JFreeChart API Documentation,
http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/api/javadoc/index.html
5. Li, W., Dong, R., Tang, C., Zhang, S.: A Theoretical Model of Thermal Environment in
Solar Plastic Greenhouses with One-Slope. Transactions of the CSAE (2), 160163 (1997)
 Design of Limb for Parallel Mechanism Based on Screw
Theory*

Zhigang Lai1, Lixin Li2, and Ping an Liu2

1
Jiangxi Technical College of Manufacturing, Nanchang, Jiangxi, 330095, China
2
School of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering at East China Jiaotong University,
Nanchang 330013, China
lilixinsky@163.com

Abstract. Based on the reciprocal relationship of twist and wrench in screw

theory, the mathematical model for limb of parallel manipulator is established
in this paper. According to the motion modes of mobile platform (translation or
rotation), we concluded the geometric conditions which the prismatic joint or
revolute joint must meet with by analyzing the constraint screw on the platform,
which provides the background for development of parallel mechanism.

Keywords: parallel mechanism; crew theory: limb; geometric condition.

1 Introduction
In recent year, since parallel mechanism can offer higher stiffness and larger load ca-
pability than those of serial mechanism, it has become a hot research topic in interna-
tional robotics area. However, it is very difficult to design because of the complexity of
kinematics and dynamics, the diversity of limb and the coupling of architecture.[1-3]
It is the most important task to meet with the DOF of the required motion for de-
signing the parallel mechanism. In fact, DOF is the outward feature. The key is the
design of constraint to implement the DOF of the required motion. The DOF of
motion is objective in the limb. However, the constraint is designed in the limb by
designer. And there are strict requirements to the geometric conditions which the
prismatic joint or revolute joint must meet with in the limb.[4-5]
Based on the reciprocal relationship, in this paper, we concluded the geometric
conditions which the prismatic joint or revolute joint must meet with in the limb by
analyzing the constraint screw on the platform. According to the limb, we can design
the parallel mechanism which is satisfied the required movement. It is a common
method to the basic design of the parallel mechanism.

2 Structural Synthesis of the Constraint Screw on the Platform

Each limb should provide a constraint screw for the moving platform in the parallel
mechanism. According to the constraint characteristics provided to the platform,

* Supported by Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi, China, NO. 2008GZC005.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 508518, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Design of Limb for Parallel Mechanism Based on Screw Theory 509

screw can be divided into twist and wrench. An arbitrary motion screw in space can
include six motions at most, three translations along the X, Y, Z axes and three rota-
tions around the X, Y, Z axes[6-8].
Twist should provide constraint for movement in space. It can be defined a
r = ( sr ; rr sr ) . In the formula, sr stands for a unit vector along axis of twist and

rr for a point on the axis direction of twist. Wrench should provide constraint for

rotation in space. It can be defined as r = (0 0 0; lr mr nr ) and here we
have l + m + n = 1.
2
r
2
r
2
r
Twist and wrench are decided by the structural conditions of limb in parallel
mechanism. So the type of constraint depends on the structural conditions of limb.
According to the type of constraint, we can obtain the characteristic of limb structural.
According to the difference of constraint in the limb, they can be divided into uncon-
strained limb, single constrained limb, double constrained limb, three-constrained
limb, four-constrained limb, five-constrained limb and six-constrained limb. How-
ever, the five-constrained limb and six-constrained limb belong to planar limb which
have no requirement in the space.
This paper analyzes the limb types including: the limb providing only one twist,
the limb with two twists, the limb with three twists; the limb with only one wrench,
the limb with two wrenches, the limb with three wrenches; the limb with one twist
and one wrench, the limb with two twists and one wrench, the limb with one twist and
two wrenches.

2.1 The Limb with Only One Twist

The basic expression of screw is r = (sr ; rr sr ) . It is known from the reciprocal

of screw that the limb should consist of the five independent screws which are
reciprocal with the twist .

When the joint is revolute = ( s; r s )

= s i(r s) + si(r s ) = s i[(r r ) s] = 0

r r r r r r

According to the geometric feature of vector, it should be known that there is a com-
mon perpendicular among sr , r rr and s , that is to say, the axis direction of the
revolute joint and the axis direction of twist must be in the same plane.

When the joint is prismatic = (0; s )
= s is = 0
r r

According to the geometric feature of vector, it should be known that sr and s must
be perpendicular each other, that is to say, the moving direction of the prismatic joint
and the axis direction of twist must be perpendicular each other.
When the structural conditions of limb meet with the above requirements, the limb
should provide only one twist. According to the requirements above, we should put up
the limb-RRPRR shown as Fig. 1. First, we construct two parallel revolute joints,
510 Z. Lai, L. Li, and P. Liu

which make sure the direction of twist. Second, we establish the moving direction of
the prismatic joint and the axis direction of twist must be vertical each other. Last, the
axis direction of the last two revolute joints must intersect at o point which is the
point of action of sr.

Fig. 1. Structur of Limb RRPRR-1F (sr//s1//s2s3, s4 and s5 intersect at o, sr acting on o)

2.2 The Limb with Two Twists

= (sr1; rr1 sr1 )

r1
The basic expression of screw is . It is known from the reciprocal

= (sr2; rr2 sr2 )
r2
of screw that the limb should consist of the four independent screws which are recip-
rocal with the two twists.

When the joint is revolute = ( s; r s )


r1 = s i(rs) + si(r s ) = s i[(r r )s] = 0
r1 r1 r1 r1 r1

= s i(rs)+si(r s ) = s i[(r r )s] =0

r2 r2 r2 r2 r2 r2
According to the geometric feature of vector, it is known that there is a common per-
pendicular among sr1 , r rr1 and s ; a common perpendicular among sr 2 ,
r rr 2 and s , that is to say, the axis direction of the revolute joint must pass the point
which is the point of intersection with the two twists or be parallel the plane which
makes sure by the two twists.
When the joint is prismatic = (0; s )


r1 = s r1 is = 0



r2 = s r 2 is = 0

According to the geometric feature of vector, it should be known that sr1 and s must
be vertical each other; sr 2 and s must be vertical each other, that is to say, the mov-
ing direction of the prismatic joint must be parallel the cross-produce of the two
twists. And there is the only prismatic joint in the limb.
 Design of Limb for Parallel Mechanism Based on Screw Theory 511

When the structural conditions of limb meet with the above requirements, the limb
should provide two twists. According to the requirements above, we should put up the
limb-RRPR shown as Fig. 2.

Fig 2. Structur of Limb RRPR-2F (s1sr1sr2s2sr1sr2, o is the point of action with sr1 and
sr2)

2.3 The Limb with Three Twists

The basic expression of screw is

r1 = ( sr1 ; rr1 sr1 )

r2 = ( sr 2 ; rr 2 sr 2 )

r3 = ( sr 3 ; rr 3 sr 3 )
The limb should provide three independence twists which intersected at a point for
platform. The limb constrained the three directions moving of the platform, that is to
say, the platform just can be round the point to revolve. The limb should consist of
three revolute joints, and that, there is only one type of the limb-RRR. According to
the requirements above, we should put up the limb-RRR shown as Fig. 3.

Fig. 3. Structur of Limb RRR-3F (s1, s2, and s3 intersect at o)

2.4 The Limb with Only One Wrench

The basic expression of screw is r = (0; sr ) . It is known from the reciprocal of

screw that the limb should consist of the five independent screws which are reciprocal
with the wrench.
512 Z. Lai, L. Li, and P. Liu

When the joint is revolute = ( s; r s )

= sis
r r =0
According to the geometric feature of vector, it should be known that sr and s must
be vertical each other, that is to say, the axis direction of the revolute joint and the
axis direction of wrench must be vertical each other.

When the joint is prismatic = (0; s )
= 0
r
The equation is satisfied under any conditions, that is to say, the moving direction of
the prismatic joint is independent of the axis direction of wrench.
When the structural conditions of limb meet with the requirements above, the limb
should provide only one wrench. According to the requirements above, we should put
up the limb-RRPRP show as Fig. 4.

Fig. 4. Structur of Limb RRPRP-1M s //s , s //s s

1 2 r 2 4

2.5 The Limb with Two Wrenches

= (0; sr1 )

r1
The basic expression of screw is . It is known from the reciprocal of

r2
= (0; sr 2 )
screw that the limb should consist of the four independent screws which are reciprocal
with the two wrenches.

When the joint is revolute = ( s; r s)

= si s r1 =0
= si s
r1

r2 = 0

r2

According to the geometric feature of vector, it should be known that sr1 and s must
be vertical each other; sr 2 and s must be vertical each other, that is to say, the axis
direction of the revolute joint must be parallel the cross-produce of the two wrenches.

When the joint is prismatic = (0; s )

=0


=0
r1


r2
 Design of Limb for Parallel Mechanism Based on Screw Theory 513

The equation is satisfied under any conditions, that is to say, the moving direction of
the prismatic joint is independent of the axis direction of the wrenches.
When the structural conditions of limb meet with the requirements above, the limb
should provide only one wrench. According to the requirements above, we should put
up the limb-RRPR shown as Fig. 5.

Fig. 5. Structur of Limb RRPR-2M (sr1sr2//s1//s2//s3)

2.6 The Limb with Three Wrenches

The basic expression of screw is

r1 = (0; sr1 )

r2 = (0; sr 2 )

r3 = (0; sr 3 )
The limb should provide three independence wrenches which are independent each
other. The limb constrained the three directions rotation of the platform, that is to say,
the platform just can move along the X, Y, Z axis. The limb should consist of three
independent prismatic joints, and that, there is only one type of the limb-PPP shown
as Fig. 6.

Fig. 6. Structur of Limb PPP-3M (s1, s2 and s3 are independent each other)
514 Z. Lai, L. Li, and P. Liu

2.7 The Limb with One Twist and One Wrench

r1
= (sr1;rr1 sr1)
The basic expression of screw is . It is known from the reciprocal
r 2 = (0; s r 2 )

of screw that the limb should consist of the four independent screws which are recip-
rocal with the one twist and one wrench.

When the joint is revolute = ( s; r s )
= s i(rs) + si(r s ) = s i[(r r )s] = 0


r1 r1 r1 r1 r1 r1

= si s = 0

r2 r2

According to the geometric feature of vector, it should be known that there

is a common perpendicular among sr1 , r rr1 and s ; sr 2 and s must be
vertical each other, that is to say, the axis direction of the revolute joint
must be located in the normal plane, which contained the twist, of the
wrench.

When the joint is prismatic = (0; s )

r1 = sis r1 =0


r2 = 0
According to the geometric feature of vector, it should be known that sr1 and s must
be vertical each other, that is to say, the moving direction of the prismatic joint and
the axis direction of twist must be vertical each other.
When the structural conditions of limb meet with the above requirements, the limb
should provide one twist and one wrench. According to the requirements above, we
should put up the limb-RPRR shown as Fig. 7.

Fig. 7. Structur of Limb RPRR-1F1M(s2sr1,s1sr2, s3sr2,s4sr2,s1,s3,s4 and sr2 are in the same
plane
 Design of Limb for Parallel Mechanism Based on Screw Theory 515

2.8 The Limb with Two Twists and One Wrench

The basic expression of screw is

= ( sr1 ; rr1 sr1 )

r1


r 2 = ( sr 2 ; rr 2 sr 2 )

r 3 = (0; sr 3 )

It is known from the reciprocal of screw that the limb should consist of the three in-
dependent screws which are reciprocal with the screws.
When the joint is revolute = ( s; r s )

= s i(rs) + si(r s ) = s i[(r r )s] = 0

r1 r1 r1 r1 r1 r1

= s i(rs) +si(r s ) = s i[(r r )s] =0

r2 r2 r2 r2 r2 r2

= sis = 0

r3 r3

According to the geometric feature of vector, it should be known that there

is a common perpendicular among sr1 , r rr1 and s ; a common perpendicular
among sr 2 , r rr 2 and s ; sr 3 and s must be vertical each other, that is to
say, the axis direction of revolute joint, which must be vertical the axis
direction of the wrench, must pass the point which is the point of intersection
with the two twists or be parallel the plane which make sure by the two
twists.

When the joint is prismatic = (0; s )

= si sr1 r1 =0


= si s
r2 r2 = 0
= 0
r3

According to the geometric feature of vector, it should be known that sr1 and s must
be vertical each other; sr 2 and s must be vertical each other; sr 3 is independent of s ,
that is to say, the axis moving direction of the prismatic joint, which is independent
of the axis direction of the wrench, must be parallel the cross-produce of the two
twists.
When the structural conditions of limb meet with the above requirements, this limb
should provide two twists and one wrench. According to the requirements above, we
should put up the limb-RRP shown as Fig. 8.
516 Z. Lai, L. Li, and P. Liu

Fig. 8. Structur of Limb RRP-2F1M s s ,s s ,s s ,s s , s s s , s s s )

1 r3 2 r3 3 r1 3 r2 1 r1 r2 2 r1 r2

2.9 The Limb with One Twist and Two Wrenches

The basic expression of screw is

r1 = ( sr 1 ; r s r 1 )

r 2 = (0; sr 2 )


r 3 = (0; sr 3 )

It is known from the reciprocal of screw that the limb should consist of the three in-
dependent screws which are reciprocal with the screws.
When the joint is revolute = ( s; r s )

= s i(rs) + si(r s ) = s i[(r r )s] = 0

r1 r1 r1 r1 r1 r1


= si s = 0
r2 r2

= sis = 0
r3 r3

According to the geometric feature of vector, it should be known that there is a com-
mon perpendicular among sr1 , r rr1 and s ; sr 2 and s must be vertical each other;
sr 3 and s must be vertical each other, that is to say, the axis direction of revolute
joint, which is in the same plane with the twist, must be parallel the cross-produce of
the two wrenches.
When the joint is prismatic = (0; s )


r1 = si s r1 =0



r2 = 0
r3 = 0
 Design of Limb for Parallel Mechanism Based on Screw Theory 517

According to the geometric feature of vector, it should be known that sr1 and
s must be vertical each other, that is to say, the axis moving direction of the prismatic
joint must be vertical the axis direction of the twist.
When the structural conditions of limb meet with the above requirements, the limb
should provide one twist and two wrenches. According to the requirements above, we
should put up the limb-RRP shown as Fig. 9.

Fig. 9. Structur of Limb RRP-1F2M (s1// s2//sr2sr3, s3sr1 s , s

1 2 and sr1 are in the same
plane )

3 Example of the Application

Since it is regular for the geometric conditions of the joint in the limb, which connects
fixed platform with mobile platform, the limb, which meets with the geometric condi-
tions, can be used to establish the parallel mechanism which be satisfied with the
mode of motion. Now take the limb Fig. 7 as an example to establish the 3-2T1R
parallel mechanism as shown in Fig. 10. The limb in Fig. 7 provides one twist along
the Z-axis, which constrain the moving along the Z-axis, and one wrench along the X-
axis, which constrain the rotation around the X-axis. Thanks to the wrenches which
provided by the three limbs are dependent in the XY plane, it should constrain the

Fig. 10. 3-2T1R parallel mechanism

518 Z. Lai, L. Li, and P. Liu

rotation around the X-axis and Y-axis, that is to say, the platform just can revolve
around Z-axis and move in the XY plane.

4 Conclusions
According to analyze the type of limb and the type of restraint in screw theory, it is
given a general design method of limb in the parallel mechanism. And that, it
obtained the geometric conditions which the prismatic joint or revolute joint of
over-constrained parallel mechanism must be meet with. The method analyzed from
basic concept of the reciprocal produce in screw theory. It should make sure be gen-
eral and pragmatic. It is a common reference value to the basic design of the parallel
mechanism.

References
1. Ball, R.S.: A Treatise on the Theory of Screws. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
(1900)
2. Fang, Y., Tsai, L.-W.: Structure Synthesis of a Class of 4-DoF and 5-DoF Parallel Ma-
nipulators with Identical Limb Structures. The International Journal of Robotics Re-
search 21(9), 799810 (2002)
3. Herve, J.M., Sparacino, F.: Structural synthesis of Parallel Robots Generating Spatial
Translation. IEEE, Los Alamitos (1991) 7803-0078/91/0600-0808$01.00
4. Wang, J., Gosselin, C.M.: Kinematic Analysis and Singularity Loci of Spatial Four-
Degree-of-Freedom Parallel Manipulators Using a Vector Formulation. ASME Transac-
tions, Journal of Mechanical Design 120(4), 555558 (1988)
5. Tsai, L.-W.: Systematic Enumeration of Parallel Manipulators. Technical Research Report,
T.R. 98-33
6. Herve, J.M., Karoutia, M.: The Novel 3 - RUU Wrist with No Idle Pair. In: Proceedings of
the Work-shop on Fundamental Issues and Future Research Directions for Parallel Mecha-
nisms and Manipulators, Quebec, Canada, pp. 284286 (2002)
7. Kong, X., Gosselin, C.M.: Type Synthesis of Three - Degree - of - Freedom Spherical Par-
allel Manipulators. The International Journal of Robotics Research 23(3), 237245 (2004)
8. Karouia, M., Herve, J.M.: Non over-constrained 3 DOF Spherical Parallel Manipulators
of Type; 3 RCC, 3 CCR, 3 CRC. Robotica 24, 8594 (2006)
 Design of Non-Full Irrigation Management Information
System of Hebei Province Based on GIS

Junliang He, Yanxia Zheng, and Shuyuan Zhang

Department of Resource & Environment, Shijiazhuang University,

Shijiazhuang 050035, China
hejunliang0927@163.com

Abstract. Combined the data of irrigation experiments in Hebei Province, The

paper built an integrated system which integrates data input and output, man-
agement, analysis and decision. The system is based on GIS (Geographic In-
formation System), DSS (Decision Support System) and crop water production
formula. With the establishment of the system, the modern management level of
non-full irrigation will be advanced, and the allocation of soil and water re-
sources will be optimized. By analyzing the system demand, the framework of
non-full irrigation management information system was proposed, and the main
function of the system was designed in the article.

Keywords: Geographic Information System, Non-full Irrigation, Hebei.

1 Introduction
Water is the basic natural resources for social and economic development, and also the
important strategic resources. With the low per capita water resources and uneven
space-time distribution, the contradiction between supply and demand of water is still
very prominent in our country. The annual amount of water shortage reaches 300-400
billion cubic meters in China which is one of the water shortage countries. Hebei is one
of the serious water shortage provinces in China, the per capita water resources is one-
eighth of the national average level. In this area, 90 percent of agricultural water is
used for crop irrigation, but the actual utilization rate of water resources is only about
45 percent, lower than 50 percent which is the utilization rate of the most water short-
age country. There exists a large water saving potential in Hebei Province behind the
phenomenon of water shortage [1]. Therefore, the development of high efficiency and
water saving agriculture is one of the main measures to alleviate water shortage, and to
promote sustainable development of agriculture in this area.
As an advanced mode of water saving irrigation, the non-full irrigation is studied
from various aspects in recent years. According to the analysis of water consumption of
wheat in North China Plain, Changming Liu etc reveal wheat water effect and wa-
ter requirement [2]. Based on the irrigation experimental data in Linxi and Wangdu,
Shaoyuan Feng etc use multiple regression analysis method to determine the sensi-
tive index of the model [3]. Combined irrigation experimental data in Wangdu, Lu-
hua Yang etc discuss the solution method for two dimensional dynamic programming

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 519525, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
520 J. He, Y. Zheng, and S. Zhang

of the Jensen model [4]. According to the irrigation experimental data in Gaocheng,
Wangdu and the central experiment stations, Zunlan Luo etc select Jensen, Minhas,
Blank, Stewart and Singh models to analyze water production function of maize in
Hebei Province [5]. At present, the information of non-full irrigation in this region is
acquired and managed mainly by traditional manual work, the effective information
management, maintenance, and sharing will be impossible to realize. To develop
water saving agriculture, the key is to integrate irrigation experimental results and
information technology, establish the decision support system of water saving irriga-
tion, promote the modern management level of non-full Irrigation, and optimize the
allocation of soil and water resources.

2 General Structure Design

Facing the decision making managers and professionals, the non-full irrigation in-
formation has spatial and temporal distribution properties. The information involves
topography, hydrogeology, river system, weather, vegetation, soil and other factors in
the agricultural area. The GIS has efficient ability of spatial data management, and
flexible ability of comprehensive analysis. DSS can provide the decision support
environment of model construction, process simulation, and effectiveness evaluation
for the management [6]. Therefore, In view of the professional model, GIS and DSS
technology, considering practicality and scalability, the system architecture based on
C/S mode is proposed. The system uses SQL Server which is a large relational data-
base to manage the spatial data and non-spatial data, and adopts GIS software

Fig. 1. The basic structure of non-full irrigation management information system

 Design of Non-full Irrigation Management Information System of Hebei Province 521

development platform MAPGIS 7. 0and Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 to develop. The
basic framework of the system is shown in Figure 1.

3 Database Design
The main function of database system is to manage, store related information, and
provide the support for the establishment and auxiliary management of the non-full
irrigation schedule design. The database design is the basis for development applica-
tion system, including irrigation information database and geographic information
database two categories.

3.1 Irrigation Comprehensive Information Database

In this paper, according to the need of the non-full irrigation management, and
combined the irrigation experimental data of agricultural experiment stations, the

Table 1. The content of agricultural irrigation comprehensive information database

Data type Data content

site code, site name, latitude, longitude, annual average
Basic temperature, annual average evaporation, soil, field
information of moisture capacity, soil capacity, organic matter content,
irrigation station total nitrogen, total potassium, total phosphorus, salt
content, groundwater depth, groundwater salinity etc
hydrometric station code, hydrometric station name,
crops name, growth stage name, beginning year,
beginning month, beginning date, ending year, ending
Irrigation
month, ending date, growth period day, precipitation,
experimental data
survey month, survey date, soil humidity, irrigation
month, irrigation date, irrigation quota, water
consumption, yield, method etc
Basic
information of site code, site name, altitude, longitude, latitude etc
meteorological
station
site code, site name, latitude, longitude, altitude, year,
month, day, time pressure, time temperature, time
Meteorological relative humidity, time precipitation, time wind speed,
monitoring data daily average sunshine time, daily extreme temperature,
minimum relative humidity etc
surface water resources, groundwater resources, water
Water bulletin supply, water consumption, effective irrigated areas on
farmland etc
522 J. He, Y. Zheng, and S. Zhang

comprehensive information database is established, which includes irrigation data,

meteorological data and water data etc (Table 1). At the same time, in order to
realize the connection of the comprehensive information database and irrigation
geographic information database, the shared field parameters are also taken into
account in the database design phase.

3.2 Geographic Information Database

Geographical information database is the basis for the function realization of GIS. It
mainly accomplishes graphic data management, retrieval and query, as well as the
spatial analysis and evaluation of thematic data. Taking advantage of the vectoriza-
tion function of Mapgis, the author obtained the administrative map of Hebei prov-
ince (surface), the main water distribution (line), irrigation experiment stations dis-
tribution (points), weather station distribution (points) and so on. In order to connect
with the database of irrigation comprehensive information, using the property man-
agement function of Mapgis, the author modified the geography information table on
the digital map, and added the corresponding shared field parameters. In addition,
the modify functions of geographical information database are not provided for ordi-
nary users in order to prevent mistakes causing by modification in the geographical
information database.

4 Model Base Design

According to the model of application analysis which is called during decision analy-
sis, model base system presents data demand and storage format requirement to the
database system. The optimization of the irrigation schedule model is the core of deci-
sion support system. In order to achieve high yield targets, under the limited irriga-
tion quota conditions, the optimal allocation of the irrigation quota in timing and
quantity is realized. Using the crop-water model (MCRW) as constraints or objec-
tive function, and the crop water consumption as the variable, the relation between
the yield and the water deficit in different growth stage and different degree is revealed
in this system. With the linear programming method, the optimal solution is obtained
through the linear processing of the objective function, the calculating processing is
simplified, and the optimization of the non-full irrigation schedule design is realized.
A series of professional models is established in this system, involving reference
crop water requirements, crop water requirements, irrigation quota calculation and
assessment of crop water deficit. Base on the analysis of the spatial and non spatial
information, enlightened by the professional knowledge and experience, decision-
makers can evaluate and predict water supply and demand, and establish water sav-
ing irrigation strategies.

5 Function Module Design

5.1 GIS General Functions
Data management: With the data management platform of entire system, a series of
operations are accomplished, such as daily management and maintenance of database,
 Design of Non-full Irrigation Management Information System of Hebei Province 523

data edit, data import and data export. The function of the system includes database
management, documentation management, data manipulation and metadata mainte-
nance and so on.
Query and retrieval: Based on the function of the visual graphic display, with the aid
of functions such as roaming, zooming and eagle-eye, the location, query and
browsing for the spot, line, plane and other geographic features are realized. Accord-
ing to the combination of data item and any logical expression, users can query
and retrieve the attribute data.
Statistical analysis: The system may carry on the statistical calculation to the re-
lated data, including maximum value, minimum value, average value, histogram
computation and so on.
Special output: According to the need, users can choose the layer to output water
supply and demand maps, agricultural weather information maps and other thematic
maps, can also output all kinds of the irrigation resources parameters in the form of
statistical charts and text statements, including known data and the result data.

5.2 Professional Analysis Functions

Analysis of crop water requirement: Based on the Penman formula, the crop water
requirements at any day can be calculated, and the daily crop water requirements and
the monthly crop water requirements from 1991 to 2000 in the experimental Station of
Hebei Province can be queried. Using the reference crop evaporation quantity to cal-
culate the crop evaporation quantity, the crop water requirements can be calculated.
Based on the experimental data of crop water requirements, the query of the different
crop coefficient in different region or during whole growth period can be realized.
According to the soil condition, the irrigation quota before planting and the irrigation
quota in each growth phase can be calculated.
Optimization of the irrigation schedule design: Using the existing analysis results
of irrigation data, the crop - water model which suit for the different corps in differ-
ent region of Hebei province, and the sensitive index in each growth phase can be que-
ried. The irrigation quota, the crop water consumption corresponding the maximum
yield treatment, the relative yield and the relative evaporation in each growth
phase, the effective rainfall and other data can be set by users, also can be queried
from the functional modules such as the basic information and analysis of crop water
requirements. Through inputting the limited water supply (irrigation quota), the
water allocation optimized strategy with different irrigation quota can be calculated,
and the comparative analysis of the economic scale irrigation quota can be carried
on, according to the relations between each kind of irrigation quota and optimal rela-
tive analog output.

5.3 System Maintenance and Help Functions

System login: In order to ensure the security of the system, users must input the
users name and the password to entry the system.
System help: The functions of system help include system description and user
guide and so on.
524 J. He, Y. Zheng, and S. Zhang

6 Conclusion

Combined GIS and professional models, with the development of the non-full irriga-
tion management information system, the graph and the attribute data are queried
reciprocally; the irrigation data and agricultural resource are managed scientifically.
The partial interface of the system is shown in Figure 2. Based on this, according to the
water resources condition in different region and the different crop water deficit con-
dition, the optimal allocation strategy of the limited irrigation quota in the timing and
quantity is proposed. Taking advantage of this system, decision- makers can grasp all
kinds of information in crop area, realize the digital, systematic and scientific of the
agricultural irrigation resource management, and advance the effective development
and sustainable utilization of the agricultural water.

Fig. 2. The partial interface of the system

References
1. Wang, J.: Utilization and Countermeasures of Water Resources in Hebei Province. Indus-
trial & Science Tribune 7(2), 8586 (2008)
2. Liu, C., Zhou, C., Zhang, S.: Study on Water Production Function and Efficiency of
Wheat. Geographical Research 24(1), 110 (2005)
3. Feng, S., Luo, Z., Zuo, H.: The Study of Water Product Function of Winter Wheat in He-
bei Province. Journal of Irrigation and Drainage 24(4), 5861 (2005)
 Design of Non-full Irrigation Management Information System of Hebei Province 525

4. Yang, L., Xia, H., Wang, F.: Application & Solution of Jensen Model In Unsufficient Irri-
gation Schedule. Irrigation and Drainage 21(4), 1315 (2002)
5. Luo, Z., Feng, S., Zuo, H.: Preliminary Study on Water Production Function for Summer
Corn in Hebei Province. Water Saving Irrigation 1, 1719 (2006)
6. Ge, A., Li, C., Yang, C.: Primary Study on Building Water-saving Agricultural Decision
Support System Based on GIS. Remote Sensing Technology and Application 19(5), 392
395 (2004)
 The Monitoring System of Water Environment Based
on Overlay Network Technology

Xueliang Fu, Changyou Li, Buyu Wang, Honghui Li, Hailei Ma,
and Dongnan Zhu

Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot, 010018, P.R. China

Fuxl@imau.edu.cn

Abstract. At present, although methods of automatic, periodical manual data

collection have been adopted in some areas, there are many problems existing
in these methods. This paper proposes a new framework for online monitoring
of water environment based on overlay network technology. Especially, we
build the multi-level overlay network, which consists of the GPRS networks,
mobile networks and internet networks. Following this, a multi-dimensional
data cube for water environment is established using the ETL process with the
input of complex heterogeneous data collected. Thereby, the framework of data
center is established for on-line early warning of water environment and data
analysis and processing. This framework has been put into use in Wuliangsuhai
for the on-line real-time water monitoring tests. The results show that the over-
lapping network architecture is effective and on-line analysis and early warning
of heterogeneous data is efficient.

Keywords: WSN, Overlay network, ETL, Multidimensional data cube.

1 Introduction

Currently, water-quality monitoring in Wuliangsuhai is mainly performed manually

[1]. Researchers in related institutes reside in Wuliangsuhai, and gather water-quality
data manually during the ice-absent period. The main method to gather data relies on
portable instruments. It is difficult to meet the needs of comprehensive monitoring,
analysis and early warning in Wuliangsuhai for water-quality. Therefore, the compre-
hensive development of research and eco-social benefit is seriously restricted [2].
There are mainly four issues in the above traditional method. Firstly, researchers
had to be outside for long time, thus, they cannot conduct large-scale experimental
analysis using tools and computing environment. Secondly, the continuity of data
collection is poor, and a sample space is very limited. In the ice-absent period, one
can only collect data once or twice per day (once at noon, or twice in the morning and
evening respectively). One cannot collect data at night as well as in freeze-up period.

The research is supported by Chinese Natural Science Foundations (50969005,40901262) and

by Specialized Research fund of High Education for Inner Mongolia (Njzy08046).

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 526531, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 The Monitoring System of Water Environment 527

So, the number of the achieved water-quality data is no more than 200 records. There-
fore, it is impossible of widely data mining and analysis owing to the significant
shortage of data. Moreover, the quality of the collected data cannot be guaranteed.
Thirdly, using the manual-collecting method, the quality of data is effected strongly
by the professional proficiency of the researchers and the usage of the equipment. As
a result, dirty data may appear and cannot be analyzed and rectified using other time-
sequential data. Finally, the collection area is very limited. Due to the broad water
area of the Wuliangsuhai Lake, it is impossible for the residing researchers to collect
data at the same time from multiple locations far away from each other. As a result,
there is no way to analyze and compare data in terms of time scale and location.
The current trends to resolve these issues is to use the framework of cloud services,
with which data is online automatically assembled, real-time transmitted using over-
lay networks. Decision of knowledge is made in a data center.
Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are the task-oriented wireless networks which
consist of a number of wireless sensor nodes [3]. WSN integrates multiple area tech-
nology, including sensor technology, embedded computing technology, modern net-
working, wireless communication technology, distributed information processing
technology and others. In WSN, various micro sensors take responsibility of on-line
monitoring target; the embedded computing resources take care of processing data
obtained by sensors; the related information is send to the remote user data center
using wireless communication networks. This technology can be broadly applied in
the military defense, industrial and agricultural controls, urban management, biologi-
cal medicine, environmental monitoring, disaster relief, antiterrorism and remote
control in dangerous areas. It is attractive in both academy and industry [4].
This paper studied the design of monitoring system for environment of water based
on the overlapping networks in order to deal with the issues about Wuliangsuhai
water-quality monitoring.

2 Main Contributions

2.1 Architecture

Our proposed system is mainly composed of overlapping network communication

subsystem, the water-quality sensor acquisition subsystem, multi-dimension data
analysis subsystem [5] and solar power subsystem. The issues are addressed using
multi-layer overlay network technologies on inter communication among networks,
such as 485 network, GPRS network, PSTN network and computer networks. In this
system, the task-oriented data-collecting network is constructed using water quality
sensors and data acquisition equipment based on wireless sensor network technology;
the multi-dimensional data analysis center are established based on OWB and ETL
technologies for early warning and comprehensive analysis of instantaneous data and
historical data; solar power system is employed for 24-hour uninterrupted power sup-
ply all day long and thus provide guaranteed environments for the good performance
of the entire system. System architecture is shown in Figure 1.
528 X. Fu et al.

Fig. 1. The system architecture

2.2 Overlay Network Design

A networking framework which enables multi-network integration must be explored

in order to realize a distributed resource management platform. This platform can
provide for the application layer reliable and efficient resource searching and localiza-
tion service through monitoring link status, shielding network failures and changes.
Also, this platform can provide for application service such as network routing opti-
mization through node detection of network paths and performance.
The real-time signal data on water quality parameters is achieved through the data
acquisition subsystem. The collected signal data is first send to a GPRS-wireless
hybrid communication system via a RS485 network, and then transfer to the
data center with fixed IP address by the GPRS wireless network. In the data center,
the signal data is translated, analyzed, processed and stored. The TCP multicast
protocol, i.e., center to multi-point, is adopted for reliable and transparent data
transmission.
Multiple-layer hybrid overlay networks are constructed between each sensor node,
which registers as an online communication node and the super node in the data cen-
ter with a fixed IP. The super node manages the whole WSN. Each facility, which is
eligible for the WSN, can log in, exit and abnormal exit through this subsystem. This
subsystem is important for the establishment of a reliable network, which provides
bidirectional data transmission channels and communication links for the transmission
of signal data and control signaling.
The layered hybrid network architecture is exploited in the whole network frame-
work. The whole network is divided into four layers: the service layer, the core layer,
the access layer and the link layer.
 The Monitoring System of Water Environment 529

2.3 Data Stream Processing

The Data center architecture is shown in Figure 2. The data stream processing in-
cludes two steps: receiving data stream and sending data stream, which are described
as follows:
1) Receiving data stream
i. The on-line real-time data on water quality parameters is send to the data center
in the sampling frequency using the data acquisition subsystem. The acquisition sub-
system consists of water-quality-parameter sensors, filters and A / D converters.
ii. After receiving the real-time data, the data center analyzes the data logically,
eliminate the dirty data, and store the qualified data in the transient database.
iii. Water-quality analysis-type database or data warehouse, which is suitable for
analysis and statistics, is built from the data in transient database using the ETL tools
combined with the functionalities of operations / scheduling of enterprise database.
iv. Various analysis products needed by users can be generated using the database
products for analysis (BI data warehouse reporting engine) together with the water-
quality analysis-type database or data warehouse.

Fig. 2. Data center architecture

2) Sending data stream

i. A user can log in the data center using the mobile terminal equipment (e.g., mo-
bile phones, PDA, etc.) or the water quality data viewer on a fixed terminal. Through
530 X. Fu et al.

the data center, the user can transmit the acquisition subsystem in order to set the
sampling period and other parameters of the acquisition system.
ii. With the help of the data center for sending the control information, an eligible
user can turn on or off the power supply system, or remote manage the power supply
system.

3 Experiment Setup and Discussion

Firstly this paper deployed the PH-value and ORP and oxygen-content sensors in the
Wuliangsuhai Lake. Then, the real-time, automatic data acquired with adjustable
sampling frequency has been achieved using the proposed water-quality sensor acqui-
sition subsystem, the overlay network transmission subsystem, and the data storage
and processing subsystem. Thereby, the water-quality parameter data can be proc-
essed and analyzed in a very short time.
The software in PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) exploits the means of cen-
ter-to-multi-point communication in the water-quality-parameter signal acquisition
subsystem in Wuliangsuhai; the Baud Rate is 9600; the survivable mechanism is
achieved through the heart-rate packet; the communications signaling employs AS-
CII-code signaling. The connections between the PC software and the data center are
established using TCP/IP protocol. The unity of the user programming interface is
approached through encapsulating the Socket package in the system level and the
integrated converged communications from the data link layer, the network layer and
the application layer.
The data center is built based on Oracle database, where the transaction concur-
rency mechanism and trigger mechanism are used, and the data OLTP is achieved
through the job scheduling. Oracle DWB is used to build the data warehouse which
provides analysis environments. All analysis products and user UI are implemented
using the B/S framework; the system is built using the SSH enterprise multi-layer
computing framework.
After the deployment in practice and the simulations, it is found that the proposed
overlay network framework is sensitive very much to the strength of the data signals.
The instantaneous packet loss may suffer when the signals become weak, which re-
sults in dirty data. However, due to the relatively high sampling frequency, this can be
ignored in the context of the research and the application on water environment moni-
toring only if the data is accurate in the time granularity of an hour.

4 Conclusion
This paper proposed and implemented the Monitoring system of water environment
based on overlay network technology in order to deal with the issues on the current
water environment monitoring in the Wuliangsuhai Lake. Through the field deploy-
ment of our proposed system, simulation results verify that the effectiveness of our
design. It solves a series of issues existing in the current monitoring method men-
tioned before. The future work is to investigate the issues related to data processing
and data reliable transmission both in academy and in practice.
 The Monitoring System of Water Environment 531

References
[1] Seelig, H.D., Hoehn, A., Stodieck, L.S., Klaus, D.M., Adams III, W.W., Emery, W.J.:
Relations of remote sensing leaf water indices to leaf water thickness in cowpea, bean,
and sugarbeet plants. Remote Sensing of Environment 11(2), 445455 (2008)
[2] Ross, B., Steiner, G., Kiesshauer, Bradter, M., Cammann, K.: Instrument with integrated
sensors for a rapid determination of inorganicions. Sensors and Actuators 27, 380383
(2009)
[3] Tatyana, B., Thomas, A.C., Thomas, H.C.: A sensitive nitrate ion-selective electrode
from a pencil lead. Journal of Chemical Education 82(3), 439441 (2009)
[4] Wang, B., Li, M.: A clustering Algorihm Based on Latent Semantic Model. In: IEEE
ICACIAP 2009, October 2009, pp. 4448 (2009)
[5] Cooley, P.M., Barber, D.G.: Remote Sensing of the Coastal Zone of Tropical Lakes Us-
ing Synthetic Aperture Radar and Optical Data. Journal of Great Lakes Research 29(2),
6275 (2003)
[6] Wang, Y., Dong, W., Zhang, P., Yan, F.: Progress in Water Depth Mapping from Visible
Remote sensing Data. Marine Science Bulletin 26(5), 92101 (2007)
 Design of Rotary Root Stubble Digging Machine Based
on Solidworks

Xinglong Liao1, Xu Ma1,2, and Yanjun Zuo1

1
College of Engineering, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, P.R. China
2
Key Laboratory of Key Technology on Agricultural Machine and Equipment,
Ministry of Education, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, P.R. China
liaoxinglong1985@163.com, maxu1959@scau.edu.cn, 42648135@qq.com

Abstract. In the paper, the necessity of root stubble harvesting and recycling
was put forward from the perspective of biomass energy utilization. To accom-
plish mechanized harvesting on root stubble, a rotary digging machine was de-
signed based on parametric modeling software Solidworks. Firstly, parts were
built under entity modeling module, and then assembled to 4 main mechanisms
in assembling environment. Secondly, mechanisms including frame, transmis-
sion mechanism, suspension mechanism and digging mechanism were assem-
bled together to establish the whole prototype on which interference checking
was done. Through manual change of the transmission chains installation posi-
tion, the digging mechanism was able to shift between reverse and forward rota-
tion according to different soil conditions. Finally, relevant 2-D engineering
drawings were generated for manufacture. The paper provides methodological
reference for the design of similar machines and preparation for further
simulation and analysis of the designed models.

Keywords: Root stubble, Rotary digging machine, Solidworks, Virtual design.

1 Introduction
As one of the main food crops in China, corns significance is only next to rice and
wheat. The perennial planting area is about 25 million hm2 and annual yield is up to
120 million tons[1]. As by-product of corn planting, the treatment of these root stubble
is a tough task to peasants, especially in busy farming seasons. Moreover, there exist
many deficiencies in traditional treating ways of root stubble. Leaving them alone will
hinder subsequent seeding operation; burning them up will generate a lot of smoke
harmful to the environment; burying through plowing will be inefficient; and mecha-
nized shattering will consume large amounts of energy. Stalk and root stubble of corn
is a kind of clean fuel with high heating value and low sulfur and is one of the most
potential green renewable energies. As energy crisis and environmental pollution
are more and more concerned in the world, the task to explore new energy and mate-
rial as a replacement of petroleum is urgent. So it is necessary to harvest and recycle

The research is supported by National High-tech R&D Program (863 Program) (project num-
ber: 2009AA043604).

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 532538, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Design of Rotary Root Stubble Digging Machine Based on Solidworks 533

root stubble for the sake of providing raw material for biomass transformation and
utilization.
In the study, Solidworks2009 was applied for the design of rotary root stubble dig-
ging machine. With this software, 3 dimensional entity models of each part can be
designed and assembled together easily and interference between components can be
checked conveniently. Therefore, before manufacture of physical prototype, sufficient
assembly and test can be done on simulated models, promoting the standardization,
normalization and serialization of the design work.

2 Characteristics of Solidworks
Solidworks is the first 3 dimensional CAD software developed on windows operating
system, and due to its powerful functions, characteristics of easy to learn and easy to
use, it is widely applied in mechanical design. With parametric feature modeling tech-
nology, different entities can be created, meeting most requirements of engineering
design; with single internal database, all data is related with each other, modifications
on dimension in any module will automatically reflect in other modules; in 3 dimen-
sional assembly module, transmission relationship between components can be dynami-
cally simulated. Solidworks is especially suitable for product development, as it is able
to shorten product design cycle, improve design quality and reduce cost. Soliworks has
become one of the mainstream software in mechanical design and modeling[2].

3 Design Process of Rotary Root Stubble Digging Machine Using

Solidworks

3.1 Scheme Design

The machine consisted of 4 main parts including frame, transmission mechanism,

suspension mechanism and digging mechanism. The machine was hitched to tractor
with suspension mechanism. During operation, power of tractor was transmitted to
input shaft of the machine through universal joint from the tractors PTO (power take
off) shaft. Then via bevel gear pair and bevel-shaft, the power was transmitted to
flank chain sprockets. Finally, flank chain sprocket drove the driven sprocket which
was fixed on the digging mechanism, so the digging mechanism rotated with the
driven sprocket synchronously.
Motion of the digging mechanism was structured by two components. While ad-
vancing with tractor (pulled by tractor), it also rotated around the self blade shaft.
During working process, root stubble was dug out of soil and tossed upward by the
rotating blades, and then the root stubble hit the baffle board and fell behind the ma-
chine. After a few days of exposure under the sun, these root stubble were picked up
by the matched picking machine which could finally get clean root stubble as there
was soil removing mechanism on the machine. In this paper, the task was to dig the
root stubble out of soil and the subsequent picking procedure was not discussed here.
The gear box had 1 input shaft and 2 output shafts rotate at opposite directions. To
meet different tillage requirements, the digging mechanism can be switched between
reverse rotation and forward rotation through manual changes of the transmission
534 X. Liao, X. Ma, and Y. Zuo

chains installation position from left to right. Noted that though there were two pairs
of flank sprockets, there was only one strip of chain, so only a pair of flank sprockets
(either the right pair or the left pair) was at work at a time. Transmission sketches of
reverse rotation and forward rotation were shown in (a) and (b) of fig.1 respectively.

(a)

(b)

Fig. 1. Transmission sketches

1. Input shaft; 2. Gear box; 3. Flank sprocket (right);
4. Transmission chain; 5. Digging mechanism; 6. Flank sprocket (left)

3.2 Part Design[3-6]

Part design is the basis of 3 dimensional virtual design. In Solidworks, features are cre-
ated from ways such as extrude, revolve, sweep, etc., and then combined together accord-
ing to constraint relations to form parts. For example, the creating process of the bevel
gear used in the machine was: create the basic feature by revolving the 2-D sketch around
an axis(revolve) create gear groove by removing material between the two pro-
files(loft-cut) array gear groove around the axis(circular pattern) create hole and
keyway by cutting material(extrude-cut) complete. The process is shown in fig.2.
 Design of Rotary Root Stubble Digging Machine Based on Solidworks 535

Fig. 2. Creating process of the bevel gear

Parts of the digging machine were created one by one and then saved in the same
file folder, as this would make the file management more convenient especially in the
subsequent assembly manipulation. During the design process, relationships among
features must be taken into account. Generally, according to the order in which fea-
tures are created, features and their relationships are listed in FeatureManager design
tree on the left side of the interface. And for the convenience of feature modification,
models can be zoomed in and out, freely rotated, hided and suppressed.

3.3 Assembly Design

After parts design was completed, parts (or components) and necessary mates were
inserted into assembly environment to form assembly models. Mates create geometric
relationships between assembly components and define spatial position of one com-
ponent relating to another. There are many mate types available in Solidworks such as
coincident, parallel, perpendicular, tangent, concentric, and so on. For the machine,
according to the function of each mechanism, parts were assembled to 4 sub-
assemblies including frame, transmission mechanism, suspension mechanism and

Fig. 3. Assembly of the gear box

536 X. Liao, X. Ma, and Y. Zuo

digging mechanism. Then, these 4 sub-assemblies were combined together to form

the complete assembly of root stubble digging machine. The gear box and the whole
assembly were shown in fig.3 and fig.4 respectively.

Fig. 4. Whole assembly of the machine

3.4 Interference Detection

Interference detection is one of the most important functions of Solidworks which can
rapidly determine whether there is any interference between components and between
sub-assemblies (a sub-assembly is treated as a single component). Here, the whole
assembly was checked for interference, and according to analysis results, relevant
details of parts and constraint settings between components were modified. The pro-
cedure was repeated until there wasnt any interference, as shown in fig.5.

Fig. 5. Interference detection on the machine

3.5 Generation of 2-D Engineering Drawings

After above steps, 2-D engineering drawings were generated from corresponding
parts and assemblies in the drawing module, and automatic dimensioning was done in
 Design of Rotary Root Stubble Digging Machine Based on Solidworks 537

each drawing. Noted that 3-D models and 2-D engineering drawings were related with
each other, namely any modification of dimensions made in 3-D part and assembly
module would be reflected in drawing module and vice versa. Some necessary anno-
tations such as weld symbol, geometric tolerance, surface finish symbol and BOM
(Bill of Material), etc. were inserted into drawings as these were required for
manufacture. Completed engineering drawings were saved in default file format of
Solidworks and DWG format which was recognizable by AutoCAD. 2-D projection
drawing of the whole machine was shown in fig.6.

Fig. 6. 2-D projection drawing

4 Conclusions
(1) The necessity of mechanized root stubble harvesting and recycling was put for-
ward from the perspective of biomass energy utilization, considering the traditional
treating ways and its ingredient of high heating value and low sulfur.
(2) Soliworks was applied to accomplish parts design, assembly design, interference
detection and generation of 2-D engineering drawings. Results showed that the design
was reasonable and feasible.
(3) The created parts and assembly will be models for subsequent simulation and
analysis if necessary. The study provides theoretical foundations and methodological
references for the application of virtual prototype technology on the development of
new agricultural machinery.

Acknowledgements
The research is supported by National High-tech R&D Program (863 Program) (pro-
ject number: 2009AA043604).
538 X. Liao, X. Ma, and Y. Zuo

References
1. Han, Z.: The Study of Realization Way on Corn Mechanization. Journal, Farm Machin-
ery (05), 4546 (2010) (in Chinese)
2. Zhou, D., Liu, X., Lu, W.: Application of Solidworks Software on the Design of Agricul-
tural Machinery. Journal, Modernizing Agriculture (10), 4243 (2006) (in Chinese)
3. Zhu, K., Ning, E., Zhao, M., et al.: Virtual Design and Experiments of 9QS8 Forage Har-
vester Based on Solidworks. Journal of Agricultural Mechanization Research (11), 137
139 (2009)
4. Yu, J., Kong, X., Huang, S., et al.: Virtual Design of Soil-processor in Rice-seedling Rais-
ing-by-plates by SolidWorks. Journal, Packaging and Food Machinery 24(2), 3134
(2006) (in Chinese)
5. Yang, W., Guan, C., Wu, M., et al.: Feature Modeling and Assembling. Conjunction De-
sign on Precision Seeder by Software Solidworks (3), 110113 (2006) (in Chinese)
6. Zhan, D.: Solidworks Baodian. Publishing House Of Electronics Industry, Beijing (2008)
(in Chinese)
 Design of the Network Platform Scheme Based on
Comprehensive Information Sharing of Zigong Citys
Characteristic Agriculture

Wen Lei, Hong Zhang, and Lecai Cai

School of Computer Science, Sichuan University of Science & Engineering, Zigong, P.R. China
suselwen@126.com

Abstract. A network platform scheme targets the Zigong Citys characteristic

agriculture is designed, which is according to the actuality of characteristic ag-
riculture, the requirements of Comprehensive Information sharing, and the status
of citys network topology. In the scheme, many solutions are given out, such as
the network architecture, distributed data storage, remote diagnosing, expert
decision-making, comprehensive information sharing, distance learning &
training, information managing, and the single sign-on logging, etc. Finally, the
capability and security of the network scheme is analysed and summarized.

Keywords: Agriculture, Comprehensive information sharing, Network platform,

distance learning & training, Network architecture.

1 Introduction

Agricultural informatization is the foundation and important way for modern agricul-
tural development, it can reduce the investment, improve the quality and quantity of the
agricultural production, reduce the influence of natural disasters, accelerate agricultural
circulation, guide agricultural production and consumption. In market environment, it
can help to optimize agricultural resources allocation, reduce market risk, accelerate the
spread and popularization of agricultural technology, promote agricultural sci-tech
personnel training, and improve the international competitiveness of agricultural
products. The network is an important way to realize the agricultural informatization.
This paper will aim at Zigongs characteristic agriculture needs to build a comprehen-
sive information sharing network platform.
The platform is an agricultural comprehensive information sharing platform, which
includes many functions, such as crop condition monitoring, remote diagnosing, expert
decision, comprehensive information sharing, information release and management,
products display, market information and instant communication function, etc.
The platform is an important tool for users to store, look up and share information,
which can collect the internal and external information, then classify and store them in
database server. Through the platform, the merchants and agricultural leading de-
partment and farmers can share the information. The platform can help merchants and
households easily to get market and product information, assist agricultural experts and
agricultural leading department to do real-time guides for agricultural production.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 539546, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
540 W. Lei, H. Zhang, and L. Cai

2 Zigong Characteristic Agriculture Status

Zigong city locates in the South of Sichuan Basin, is a moist monsoon climate featuring
subtropical zone. Its climate is beneficial to develop agriculture. According to the
characteristics of Zigong, the city government has mapped out a regional planning of
Zigong characteristic agriculture. The characteristic agricultural production is rela-
tively concentrated, and gradually formed a certain scale of industrialized production
pattern. At present, the main characteristic agriculture has more than 10 kinds, with the
regional distribution in the area two district and four counties. But, in the characteristic
agricultural production, there are still some problems, such as follows: (1)The quantity
of agricultural sci-tech personnel is less, and most of them live in city, once there are
some technological difficulties in production, farmers could hardly obtain the solution
timely; (2)In a broad area, farmers are scattered here and there, it is difficult to
concentrate to popularize agricultural scientific and technological knowledge, in addi-
tion, the agricultural leading department is also hard to grasp agricultural production
status, and provide technological guidance;(3)It is not sufficient and timely to take the
products market information, farmers are hardly to according the market demand to
obtain the maximum economical efficiency;(4)The sales channel is single. Currently,
the main sales mechanisms is merchants according to their own demands to buy pro-
duce from farmer, on the contrary, due to the lack of market information, farmers can
hardly sale their produce to merchants actively, which is easily to cause the product
backlog.
To solve the above problems, it is the effective means to build a comprehensive
information sharing platform. Through the platform, the farmers can easily gain agri-
cultural science and technological information and market information, the agricultural
leading department can also easily grasp the agricultural production status and guide
agricultural production.

3 The Overall Design of Sharing Platform Scheme

The information sharing platform is a distributed system structure. The planting and
breeding belt establish their own regional information center, with Web integration
technology, regional information is integrated to the sharing platform of city agricul-
tural information center. The sharing platform through the city telecom network
communicates with the regional information center.

3.1 The Design of Network Topology

The platform network is constructed to a distributed network structure, the city agri-
cultural information center LAN links to the regional information center network by
city telecom network. Remote users can access the sharing platform through Internet,
and local users through the city telecom network access the sharing platform or cor-
responding regional information center. The network topology is shown in figure 1.
 Design of the Network Platform Scheme Based on Comprehensive Information 541

Fig. 1. The Network Structure

3.2 The Design of Sharing Platform Scheme

According to the city characteristics agriculture information sharing demand,

the platform construction tasks can be divided into 5 subsystems, includes expert
system, the remote diagnosis system, information collection and release system,
remote learning and training system, and single sign-on(SSO) system. The
sharing platform structure is shown in figure 2. Among them, the front 4 systems
will be independently developed, this scheme focuses on the single sign-on
system.

4 The Detailed Design Scheme

In practical applications, most farmers have low level of computer skill, they can only
do simple network operation, and most time, the characteristic agricultural planting and
breeding farmers are concerned with the agricultural science and technology and the
basic pest control information, therefore, the regional information center is the main
visit position. According to the practical needs, in sharing platform design, the char-
acteristic agriculture basic information platform and comprehensive information
sharing platform are combined the scheme. Each regional information center constructs
its basic information platform, and in agricultural science and technology center set up
a comprehensive information sharing platform, through the Web integration technol-
ogy, regional information are integrated to the sharing information platform. Regional
information center establish their own expert system, the basic information collection
and release system, crop condition monitoring system and basic agriculture science and
technology consultation system. The remote diagnosis, system information collection
and release system, remote learning and training system and single sign-on system are
established in the sharing platform.
542 W. Lei, H. Zhang, and L. Cai

Application layer clien t

Expert systems Remote diagnosis system Information collection
release systems
Distance learning &
training systems SSO system

The information sharing plantform

The front end information process plantform

Information sharing
platform
SSO

Information Information query Information release SSO process

collection platform platform platform platform

Intelligent information Intelligent Activity analysis

classifiction information search mining

The backend information process plantform

Distributed information layer

Agricultural information Training information

Information standardation Policy information

Foundation layer

Infrastructural Information criterion Information Standardization

Fig. 2. The structure chart of information sharing platform

4.1 Single Sign-On System

Single sign-on(SSO) system is mainly for the convenience of sharing platform and the
regional information center management, the system architecture is shown in figure 3.
Each sharing platform administrator, agricultural science and technology personnel
or expert perhaps needs to maintain multiple applications, through the SSO system, he
can only need once login to do all of information modification, maintenance, and
management of sharing platform and corresponding regional information center.
 Design of the Network Platform Scheme Based on Comprehensive Information 543

Login request
Authentication
Token
Client server(AS) Regional information
URL request platform

Application
Result return proxy server
Regional information
platform
Fig. 3. SSO system architecture

The system is based on Web Service Structure. Each regional basic information
platform must register its restricted access application system and set an application
proxy in single sign-on system. The proxy contains a registration information table
with the URL of the registration application system, replaces user to communicate with
the application. The proxy and the basic information platform share a key for secure
communications. Each user who needs to access restricted access application must
register in single sign-on system, except the identity information, also he must register
the information of applications that he can access. After loginning successful, the
system distributes the authorization to user by applying for registration information.
The authorization is a token form. Once user obtains the authorization, in token valid-
ity, he can access the corresponding application, without needing to relogin.

4.1.1 The Design of Users' Data Structures

As the uers information database is used to store many important information, such as
the user accounts and passwords, etc, it is vulnerable to attack. In designing, 3 key data
tables are used to ensure the databases security, such as user basic information ta-
ble(UserInfo),user token information table(Token) and user agent data ta-
ble(URLAgent),they are shown in table 1, table 2 and table 3.

Table 1. UserInfo

Field names Description Remarks

User_ID the unique user ID Primary key
User_name User name
User_pw Password Encypted by MD5
User_Role User role Foreign key

Table 2. Token

Field names Description Remarks

SessID Token ID Primary key
UserID User name Foreign key
CurrentIP User IP address
ExpireTime Termination time of user session
544 W. Lei, H. Zhang, and L. Cai

Table 3. URLAgent

Field names Description Remarks

URLAgentID URLAgent ID Primary key
User_ID the unique identifier of user Foreign key
URL The acquisition URL Encypted by DES
POST HTTPPOST data Encypted by DES
HEADER HTTP header data Encypted by DES
REFER ReferURL Encypted by DES
DESURL Destination URL Encypted by DES

4.1.2 The Design of Login Certification Process

The client is realized by plug-in, IE browser and Windows resource management are
supported. It uses the Web Service SOAP protocol to interact with authentication
server(AS). User login certification process is as follows:
1)The client enables HTTPS to connect the AS, and then sends the user name and
password to AS by SOAP.
2) After receiving the information, the AS computes the password with MD5, then
matches the result with the corresponding encrypted information in database. If they are
mismatching, the AS refuses the login request, else, the AS sends an authentication
token and URL field data(called URLCache List) to the client. The URLCache List is
extracted from URLAgent table according to User_ID.
3) The AS inserts a new record into Token table. The record consists of SessID,
UserID, CurrentIP and ExpireTime.
Through the above steps, the user logins successfully. Then through the URL of
URLCache List, he can access the corresponding service directly. In token validity, he
does not need to relogin.

4.2 The Independently Developing System

4.2.1 Expert System

Expert system is an intelligent information system with characteristic agriculture do-
main expert-level knowledge and experience. Since most farmers are lack of computer
application skill, the system adopts question and mouse-click means to interact with
users, according to mutual information, it can carry out the corresponding intelligent
decision-making for users. In daily agricultural production, once insect appears,
farmers can easily use the expert system to obtain the corresponding solved methods
and skills.

4.2.2 Remote Diagnosis System

If the user cannot obtain satisfactory result by expert system, they can try the remote
interactive diagnostic with technical personnel or agricultural experts through the re-
mote diagnosis system. The system is used video transmission to implement, which has
 Design of the Network Platform Scheme Based on Comprehensive Information 545

2 ways of off-line diagnosis and online diagnosis. For off-line diagnosis, users can use
photograph, text, pictures and graphics to collect information, and send the messages to
the remote diagnostic system. After receiving the messages, system classifies them and
submits them to the corresponding technical personnel or expert. When expert offers
the solution, system will answer back to the user. For online diagnosis, using video
interaction method to implement instant communication, users can interact with experts
by using voice, text, video, images and graphics.

4.2.3 System Information Collection and Release System

Information collection and release system is divided into 2 parts, the regional infor-
mation center information collection and release system and the sharing platform of
information collection and release system.
The regional information center information collection and release system is mainly
used to collect the information of crop growth, environment and agricultural products
by artificial method or acquisition terminal, and the regional central database gathers,
analysis, processing and issuing the information. Users can monitor crops state through
the regional central Web.
The sharing platform information collection and release system mainly includes 2
functions. One is using "link" search technology to gather products information from
the regional information center, then classify and release them to the characteristic
agriculture exhibition hall of sharing platform. The other is using resources location
information retrieval technology and Web mining technology to collect the information
of product and market demand, then classifying, analyzing, processing and release, and
realize the subscription to users.

4.2.4 Distance Learning and Training System

Distance learning and training system offers video courseware and real-time teaching
services for users. Usually, the user can use video courseware to learn agricultural
technology intuitively. If there is any technical training, remote training can be held
through the real-time teaching system. Real-time teaching system is a multicast
real-time teaching system, which is adopted with MPEG4 standard and video com-
pression technology of H.264 standard, based on T.120 standards to develop and im-
plement. It can also withstand over 500 user terminals online class at the same time, and
provide many functions, such as the audio and video interacting, whiteboard sharing,
document sharing, collaborative browsing etc.

5 Scheme Performance Analysis

The scheme has higher communication performance and security performance of

network communication.

5.1 Network Performance

The sharing platform is based on city telecom broadband network, which is a distrib-
uted network system structure. As most access businesses occur in regional information
546 W. Lei, H. Zhang, and L. Cai

center, the traffic is effectively reduced on the information sharing platform, it does not
cause an access bottleneck in sharing platform.

5.2 Security Performance

On the network boundary, firewall is configured, which can be effectively against the
denial of service attacks. The access control by security certification can be effectively
defense unauthorized access. Between the single sign-on system and regional infor-
mation center, shared key is used to implement symmetric encryption communication,
which can ensure confidentiality of information.

6 Conclusion

Aiming at Zigong characteristic agriculture production and marketing demand, this

comprehensive information sharing platform is designed, which is planned to complete
within 3 years. So far, the constructions of the city information center agricultural
information network and the basic information platform of the black goat breeding
center of construction have completed. With this scheme achievement and application,
it will strongly promote the city characteristic agricultural development with intensi-
fication, scale and commercialization, improve agricultural production efficiency and
benefit, and speed up the agricultural informatization construction.

References
1. Ye, L., Luo, M., Chen, J.-h.: Construction of Agriculture Information Service System for
Midland Amountainous Area. J. Computer and Modernization 171(11), 169171 (2009)
2. Single sign-on, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_sign-on
3. Yang, Z., Chen, X.-y., Zhang, B.: A single sign-on scheme supporting double authentication
method. J. Computer Applications 27(3), 595596 (2007)
4. Wu, Q.: Design of Grid Agricultural Information Service System. J. Hubei Agricultural
Sciences 48(8), 19982000 (2009)
5. Hu, C.-x.: The Effects of agro-informationon Building Socialist New Countryside and
Development Strategy. J. Commercial Research 367(11), 131134 (2007)
6. Liu, X.-h., Zhang, Z.: Experience and Countermeasures of Promoting Regional Agricultural
Economy Development by Agricultural Informationization Construction. J. Agriculture
Network Information 11, 4850, 60 (2009)
7. Chen, P., Diao, H.-j., Zhu, F.: A Wed Based System of Single Sign-On. J. Computer Ap-
plications and Software 24(11), 147149 (2007)
 Detection of Surface Defects of Fruits Based on Fractal
Dimension

Yongxiang Sun, Yong Liang, and Qiulan Wu

School of Information Science and Engineering,

Shandong Agricultural University,
Taian, Shandong Province, P.R. China, 271018
syx@sdau.edu.cn

Abstract. As the identification of surface defects is very important in fruit

automatic detection, a new method for the detection of fruit surface defects
based on fractal dimension is suggested. In this method, fruit image was col-
lected using computer vision system. The fractal dimension of fruit image was
calculated by an improved box dimension. The fruit fractal dimension reflects
the three dimensional characteristics of the fruit as well as information of the
fruit surface. The detection of surface defects of fruits was performed according
to a given threshold of fruit image fractal dimension. The results on Fuji apple
fruits showed that the improved box dimension method was effective and reli-
able in the detection of fruit defects for its improvement in the accuracy in the
calculation of the fractal dimension.

Keywords: Fruit; Surface defects; Detection; Fractal dimension.

1 Introduction

Although much progress has been made in fruit automatic grading world widely, the
detection of fruit surface defects was the most difficult and became one of the limiting
factors. [1] In recent years, the development of the theory of fractal provides a new
way for the detection of fruit surface defects.[2, 3]
Fractal theory is an important branch of nonlinear scientific that gained much atten-
tion, which focuses on objects with irregular shape in nonlinear systems in nature. As
fractal geometry has many advantages in describing and analyzing the chaotic, irregu-
lar and random phenomenon in nature in comparison with traditional geometry,
fractal theory was widely used in mathematics, physics, chemistry, material science,
biology, medicine, geography, earthquake, astronomy, computer science, and so on.
In particularly, in computer science, the ideas and methods of fractal have been made
much success in pattern recognition, natural images simulation, and signal process-
ing.[4] In this paper, the detection of fruit defects was successfully performed by
analyzing the fractal feature of the fruit image, which is obtained from a computerized
image processing system.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 547554, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
548 Y. Sun, Y. Liang, and Q. Wu

2 The Calculation of Fractal Dimension of Fruit Image

The fractal dimension represents the irregularities of an object, reflecting the shape as
well as the surface characteristics of geometric solids. At present, there are several
methods concerning the calculation of fractal dimension, in which the box dimension
became one of the most widely used as it can be easily performed in computer.[5]

2.1 The Traditional Method for the Calculation of Box Dimension

Let F be a nonempty finite subset of R, N(F) be the amounts of the boxes covering F
which has the maximum diameter .[6] The lower and upper box dimension of F
could be expressed as in formula (1) and (2), respectively.
log N ( F )
dim B F = lim (1)
0 + log

log N ( F )
dim B F = lim (2)
0 log
If (1) and (2) are equal, the box dimension of F could be expressed as in formula (3).
log N ( F )
dim B F = lim (3)
0 log
In fact, the box dimension of F could be considered to be the increasing logarithmic
ratios when 0, which can be estimated by the slope of logN(F) and -log.
The calculation of box dimensions could be described as follows.[7] A gray image
could be considered to be a three-dimensional space (x, y, z), z being the gray values
of the pixel (x, y). Thus, a three-dimensional curved surface can be formed with the
total three-dimensional pixels of the gray image, which can be considered to be a
nonempty finite subset F in the three-dimensional space. In the three-dimensional
space, cube boxes of size rrr are piled in the x, y, z directions. If these boxes are
enough to cover the whole curved surface of the gray image, the amounts of boxes
that intersect with the curved surface of the image should be N(F) (Figure 1). N(F)
can be calculated as follows. The M M gray image is divided into grids of rr size
in the x - y plane (1< r M /2, r being an integer), with a cube box of rrr size
existing in each grid. Let the minimum and maximum gray value of the image in the
(i, j) grid lie in the k box and the l box from bottom-up, respectively, there comes
formula (4).
nr(i, j) =l- k+1 (4)
In formula (4), nr(i, j) is the amounts of boxes that is needed to cover the image of the
(i, j) grid, and Nr is the total boxes covering the whole image, which can be expressed
in formula (5).

Nr = n (i, j )
i, j
r (5)
 Detection of Surface Defects of Fruits Based on Fractal Dimension 549

According to formula (5), different values of Nr can be obtained with different val-
ues of r. Thus, the slope of (log (N r),-log (r)), namely the box dimension D, can be
fitted using linear least squares regression.

Fig. 1. The traditional box dimension

In computer, the algorithm for the calculation of the fractal dimension of a gray
image is as follows.
i. Binarization of the image. Namely, the value of matrix elements of the image is
let to be either 1 or 0.
ii. Partition of the binary image. Within each parts of the image, its row = col-

umn=K(K=1 2 4 2i). Thus the image is partitioned into parts of 2i2i,

2i-12i-1, 2i-22i-2 2121 2020, 2i the length of the image.
iii. Calculation of the pixels. The amounts of image parts that contain the pixel 1
are calculated which is denoted as NK , Thus a serious of values N1, N2, , N(i+1)
as well as data pairs (K, NK) with the amounts of (i +1), are obtained.
iv. Curve fitting. A straight line can be obtained using least squares method (-logK,
logNK).
v. Calculation of the fractal dimension of the image. The slope of the fitted line,
namely the fractal dimension of the image, was determined.
In this method, as all of the cubes are located in a fixed position in the calculation of
amounts of boxes N(F), there are some disadvantages in the calculation of box di-
mensions. For example, there are situations that although the curves of some image
surfaces are slight, they cover between two cubes. Therefore, the amounts of boxes
covering this kind of surface are even more than the amounts of boxes covering image
surfaces with larger curves. In this situation, there are some boxes that are not in set
F. In the condition of 0, this effect on the calculation of box dimension is negligi-
ble. But for digital images, is not always very small. In this condition, the calcula-
tion of box dimensions is affected as the surface is not totally covered by cubes. This
situation might get even worse with even larger values.

2.2 An Improved Method for the Calculation of Box Dimension

To solve this problem, an improved method for the calculation of box dimensions was
suggested in this paper, which eliminated the effects of empty boxes in comparison
550 Y. Sun, Y. Liang, and Q. Wu

with the traditional method, by covering the image surface with the least amount of -
cubes. In the improved method, the cubes are not confined to a fixed position; instead,
they can move along the z axis.[8] In this method, great improvement was achieved in
the calculation of box dimensions due to reduced amounts of boxes as well as im-
provement in the tightness that the boxes cover the image surface. The essence of this
improved method is that the cuboids of size rrr' with variable heights are adopted
to cover the image surface instead of the fixed-size cubes of size rrr. This method
does not disobey the definition of box dimension; instead, it approaches even more
close to the essence of the definition of box dimension in comparison with the tradi-
tional method for the improvement in the tightness that the boxes cover the image
surface (Figure 2).
z
y

Fig. 2. An improved box dimension

The realization process is as follows. The MM gray image is partitioned into grids
of rr size in the x-y plane (M 1 /3 rM /2, r being an integer). Each grid encloses a
series of boxes of rrr size, whose height r is a variable, as shown in Figure 2.
i. Calculation on the amounts of boxes within the (i, j) grid. Firstly, the serial num-
ber of the boxes in each pixel is tracked and scanned within the (i, j) grid; secondly,
the gray value of each pixel is calculated within the (i, j) grid; finally, the statistical
result, namely the set of indexi, j, can be obtained.
ii. Scan of the set indexi, j. In the scanning, elements that appear only once are to-
tally adopted while elements that appear more than once are considered to be the
same. A new set indexnew is used to record the serial number of different boxes. The
set indexnew can be expressed in formula (6).
Indexnew={indexi, j (1),indexi, j (2),,indexi, j(Q)} (6)
iii. Let the amounts of elements in Indexnew be Q. It means that in the (i, j) grid,
the amounts of boxes that cover curved surface of the image is nr( i, j) =Q. Thus the
amounts of boxes in all the grids are the sum of the amounts of boxes in each grid. It
could be expressed in formula (5).
iv. Finally, the value of Nr with different values of r could be calculated according
to formula (5), and thus the fractal dimension D of the image can be obtained accord-
ing to formula (7).
D = log Nr / log(1/r) (7)
 Detection of Surface Defects of Fruits Based on Fractal Dimension 551

However, it should be pointed out that much costs would be needed in the calcula-
tion of the amounts of boxes in the (i, j) grid in comparison with the traditional
method, which should be resolved to work more efficiently in this algorithm.

3 Detection of Surface Defects of Fruits Based on Fractal

Dimension
This improved algorithm of differential box-counting can be used in fruit surface
defects detection. Firstly, fruit image was collected and preprocessed (including gray-
ing, noise filtering). Secondly, an appropriate threshold was set, and then removal of
the background and binarization of the isolated fruit image was performed.[9]
Thirdly, fractal dimension D of the fruit image was calculated using the improved box
dimension algorithm. Finally, the threshold of fractal dimension Dthd was determined
according to different kinds of fruits, which is used to determine whether the fruit has
defects or not. The flow chart of this process is shown in Figure 3.

Fruit image acquisition and

preprocessing (graying, noise
filtering)

Removal of the background and

binarization of the fruit image

Calculation of the fractal

dimension D using differential
box-counting algorithm

For a given Dthd, No

DDthd,?
Yes

Defective Normal

Fig. 3. Detection of fruit surface defects based on fractal dimension

4 Detection of Surface Defects in Fuji Apple Fruits

To test whether this method is reliable in fruit defects detection, 50 Fuji apple fruits
that have surface defects (defective fruits) and 50 normal fruits were selected. The
experimental device was shown in Figure 4. The image acquisition card is DH-CG410
(Daheng Company, China). The image size is 512 512 pixels. CCD camera is
WV-CP230 (Panasonic).
552 Y. Sun, Y. Liang, and Q. Wu

3 4
4

1 5
2

Fig. 4. Detection system configuration

1. Light box 2. Sample 3.CCD camera 4. Light sources 5. Computer (inside image acquisition
card)

In order to reflect the entire surface of the fruit and to eliminate the effect of posi-
tion and directions of the fruit on the detection results, eight images were collected for
each fruit from random directions. Totally 800 fruit images were collected, which
were numbered by letters plus numbers. For example, the 8 images of sample 1 were
numbered as A1, B1, C1, D1, E1, F1, G1, and H1, respectively. The representative
gray images of 6 samples were shown in Figure 5 and the fractal dimensions derived
from this improved method were shown in Table 1.

Fig. 5. Gray image of 6 Fuji apple fruits

Table 1 shows that for the same sample, there was no much difference between the
maximum and the minimum box dimensions, indicating that this improved box-
counting method was reliable.
The fractal dimension threshold Dthd is set to be 1.30 based on this experiment. Ac-
cording to this value, the detection results of the selected 100 apples are shown in
Table 2.
 Detection of Surface Defects of Fruits Based on Fractal Dimension 553

Table 1. Fractal dimensions of 6 Fuji apples

Samples Normal fruits Defective fruits

1 2 3 4 5 6
Images
A 1.186 1.299 1.178 1.355 1.412 1.499
B 1.073 1.291 1.117 1.387 1.358 1.438
C 1.129 1.261 1.132 1.304 1.435 1.456
D 1.129 1.284 1.142 1.372 1.450 1.491
E 1.129 1.284 1.142 1.304 1.404 1.496
F 1.073 1.261 1.144 1.355 1.412 1.538
G 1.126 1.299 1.148 1.372 1.400 1.456
H 1.188 1.269 1.175 1.371 1.341 1.444
Maximum 1.188 1.299 1.178 1.387 1.450 1.538
Minimum 1.073 1.261 1.117 1.304 1.341 1.438
Difference
between
0.115 0.038 0.060 0.083 0.109 0.100
maximum and
minimum
Mean of each
1.129 1.281 1.147 1.352 1.401 1.477
fruit
Mean between
normal and 1.186 1.410
defective fruits

Table 2. Detection results of selected 100 Fuji apples

Samples Results Accuracy(%)

rmal fruits (50) 48 96.0
Defective fruits (50 49 98.0
Average accuracy(%) 97.0

5 Conclusion and Discussion

This method of surface defects detection on fruits based on fractal dimension provides
a new way in fruit automatic detection. The fractal dimension of the fruit image re-
flects the defective area as well as the characteristics of its spatial distribution. The
experimental results with Fuji apples showed that this algorithm was effective in the
identification of fruit defects. In practice, a database that contains the fractal charac-
teristics of different kinds of fruits should be established. It should be pointed out that
554 Y. Sun, Y. Liang, and Q. Wu

the effects of fruit stem on the detection results in this method should be considered in
future research.[10]

References
1. Blasco, J., Aleixos, N., Molt, E.: Machine vision system for automatic quality grading of
fruit. Biosystems Engineering 85(4), 415423 (2003)
2. Nirupam, S., Chaudhuri, B.B.: An efficient differential box-counting approach to compute
fractal dimension of image. IEEE Trans. SMC 24(1), 115120 (1994)
3. Njoroge, J.B., Ninomiya, K., Kondo, N., et al.: Automated fruit grading system using im-
age processing. In: Proceedings of the 41st SICE Annual Conference, SICE 2002, August
5-7, pp. 13461351 (2002)
4. Falconer, K.J.: Techniques in Fractal Geometry. John Wiley and Sons Ltd., Chichester
(1996)
5. Xie, H., Wang, J.A.: Direct Fractal Measurement of Fracture Surfaces. Int. J. Solids &
Structures 36, 30733084 (1999)
6. Chaudhuri, B.B., Sarkar, N.: Nirupam Sarkar: Texture segmentation using fractal dimen-
sion. Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 17(1), 7277 (1995)
7. Ojala, T., Pietikainen, M., Harwood, D.: A comparative study of texture measures with
classification based feature distributions. Pattern Recognition 29(1), 5159 (1996)
8. Zhang, T., Yang, Z.B., Huang, A.M.: Improved Extracting Algorithm of Fractal dimension
of Remote Sensing Image. Journal of Ordnance Engineering College 18(5), 6165 (2006)
(in Chinese)
9. Lin, K.Y., Wu, J.H., Xu, L.H.: Separation approach for shape grading of fruits using com-
puter vision. Transactions of the CSAM 36(6), 7174 (2005) (in Chinese)
10. Cai, J.R., Xu, Y.M.: Identification and classification of apple shape based on active shape
models. Transactions of the CSAE 22(6), 123126 (2006) (in Chinese)
 Detection Technology for Precision Metering
Performance of Magnetic-Type Seeder Based on Machine
Vision

Deyong Yang1,2, Jianping Hu2, and Zuqing Xie2

1
School of Mechanical Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province,
P.R. China 212013
2
Key Laboratory of Modern Agricultural Equipment and Technology,
Ministry of Education & Jiangsu Province, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province,
P.R. China 212013
yangdy@163.com

Abstract. Magnetic-type seeder is a precision metering device, particularly suit-

able for small seeds. A visual inspection system for precision performance of
magnetic-type seeder was established based on machine vision and image proc-
essing technology. By using pre-treatment techniques including image binariza-
tion and image filtering, image quality was enhanced effectively. As the gray-
scale value of the seeds coated with magnetic powder is very close to the elec-
tromagnet, the method of seed feature extraction based on morphological image
processing is proposed and performance testing model of precision metering
seed is put forward. The results of comparison between machine vision and
manual detection showed that the relative error of preciseness was less than 3%
and coefficient of variation and standard deviation were less than 5%, which in-
dicated the system is of high accuracy when used in real-time detection.

Keywords: precision metering, performance detection, magnetic-type seeder,

machine vision.

1 Introduction
Metering device is the core component of seed planters, which performance is important
for planter design and manufacture. The performance improvement of precision meter-
ing device depends on accurate and efficient detection technology. There were manual
detection, opto-electronic scanning [1], piezoelectric pulse and high-speed photography
[2] and other methods. In the recent years, the research of non-contact detection of pre-
cision planting quality using machine vision technology conducted gradually
[3],[4],[5],[8]. Magnet roller-type precision seeder was developed according to magnetic
seed-metering principle, which solve precision seeding of small seed like vegetable
seeds and flower seeds [6].In this research, vision detecting of precision performance of
magnetic-type seed metering device was undertaken, and visual detection accuracy was
discussed.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 555562, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
556 D. Yang, J. Hu, and Z. Xie

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Seed

Rape seed of 2.412 g /1000 seeds was used for this study. Seeds must be coated with
magnetic powder.

2.2 The Vision Detection System

A test stand with camera system was used to detect performance of precision metering
device, as shown in Fig.1 and Fig.2. Magnetic-type seed metering device has 4 rows
magnetic head per revolution. Sufficient oil was added to the top surface of the seed-bed
belt to capture the seed as it was released from metering device. The speeds of the me-
tering roller were set at 15, 20 and 30 rpm while the speed of seed-bed belt was 0.5 m/s.
The camera is a high-resolution, black-and-white, low-light, manual gain adjust-
ment MTV-1881EX equipped with AVENIR Seiko CCTV lens, manual iris of F1.3,
focal length of 8mm. Lighting system is made up of the lighting box, 12V DC lamps
and blocking mask, and 6 lamps are fixed below the box, and the camera and lighting
are arranged hierarchically to obtain stable, no shadow and uniform illumination
image to meet the needs of image processing.
As seed-bed belt moved at a constant speed, seeds from the metering device fall
onto the moving belt and were sticked on the belt. With the movement of the belt,
seeds go through the camera and the camera records images and collect data, then
transfer into the computer for processing.

1 screen filter and fuel tank 2 driving roller 3 seed-bed motor 4 seed-bed belt 5 camera system
6 metering motor 7 magnetic-type seeder 8 fuel injection device 9 driven roller

Fig. 1. Structural diagram of precision seeder test-bed

Fig. 2. Photograph of precision seeder test-bed

 Detection Technology for Precision Metering Performance of Magnetic-Type Seeder 557

2.3 Image Processing

Because the images in the collection and transmission process were interfered by all
sorts of disturbance and contain random noise in addition to images useful signal,
the images must be treated by a series of methods, such as median filtering and
image splicing, to remove the noise and make seed target and background separate
completely.

2.3.1 Binary Image Processing

In seed image acquisition process, relatively stable reservoir thickness, viscosity, seeds,
colour and lustre etc are likely to make gray-scale values of image pixel except seeds
are 1. Therefore, seeds are separated with background by using binary processing.
The background in this research is simple and few changed, so a preprocessing
fixed threshold method was tried, namely, by setting a certain threshold, make gray
scale image into two gray value of black-and-white images, which would target and
background separated. Its function expression is as follows:
0 x <T
f ( x) = (1)
1 xT

Where f ( x) is the image matrix, x the gray value and T the selected threshold value
of binary image processing.
Threshold value was set 90 in this research after repeated tests and the image after
binary processing is shown in Fig.3.

Fig. 3. Image of Binary processing

2.3.2 Image Filtering

Sequence of images contain useful signals and also contains a variety of random noise
because of internal and external interference. In order to reduce the noise and improve
image quality, it is necessary to smooth image after binary treatment.
Image smoothing processing adopt 3 x 3 neighborhood median filtering method,
that is, the value of a point in the digital image is the median value of values of all
points in a field instead.
If { xij , (i, j ) I 2 } is gray value of digital images, two-dimensional median filter with
filtering template A can be defined as:
yij = Med A{xij } = Med {xi + r , j + s , ( r , s) A, (i, j ) I 2 } (2)

The image after filtering is shown in Fig. 4.

558 D. Yang, J. Hu, and Z. Xie

Fig. 4. Image of filtering

2.4 Seed Feature Extraction

2.4.1 Marking Region

After image processing region of seed is separated with background. However,
the gray values of all regions of seeds are 1. It is necessary to mark regions of
seeds for determining the seed properties, such as seed number, size and location
coordinates.
Labeling algorithm combining with sequential scanning and parallel dissemination
is used for regional mark, as shown in Fig. 5. The image is scanned by TV raster, and
1-pixel with no label is detected. The unused label is assigned to it, and 1-pixels lo-
cated in 8-neighborhood of it are given the same label. The label begins to spread
from first 1-pixel one by one until no 1-pixel in 8-neighborhood of labeled pixel ex-
ists and the operation ends. All connected 1-pixel have the same label. The image is
scanned again, and if unlabeled 1-pixel is found, the same treatment is conducted.
Otherwise, the processing is completed.

Fig. 5. Mark regions of seeds

2.4.2 Seed Number Feature Extraction

While marking regions of seeds, the pixel that is not belong to seed area is marked to
0, the pixel that is belong to the same seed area is given the same label which is not
equal to zero. The label of pixel is different from regions of the seeds. Therefore, the
number of seed is obtained by calculating number of these nonzero label.

2.4.3 Seed Position Feature Extraction

After the region of seeds was marked, pixels with the same label are regarded as a
seed. As long as the centroid of seed region was obtained, it is regarded as the center
of the seed [7].
 Detection Technology for Precision Metering Performance of Magnetic-Type Seeder 559

If a binary image { f ( x, y ) ; x, y = 0,1,K , N 1} is given, the pq-order image mo-

ment is defined as follows [5]:
M pq = f ( x, y) x p y q p, q = 0,1, 2K (3)

Different values of p, q can obtain different moments M pq . As the performance

was concerned with center of mass, the center coordinates of the seed is defined as
follows:
M 10 M 01
( x, y ) = ( , ) (4)
M 00 M 00

Coordinate with the top-left corner of a image, for the X axis is to the right direc-
tion, for the Y axis is downward, as shown in Fig. 6. As seed spacing was measured
along longitudinal coordinate, y difference between two adjacent seed was just
seed spacing.

Fig. 6. Coordinate system of image

Through testing the seeds and coordinates the seed spacing between adjacent seeds,
and analysis of metering device of qualified rate, leakage, replay broadcast rate main
performance indexes.

3 Results and Discussion

According to the relevant test standards, single seed precision sowing experiment was
done continuously measured 250 seed spacing as a statistical sample. The speeds of
the metering roller were set at 15, 20 and 30 rpm respectively while the speed of seed-
bed belt was 0.5 m/s.

3.1 Metering Precision Detection

Main indexes of precision performace of magnetic-type metering device are precise-

ness, multiple index and miss index. Detection of precision metering were done by
using machine vision and manual methods respectively, comparative analysis for
different metering roller speed is listed in Table 1-3.
560 D. Yang, J. Hu, and Z. Xie

Table 1. Precision results at metering roller speed of 15 rpm

Preciseness (%) Multiple index (%) Miss index (%)

Manual method 84.28 15.72 0
Machine vision 83.33 16.67 0
Relative error 0.94 5.69 0

Table 2. Precision results at metering roller speed of 20 rpm

Preciseness (%) Multiple index (%) Miss index (%)

Manual method 31.13 39.63 29.24
Machine vision 30.77 38.46 30.77
Relative error 1.17 3.04 4.97

Table 3. Precision results at metering roller speed of 30 rpm

Preciseness (%) Multiple index (%) Miss index (%)

Manual method 26.99 48.51 25.50
Machine vision 26.32 47.37 26.31
Relative error 2.54 2.41 3.08

Table 1,2,3 show preciseness decreases and multiple index increases with metering
roller speed increasing. Relative error of preciseness between machine vision detec-
tion and artificial detection is less than 3%, relative error of multiple index less than
6%,relative error of miss index less than 5%. The results show that testing accuracy of
precision metering by machine vision is required.

3.2 Sowing Uniformity Detection

Sowing uniformity factors include mean seed spacing, standard deviation and coeffi-
cient of variation of seed spacing. Detection of precision metering were done by using
machine vision and manual methods respectively, comparative analysis for different
metering roller speed is listed in Table 4-6.

Table 4. Sowing uniformity results at metering roller speed of 15 r/min

Mean seed spacing standard deviation Coefficient of variation

(m) (%) (%)
Manual method 1.175 0.23 19.58
Machine vision 1.200 0.24 20.00
Relative error 2.13 4.17 4.2
 Detection Technology for Precision Metering Performance of Magnetic-Type Seeder 561

Table 5. Sowing uniformity results at metering roller speed of 20 r/min

Mean seed spacing standard deviation Coefficient of variation

(m) (%) (%)
Manual method 0.771 0.18 23.61
Machine vision 0.793 0.19 23.96
Relative error 2.85 4.21 1.46

Table 6. Sowing uniformity results at metering roller speed of 30 r/min

Mean seed spacing standard deviation Coefficient of variation

(m) (%) (%)
Manual method 0.483 0.187 38.69
Machine vision 0.498 0.192 38.57
Relative error 3.11 2.6 3.11

Table 4,5,6 show coefficient of variation of seed spacing increases with increased
metering roller speed. Relative error of standard deviation between machine vision
detection and artificial detection is less than 5%, relative error of coefficient of varia-
tion less than 5%. The results show that testing accuracy of precision metering by
machine vision is required.
The main reasons of differences between the manual measurement and system
measurement based machine vision were error of manual measurement and error of
image processing because location of center of mass of seeds changed and tiny seeds
were neglected.

4 Conclusions
This paper constructed the performance detection system of precision magnetic-type
metering device. After a series of image processing ,such as image binary, image
filtering, the region of seeds are seperated with background. By regional marking,
seed properties are easily determined. Such number of seeds was obtained efficiently
and center of mass coordinates were achieved by using moment characteristics, which
provided a satisfactory basis of the performance detection.
The parameter data of precision performance from vision detection system and
manual detection are not significantly different. Therefore ,vision detection system
can be used instead of manual detection.

Acknowledgments. This work was financially supported by the open fund of Jiangsu
Provincial Key Laboratory of Modern Agricultural Equipment and Technology, Ji-
angsu University (NZ200604), by Eleventh Five-Year-Plan National Scientific &
Technological Supporting Project(2006BAD11A10).
562 D. Yang, J. Hu, and Z. Xie

References
1. Lan, Y., Kocher, M.F., Smith, J.A.: Opto-electronics Sensor System for Laboratory Meas-
urement of Planter Seed Spacing with Small Seeds. Agric. Eng. Res. 72, 119227 (1999)
2. Liao, Q., Deng, Z., Huang, H.: Application of the High Speed Photography Checking the
Precision Metering Performances. Journal of Huazhong Agricultural University (5),
570573 (2004)
3. Wang, Y., Guo, J., Zhao, X., et al.: Performance detection and analysis of a machine vision
based metering mechanism of drill. Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural
Machinery 36(11), 5054 (2005)
4. Hu, S.: Detecting Technology of the Properties of Seed Metering Based on Computer Vi-
sion, PhD diss., Jilin University, Changchun (2001)
5. Cai, X., Wu, Z., Liu, J.X., et al.: Graindistance real-time checking and measuring system
based oncomputer vision. Transactions of The Chinese Society ofAgricultural Machin-
ery 36(8), 4144 (2005)
6. Hu, J., Mao, H.: Analytical and experimental study on principle of precision seed2meter by
magnetic force. Transaetions of the Chinese Society for Agricultural Machinery 35(4),
5558 (2004)
7. Cvibovic, M., Kune, M.: An approach to the design of distributed real-time systems.
Micro-processors and Microsystems 20, 241250 (1996)
8. Cai, X., Wu, Z., Liu, J.: Grain Distance Real-time Checking and Measuring System Based
on Computer Vision. Transactions of the Chinese society for Agricultural Machin-
ery 36(8), 4144 (2005)
9. SiWei Technology: Visual C++/MATLAB Image processing and recognition of practical
cases selected. Posts & Telecom Press, Beijing (2004)
10. Chen, C.: Digital Image Processing. China Machine Press, Beijing (2004)
 Determination of Cr, Zn, As and Pb in Soil by X-Ray
Fluorescence Spectrometry Based on a Partial Least
Square Regression Model

Anxiang Lu1,2, Xiangyang Qin2, Jihua Wang1,2,, Jiang Sun3, Dazhou Zhu2,
and Ligang Pan1
1
Beijing Research Center for Agri-food Testing and Farmland Monitoring, Beijing, China
2
Nation Engineering Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture,
Beijing, China
3
Beijing Municipal Station of Agro-Environmental Monitoring, Beijing, China
wangjh@nercita.org.cn

Abstract. Soil samples were collected from five provinces over China, includ-
ing Beijing, Xinjiang, Heilongjiang, Yunnan, and Jiangsu. Heavy metal Cr, Zn,
Pb and As in soils were analyzed by a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry
(XRF). For predicating metal concentration in soils, a partial least square re-
gression model (PLSR) was established. After cross-calibration, the correlation
coefficients for validation (R) of value predicted by PLSR model against that
measured by AAS and AFS for Cr, Zn, Pb and As was 0.984, 0.929, 0.979, and
0.958, square error of validation (SEP)was 108 mg kg-1, 117 mg kg-1, 116 mg
kg-1, and 167 mg kg-1 for metals concentration from about 100 to 1500 mg kg-1,
and the relative square error of validation(RSEP) was about 14.5 %, 15.6 %,
14.9 %, and 21.0 %. These results indicated XRF based on PLSR model could
be applied for determination of Cr, Zn, Pb and As in soil, and would be an ef-
fective tool for rapid, quantitative monitoring of metal contamination.

Keywords: Heavy metal, Soil, Partial least square regression, X-ray fluores-
cence spectrometry.

1 Introduction
Contamination by metals in the soil has become widespread in a global context.
Wastewater irrigation, solid waste disposal, sludge applications, vehicular exhaust
and industrial activities are the major sources of soil contamination with heavy met-
als. Increasing metal pollution has severely disturbed the natural ecosystem and
harmed human health through food chain.[1, 2] Numerous programs have been con-
ducted to monitor heavy metal in soils by governments or institutions all over the
world.[3, 4]
Heavy metals in soil can be measured by several conventional analytical techniques
including electro-chemical methods, chromatographic separation and spectroscopic

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 563568, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
564 A. Lu et al.

techniques etc. Especially, atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) and inductively

coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) have been the official refer-
ence methods, preceded by time-consuming acid digestions which are also subject to
possible contamination to sample and additional pollution to laboratory environment.
Compared with traditional methods, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) has some
potential advantages for soil heavy metal analysis, it is non-destructive with rapid
throughout and simple sample preparation avoiding acid digestion and the sensitivity
of ~ 10 mg kg-1 is appropriate for field screening for most metals.[5] For example, field
XRF can easily provide detection limits for lead-in-soil of less than 100 mg kg-1, well
below typical regulatory levels of 300 to 1500 mg kg-1. Actually, XRF has been widely
applied in metal determination in variety of environmental samples, such as soil, sedi-
ment, dust, rocks.[6, 7, 8]
However, the accuracy of the measurement by XRF can be affected by the sample
characteristics, e.g. moisture content, density, flatness of the surface, particle size, soil
type.[9] For soil and other complex matrices, empirical methods for calibration can be
difficult or cumbersome, and theoretical calibration methods such as fundamental
parameters models are not always viewed as reliable.[10] Partial least squares regres-
sions (PLSR) are multivariate statistical techniques that have been applied to different
sciences to obtain calibration models as an alternative to linear regressions. This sta-
tistical method has provided good predictive models for the simultaneous analysis in
complex matrices.[11] In the paper, by combining XRF analysis with the PLSR
model, we have developed a relatively uncomplicated technique to determine the Cr,
Zn, Pb and As in a collection of soil samples. This approach will almost certainly
prove to be applicable to other metals of environmental samples as well. This tech-
nique could be useful for the semi-quantitative or quantitative determination of metals
in variety of environmental solid samples.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Sample Preparation

Topsoil (0~20 cm) samples were collected from five provinces in China, including
Beijing, Xinjiang, Heilongjiang, Yunnan, and Jiangsu. Soil samples were air-dried

and passed through a 2.0 mm sieve, homogenized and stored at 4 until use. An
incubation experiment was conducted with 500 g of each soil in plastic pot to simu-
late metal pollution. Heavy metals Cr, Zn, Pb and As were added as nitrate salts (Cr
(NO3)3, Zn (NO3)2, Pb (NO3)2 and NaAsO2) in aqueous solution and then mixed with
soils thoroughly. The amounts of metals added to soils were 100, 200, 400, 600, 800,
1000 and 1500 mg kg-1 of Cr, Zn, Pb, and As (metal/soil), respectively. These soils
were incubated for 2 months, and air-dried for analysis. And extra pots without addi-
tion of heavy metals were simultaneously prepared as blank sample.

2.2 XRF Spectra Collection

Cr, Zn, Pb and As in soil samples were simultaneously analyzed by a portable XRF
(XRF7), obtained from Beijing Purkinje General Instrument. The instrument parame-
ter and operating condition was listed in table 1. Prior to sample analysis, an internal
 Determination of Cr, Zn, As and Pb in Soil by X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry 565

instrument calibration was performed. All samples were analyzed using the bulk mod
for soils. Each sample was analyzed for 300 s through a small plastic cup covered
with SDI mylar film.

Table 1. The instrument parameter and operating condition

Instrument parameter and operating condition

X-ray tube Ag
Filter Al + Mo
Detector Si-PIN
V 30 kV
I 40 A
Cr-K 5.414 eV
Zn-K 8.638 keV
As-K 11.725 keV
Pb-L 12.611 keV

2.3 Measurement of Heavy Metals by Standard Methods

Soil samples were digested using the standard method. 1.0 g soil was placed in a 50
ml round bottom flask with 10 ml aqua regia (HCl :HNO3 = 1:3). The solution was
kept at room temperature overnight before a water condenser was attached and the
solution heated to boiling for 2 h. 10 ml of water was added down the condenser be-
fore filtration of the mixture through using a Whatman No. 42 filter. The filtered
residue was rinsed twice with 5mL of water and the solution was made up to 50mL.
All solutions were prepared with 18.3 M deionised water. The above procedure was
also used to obtain a blank and control samples and all samples were blank-corrected.
Concentration of Cr, Zn, Pb and As in digested sample solution were analyzed using
AAS and AFS (Atomic Fluorescence Spectrometry). Reference soil sample ESS-1
was also analyzed as quality control sample.[12,13]

2.4 Data Analysis

XRF spectra was exported from XRF 7 (version 1.0) software in CSV format to MS-
Excel (version 2003) for spectral analysis.
The main idea of PLSR is to get as much concentration information as possible
into the first few loading vectors. One of the main advantages of PLSR is that the
resulting spectral vectors are directly related to the constituents of interest. In this
study, PLSR and leave-one-out cross-validation were used for establishing calibration
models for Cr, Zn, Pb and As respectively. Leave-one-out cross-validation estimated
the prediction error by splitting all samples into two groups. One was reserved for
validation, and the other was used for calibration. The process was repeated until all
the samples had been used once in the validation set. The optimum number of factors
used in PLSR was determined by the lowest value of predicted residual error sum of
squares (PRESS). In this study, PLSR were performed using the Matlab (version 7.0)
from Math-Works Inc.
566 A. Lu et al.

The statistics used for estimating the performance of the calibration models devel-
oped by PLSR included correlation coefficients for validation (R)and root mean
square error of validation (SEP).

i =1 ( yi y i )2
n

R = [1 ] (1)
i=1 ( yi ym )2
n

1 n
SEP =
n i =1
( yi y i)
(2)

^
where yi is the reference value of the i-th sample, yi is the predicted value of the i-th
sample, ym is the average of the referenced value of the validation set, and n is the
number of samples in the validation set.

Fig. 1. X-ray fluorescence spectra of the soil samples

3 Results and Discussion

Figure 1 shows the XRF spectra of soil samples. The mail features of the soil samples
are energy bands between 3.0 keV to 18.0 keV. From the characteristic energy of
metals listed in table 1, the relevant energy of electron volt at 5.414 keV, 8.638 keV,
11.725 keV and 12.611 keV and close range represents the concentration of Cr, Zn,
As and Pb respectively. Therefore spectra in these energy ranges: 5.399 ~ 5.429 keV,
8.623 ~8.653 keV, 11.710 ~11.740 and 12.595 ~12.625 keV were used for developing
PLSR models for Cr, Zn, As and Pb separately.
By means of full cross-validation with in PLSR method, the selection of optimal
PLS factor (number of latent variables) was important. The number of latent variables
for heavy metals is obtained according to the smallest PRESS. The number of latent
variables for all the metals was 6 the same.
 Determination of Cr, Zn, As and Pb in Soil by X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry 567

Table 2. The results of calibration models for metals

R SEP (mg kg-1) RSEP (%)

Cr 0.984 109 14.5
Zn 0.929 117 15.6
As 0.979 116 14.9
Pb 0.958 168 21.0

Using the optimum parameters for PLSR, the calibration models for Cr, Zn, As and
Pb were established respectively. Table 2 showed the results of calibration models for
metals. It can be seen that metal model had high calibration accuracy, the correlation
coefficient (R) was 0.984, 0.929, 0.979, and 0.958 for Cr, Zn, As and Pb. Its predic-
tion ability was also satisfied, the relative square error of validation (RSEP) were 14.5
%, 15.6 %, 14.9 % and 21.0 %, The XRF predicted metal concentration and its refer-
ence value were closely arranged with the 45line (Figure 2), indicating the prediction
error was low. The above result suggested that concentration of heavy metal Cr, Zn,
As and Pb in soil could be measured by XRF combined with PLSR model easily.
Predicted value (mg kg-1)

Predicted value (mg kg-1)

Measured value (mg kg-1) Measured value (mg kg-1)

Predicted value (mg kg-1)
Predicted value (mg kg-1)

Measured value (mg kg-1) Measured value (mg kg-1)

Fig. 2. Scatter plots between measured and predicted value by PLSR model

4 Conclusion
Quantitative or semi-quantitative analyses for Cr, Zn, As and Pb in soil can be
performed using XFR with a calibration model established by the method of PLSR.
568 A. Lu et al.

Creating PLSR calibration models for XRF especially useful if suitable well charac-
terized reference standards are not available or the fundamental parameter method is
inaccessible or unsatisfactory. As demonstrated, this model is suitable for soil samples
of different types without a set of standards for each site. Certainly, XRF with PLSR
model approach can be considered as a useful tool for fast screenings, field testing
and rapid identification of heavy metals in soil.

Acknowledgements. This work was supported by the Beijing municipal sciences and
technology program (Z09090501040901) and Nation hi-tech research and
development program of China ( 2010AA10Z403).

References
1. Cai, Q., Long, M.L., Zhu, M.: Food Chain transfer of cadmium an lead to cattle in a lead-
zinc smelter in Guizhou, China. Environ. Pollut. 157, 30783082 (2009)
2. Liu, J., Goyer, R.A., Waalkes, M.P.: Metal toxicology. In: Kaassen, C.D. (ed.) Casarett
and Doulls Toxicology The basic science of poisons, 7th edn., pp. 931979. McGraw
Hill, New York (2007)
3. Tan, M.Z., Xu, F.M., Chen, J.: Spatial prediction of heavy metal pollution for soils in peri-
urban Beijing, China based on fuzzy set theory. Pedosphere 16, 545554 (2006)
4. Saby, N.P.A., Thioulouse, J., Joliver, C.C.: Multivariate analysis of the spatial patterns of
8 trace elements using the French soil monitoring network data. Sci. Total Environ. 407,
56445652 (2009)
5. Radu, T., Diamond, D.: Comparison of soil pollution concentration determined using AAS
and portable XRF techniques. J. Hazard. Mater. 171, 11681171 (2009)
6. Chou, J., Clement, G., Buursavich, B.: Rapid detection of toxic metals in non-crushed oys-
ter shells by portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. Environ. Pollut. 158, 22302234
(2010)
7. Block, C.N., Shibata, T., Solo-Gabriele, H.M.: Use of handheld X-ray fluorescence spec-
trometry units for identification of arsenic in treated wood. Environ Pollut. 148, 627633
(2007)
8. Carr, R., Zhang, C., Moles, N.: Identification and mapping of heavy metal pollution in
soils of a sports ground in Galway City, Ireland, Using a portable XRF analyzer and GIS.
Environ. Geochem. Health 30, 4552 (2008)
9. Goldstein, S.J., Slemmons, A.K., Canavan, H.E.: Energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence
methods for environmental characterization of soils. Environ. Sci. Technol. 30, 23182321
(1996)
10. Vanhoof, C., Corthouts, V., Tirez, K.: Energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence systems as
analytical tool for assessment of contaminated soil. J. Environ. Monitor. 6, 344350 (2004)
11. Alvarez-Guerra, M., Ballabio, D., Amigo, J.M.: Development of models for predicting tox-
icity from sediment chemistry by partial least squares-discriminant analysis and counter
propagation artificial neural networks. Environ. Pollut. 158, 607614 (2010)
12. Standard method of China, GB/T 22105.1-2008 Soil quality-Analysis of total mercury, ar-
senic and lead contents-Atomic fluorescence spectrometry (2008)
13. Standard method of Chinese Department of Agriculture, NY/T 1613-2008 Soil quality-
Analysis of soil heavy metals-atomic absorption spectrometry with aqua regia digestion
(2008)
 Determination of Thermal Conductivity of Aloe in the
Cooling and Thawing Process

Min Zhang1,, Huizhong Zhao2, Zhiyou Zhong1, Jianhua Chen1, Zhenhua Che1,
Jiahua Lu1, and Le Yang1
1
College of Food Sciences, Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai, 201306, P.R. China
2
School of Environment and Architecture, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology,
Shanghai, 200093, P.R. China
zhangm@shou.edu.cn

Abstract. In this study, thermal conductivity of aloe was determined in the

cooling process from 20 to -11 , and in the thawing process from -11 to
20 using the tiny thermal probe method. The tiny thermal probe measurement
system had the advantages of high accuracy, short test time, low temperature
rise and little water removal and was found to give accurate and consistent ex-
perimental results. The results showed that the thermal conductivities increased
with temperature over the freezing point. The thermal conductivities rapidly in-
creased below the freezing point and it increased with the temperature decreas-
ing. The thermal conductivities decreased with temperature below the thaw
point. The thermal conductivities rapidly decreased over the thaw point and it
decreased with temperature. The thermal conductivity of aloe in the cooling
process was greater than that in the thawing process at the same temperature.

Keywords: Probe measurement system, Thermal conductivity, Temperature,

Aloe.

1 Introduction
Aloe belongs to perennial evergreen succulent herb. It has been paid more and more
attentions for its many functions such as medical, facial beauty, food, ornamental [1].
Quality of the aloe products depends on its storage and processing. In freezing and
thawing processes, one of the most important properties to estimate the time is the
thermal conductivity [2]. Some investigators have reported that the experimental
values of thermal conductivity of fruits and vegetables over years [3], [4], [5], [6], [7],
[8]. However, the thermal conductivity of aloe in the cooling and thawing process has
never been reported in the literature.
In general, an extensive review of existing methods of measuring of thermal con-
ductivity of food has been carried out by some researchers [9], [10], [11]. The thermal
conductivity measurement methods can be classified into steady-state and unsteady-
state methods [12]. The steady-state methods have the shortcoming of requiring a
long time to equilibrate. Among various unsteady state methods, the line heat source

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 569575, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
570 M. Zhang et al.

thermal conductivity probe is recommended for most food applications because it is

simple, fast, convenient, cheaper and suitable for small sample size [3],[13]. In this
work, an improved thermal conductivity probe system was used to determine the
thermal conductivity of aloe in the cooling and thawing process. Advantages of this
system are the short duration of the experiments, simplicity, high accuracy and rela-
tively small sample requirement.
The objective of this work was to determine the thermal conductivity of aloe by a
proposed probe measurement system in the cooling and thawing process.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Materials

The aloe leaves grown better were obtained from local market at Yangpu district of
Shanghai, China. The homogeneity tissue in the middle of aloe leaves were chosen to
determine because the tissue of aloe was different at various place. Three groups of
aloe leaves bodies were placed in a constant temperature cabinet (Shanghai Precision

Instrument CO., LHS-100CL, 0.5 precision) of temperature from -11 to 20 to
ensure the initial temperature of sample was constant and uniform to facilitate the
determination of thermal conductivity at different temperature conditions. Three rep-
licates of each sample were used for each run and each run was repeated at least three
times. The thermal conductivity values obtained were the average values of nine
measurements under the same conditions.

2.2 Method

The probe measurement system which was based on the idealized non-steady state
transient heat conduction model was proposed to determine the thermal conductivity

of aloe tissue in the cooling process from 20 to -11 , and in the thawing process

from -11 to 20 . The measurement system consisted of a designed thermal con-
ductivity probe, DC power supply, multimeter (Keithley data acquisition), a constant
temperature cabinet and controlled circuit system. A copper wire coated with a thin
electrical insulation layer put inside the probe was used as heating element and meas-
uring element in this experiment [14]. The probe was inserted into the measured aloe
tissue which had been put into the constant temperature cabinet for four hours to keep
a desired uniform temperature. An invariableness voltage was applied across the cir-
cuit system to cause the temperature rise of the copper wire inside the probe. This
resulted in the temperature rise of probe tube and around aloe tissue in turn. The heat
would transfer from the copper wire to the aloe tissue. As a result, the temperature of
copper wire would change according to the correlation of copper resistance and its
temperature. The weak output voltage signal from the electric bridge would be ampli-
fied and input the computer to be handled. And then the slope of output voltage and
time of natural logarithm was obtained to calculate the thermal conductivity of aloe
tissue according the equation (1)
U3 d(V )
m = C (1)
Rb2 d(lnt )
 Determination of Thermal Conductivity of Aloe in the Cooling and Thawing Process 571

0 R0
Where C = was instrument constant of the probe (/mKs), which only related
64L
with the probe material, length and had nothing with the heating power and testing
temperature of the testing system [15]. 0 was the copper electric resistance's tem-
perature coefficient at 0 (K -1
). R0 was the electric resistance value of the copper

electric resistance at 0 (). L was the effective length of the probe (m). V was the
output electric voltage of the electric circuit (V). t was heating time(s). m was the
thermal conductivity of sample(W/mK). U was the electric voltage of power supply
(V). Rb was the initial electric resistance value of probe ().
The thermal conductivity probe apparatus had the merits of rapidity, accuracy,
online measurement, and small sample requirement, which had been described by
Zhang [16]. The apparatus was firstly calibrated with a sample of known thermal
conductivity before testing thermal conductivity of aloe at different temperature. Here
glycerin was chosen as the calibration sample for its higher viscosity. The thermal
probe was inserted into the glycerin sample that filled the sample holder. The output
voltage signal V tested by the measurement system and was fed into a computer.
And the curve of V-lnt could be drawn. According to the least-squares method, the
slope of d (V)/d (lnt) could be obtained. Then the instrument constant of the probe
could be obtained by Equation (1). The measurement accuracy of the apparatus was
checked by determining thermal conductivities of ultra pure water (resistivity 18.4

Mcm) at temperatures ranging from -15 to 20 . After the accuracy of the appa-
ratus was tested, the thermal conductivities of aloe tissue in the cooling process were

determined at desired temperatures from 20, 10, 5, 3, 1, -1, -3, -5, -7, -9 to -11 .
Then the thermal conductivities of aloe tissue in the thawing process were determined

at desired temperatures from -9, -7, -5, -3, -1, 1, 3, 5, 10 to 20 , respectively.

3 Results and Discussions

3.1 Validation of Measurement System

In order to validate the proposed method and the experimental design, the standard

samples of water and ice were tested from -15 to 20 . Each sample was measured
three times under the same conditions and the average value was calculated as thermal
conductivity of the sample. An example of such profiles of output voltage was shown
in Figure 1. The best fitting of the linear part of the output voltageLn (time) history
was chosen optimizing the R2 correlation coefficient, disregarding the initial and the
final points. During the experiments, the maximum temperature rise of the heated

probe was controlled within 2 .
The experimental results were shown in Figure 2 with comparison to the recom-
mended values [17]. The results showed the agreement between the measured and the
recommended values. The maximum of relative error with reference values was
2.93% and the mean relative error was 1.51%. The accuracy of the measuring appara-
tus was satisfactorily accepted in this experiment.
572 M. Zhang et al.

0.005

Output voltage(V)
0.004
0.003
0.002
0.001
0
-2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
Ln(time) (s)

Fig. 1. Output voltage and temperature rise profiles in the measurement

3
Thermal conductivity (W/mK

2.5 Measured value

Recommended value
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
-15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20
Temperature ( )
Fig. 2. Comparison of measured and recommended values of pure water

3.2 Measured Thermal Conductivities of Aloe in the Cooling and Thawing

Process

Using the calibrated probe measurement apparatus, the thermal conductivities of aloe
tissue were determined in the cooling process from 20 to -11 and in the thawing

process from -11 to 20 . The tested thermal conductivities of aloe were showed in
Figure 3. The thermal conductivity of normal aloe issue which was not subjected to
the frozen injury was bigger than that of denatured aloe issue which had been sub-
jected to frozen injury at the same temperature.
The developing tendency of thermal conductivity of aloe in the cooling process and
in the thawing process was shown as Figure 4 and Figure 5. In the cooling process, it
showed that the thermal conductivities decreased with temperature dropping over the
freezing point, and rapidly increased at the freezing point. The thermal conductivities
increased with the temperature dropping below the freezing point. Because the water
is the main component of aloe tissue, the thermal properties of aloe were similar to
that of water. The thermal conductivity of water decreased with temperature dropping
over the freezing. The thermal conductivity of water increased at the freezing point
because of appearance of phase transition. Thermal conductivity of ice decreased with
Determination of Thermal Conductivity of Aloe in the Cooling and Thawing Process 573

Thermal conductivity (W/mK

1.4
1.2 in the cooling process
1 in the thawing process
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
-11 -9 -7 -5 -3 -1 1 3 5 10

Temperature ( )

Fig. 3. Determined thermal conductivities of aloe

Fig. 4. Determined thermal conductivities of aloe in the cooling process

Fig. 5. Determined thermal conductivities of aloe in the thawing process

574 M. Zhang et al.

the temperature increasing. Variation of thermal conductivity of water within aloe

tissue influenced the variation of the thermal conductivity of aloe. In the thawing
process, it showed that the thermal conductivities decreased with the temperature
increasing below the thaw point, which was similar to that of in the cooling process.
But over the thaw point, the thermal conductivities decreased with the temperature
increasing over the thaw point, which was different with that of in the cooling proc-
ess. It was probably for the extreme dehydration of cytoplasm of aloe tissue. The
protein structure and the membrane system in the aloe cell were damaged. It resulted
in water loss of aloe tissue in the thawing process.

4 Conclusion
The proposed tiny heat probe test system allowed accurate and reliable measurement
of thermal conductivity in a given range to be obtained, which was used to determine

the thermal conductivities of aloe at different temperatures from -11 to 20 . The
results showed that the thermal conductivities increased with temperature over the
freezing point. The thermal conductivities rapidly increased below the freezing point
and it increased with the temperature decreasing. The thermal conductivities de-
creased with temperature below the thaw point. The thermal conductivities rapidly
decreased over the thaw point and it decreased with temperature. The thermal conduc-
tivity of aloe in the cooling process was greater than that in the thawing process at the
same temperature and gave an explanation from the changes in tissue microstructure.
These studies could give help to the storage and processing, the engineering calcula-
tions in the course of freezing of aloe, and give foundations for the future study of the
impact of frost on the aloe.

Acknowledgments. Funding for this research was provided by the Natural Science
Foundation of China, Grant No 30771245 and Leading Academic Discipline Project
of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, Project No J50704.

References
1. Che, G., Qi, H.L., Yang, H.T., Wan, L.: Journal of Heilongiiang First Land Reclamation
University 19, 47 (2007) (in Chinese)
2. Delgado, A.E., Gallo, A., De Piante, D., Rubiolo, A.: Journal of Food Engineering 31, 137
(1997)
3. Sweat, V.E.: Engineering properties of foods. Marcel Dekker, New York (1995)
4. Rahman, S.: Food Properties Handbook. CRC Press, Boca Raton (1995)
5. Liang, X.G., Zhang, Y.P., Ge, X.S.: Meas. Sci. Technol. 10, 82 (1999)
6. Saravacos, G.D., Maroulis, Z.B.: Transport properties of foods. Marcel Dekker, New York
(2001)
7. Ali, S.D., Ramaswamy, H.S., Awuah, G.B.: Journal of Food Process Engineering 25, 417
(2002)
8. Martins, R.C., Silva, C.L.M.: Journal of Food Engineering 63, 383 (2004)
9. Blackwell, J.H.: J. Appl. Phys. 25, 137 (1954)
10. Reidy, G.A., Rippen, A.L.: Trans. ASAE 14, 248 (1971)
 Determination of Thermal Conductivity of Aloe in the Cooling and Thawing Process 575

11. Choi, Y., Okos, M.R.: Transaction of ASAE 26, 305 (1983)
12. Nesvadba, P.: Journal of Food Engineering 1, 93 (1982)
13. Carson, J.K., Lovatt, S.J., Tanner, D.J.: Predicting the effective thermal conductivity of un-
frozen, porous foods. Journal of Food Engineering 75, 297 (2006)
14. Cheng, S.X., Jiang, Y.F., Liang, X.G.: Meas. Sci. Technol. 5, 1339 (1994)
15. Zhang, H.F., Zhao, G., Ye, H., Ge, X.S., Cheng, S.X.: Meas. Sci. Technol. 16, 1430 (2005)
16. Zhang, M., Zhao, H.Z., Xie, J., Sun, Z.Q., Zhang, B.L.: Journal of Agricultural Machin-
ery 37, 90 (2006) (in Chinese)
17. Chen, Z.S., Ge, X.S., Gu, Y.Q.: Thermophysical Property Measurement. USTC Press,
Hefei (1990) (in Chinese)
 Development and Application of Computer Assisted
Breeding System in Rabbit Breeding Farm*

Xibo Qiao1, Hongchao Wu1, Suping Sun1, Mingyong Li2, Zhaopeng Wang2,
Jingui Dong2, and Xinzhong Fan1,**
1
College of Animal Science & Technology, Shandong Agricultural University,
Taian, P.R. China, 271018
sdfxz@163.com
2
Qiaodao Kangda Rabbit Breeding Ltd Co.
Jiaonan, P.R. China, 266400

Abstract. In order to meet the requirement of national modern rabbit husbandry

and breeding management, based on animal breeding theory and the computer
application technology the Modern Rabbit Management Software that can run
on Windows9X/Me/NT/2000 /XP was programmed with Visual FoxPro9.0,
which could enhance veracity and efficiency of selection & breeding of rabbit.
The software could perform the selection of rabbit, the request of breeding and
the tasks of production management for different scale rabbit farms. The soft-
ware show its convenience to operation and efficiency to breeding management
from the using in six rabbit farms, which had great auto-action to implement
production management automatization of rabbit farms and improve the
efficiency of breeding.

Keywords: Rabbit breeding, Software, Management system, VisualFoxPro9.0.

1 Introduction

With the development of rabbit husbandry in recent years, the rabbit farm scale is
getting larger and larger. At the same time, much more breeding data and production
management information need to be analyzed and processed timely. Breeding farm
need to use scientific management and advanced breeding technology to improve the
population quality and culture efficiency, which were difficult by the traditional
method. With the maturing of computer science, almost any information can be digital
processed by modern information technology. Whats more, it is low cost, high storage
capacity, high-fidelity and fast computing speed. At the same time, modern information
technology can be networked in the information superhighway, thus breaking the tra-
ditional time and space view, and then effectively reducing the time and space distance.
So the enterprise management information is an important means of realizing the
management of modern rabbit breeding farm to be scientific and standardization. And

*
The research was funded by the Project of Kangda Meat-type Rabbit Hybrid-lines Breeding.
**
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 576581, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Development and Application of Computer Assisted Breeding System 577

mass data information of breeding rabbit is a reliable guarantee to improve the accuracy
of rabbit breeding. Therefore, according to the management of breeding rabbit farm and
the actual situation of rabbit breeding, we have developmented "modern computer
assisted breeding system in rabbit breeding farm", so as to provide an efficient platform
for the realization of scale management of rabbit breeding farm and breeding rabbit
selection.

2 Design of System

2.1 Development Process

The design and development of the system are in accordance with the structured
method. The system is divided into seven parts: problem definition, feasibility study,
requirement analysis, software design, software coding, software testing, software
distribution and maintenance.

2.2 Structural Analysis

2.2.1 Data Flow Diagram of System

Data flow diagram (DFD) is the basic tool for software requirement analysis, which can
describe the data flow and software model effectively and intuitively. Reasonable data
flow can improve the efficiency of software development. The DFD of the system is
shown in Figure 1.

Fig. 1. Data flow diagram of the system

2.2.2 Module Structure of System

Module structure diagram can show the composition of the software structure vividly
and clearly. A scientific and rational module structure diagram can not only effectively
guide the software design but also provide basis and help for future maintenance and
upgrades of the software. According to the modern rabbit breeding and production
578 X. Qiao et al.

management, the structure of the software module is divided into three layers. The first
layer is the main control module used for the control of the five sub-layer control
module, which is formed by functional modules performing different tasks (Figure 2).

Fig. 2. The module structure of the system

2.3 Design of Database

According to the requirement analysis of the system, the design of the database must
give full consideration to the rationality, integrity and security of data structure, which
is in favor of programming and system maintenance and upgrading. On the basis of
these main principles, the software has designed breeding rabbit pedigree, breeding
determination, body identification, breeding records, production management records
and disease prevention records of more than 20 data table and views, and used the index
and database technology that fits SQL (Structured Query Language) relation. All of the
technology can enable the database to have the good independence, sharing and the
extendibility, and simplify the difficulty of program [1, 2].

2.4 Development Tools and Running Environment

The development of this system includes two aspects. One is the establishment and
maintenance of database at the backstage; the other is the development of application
in the front. The former requests the database with strong consistency and integrity,
and high data security, the latter requests the application with complete function and
easy operation. We chose Visual FoxPro, the Windows relational data tools, as the
development tools, and use the relational database languages-SQL to query and ma-
nipulate database. The graphics operating interface of Visual FoxPro has reduced
the workload of programming and improved the operation efficiency and reliability of
the application [1~2]. Thus, Visual FoxPro is the best choice for the development of
the system.
 Development and Application of Computer Assisted Breeding System 579

3 Function of System
The main modules of the system consist of four parts.

3.1 Input, Modify and Delete Breeding Rabbit Data

In this section we can input, modify and delete the pedigree information, performance
measurement records, breeding records and birth records of breeding rabbit. The
module uses the automatic check and transaction processing technology to checkout
unreasonable data, and adopts the strategy that "either a total success, or a total failure"
to deal with misuse, power failures and crashes, etc. so as to maintain consistency and
integrity of the data table.

3.2 Query, Analysis and Output Breeding Rabbit Data

In this section we can query, analysis and output the basic information, performance
measurement data and other records of the breeding rabbit and farm. This module can
not only judge the genetic relationship among breeding rabbits, query and output
various data of the breeding rabbit needed for breeding, but also analysis the whole
situation of rabbit breeding farm, such as age distribution, conception rate, fecundity,
etc. To facilitate the management of rabbit breeding farm, the module provides in-
formation of breeding rabbit on the card for printout, and has designed data interface
with Word and Excel software. Users can print and output the data conveniently and
timely.

3.3 Assess and Rank Breeding Value

After carrying on standardized processing to all data, the system used multi-trait index
selection to estimate the breeding value of breeding rabbit, and then changed it into the
relative breeding value, which were assessed following the species and sex. And then
classified and compared the relative breeding value of breeding rabbit within the group
in accordance with the overall performance, body conformation, reproductive per-
formance and growth performance. The results can not only enable producers to un-
derstand the comprehensive ranking of each breeding rabbit in the current group, but
also be used as a basis for matching breeding rabbit selection.

3.4 Module to Maintain System Functions

The module mainly included the production parameter settings, system data initializa-
tion, data migration, data backup, data recovery, user management and help. The
production arrangement in various breeding rabbit farms were not the same, and might
change with the enhancement of the technical level. The production parameters, such as
lactation, pregnancy testing period, postpartum mating time, were different in different
farms. So many production parameters were listed in the system for technical personnel
to set and adjust, so as to make data processing more suitable for actual production.
System data initialization could calculate and analysis data in time. Data backup and
580 X. Qiao et al.

restore could achieve multiple preservation and improve data security. User manage-
ment (including password changes) was to further strengthen the security of the system
so as to prevent unrelated person to operate the system.

4 Test Run of System

After fully debugged and tested, the software has been running in core breeding farm
and progenitor breed-rabbit field in Qingdao Kangda Rabbit Development Limited
Company. The application shows that this software has the following advantages: (1)
Owing to the beautiful and succinct interface and the simple operation, people with
little computer foundation can operate it easily. (2) The operation of data input and
output is very convenient, and the output of the breeding information is scientific and
rational. (3) The installation, maintenance and upgrade of the system are convenient.
(4) The running of the system is fast and stable, and takes up less system resources. The
system can help personnel do assisted breeding effectively and improve the manage-
ment efficiency of breeding rabbit enterprises.

5 Advice and Discussion

5.1 Strict Data Management

The main contents of data management are to input, modify, delete and backup the data
of breeding rabbit and breeding rabbit farm. The accuracy of the data will directly
affect the statistical analysis and summary. Only the strict and detailed data manage-
ment can ensure every single function module of the software to achieve its function.
Therefore, on data management, we recommend that technical personnel should not
only adhere to achieve long-term continuous management but also enhance data
backup so as to ensure the safety and integrity of data.

5.2 Feedback of Running Information and Demand Change of the Software Is

the Basis of Software Upgrade

Because that breeding rabbit management involves numerous data and complex tech-
nology, and different breeding rabbit farm have different management, the develop-
ment cycle of the software is very long. And then in the process of using the software,
various problems will be exposed. Therefore, software upgrade is required in order to
meet the development and change of modern rabbit breeding and management. Soft-
ware upgrade mostly depends on the feedback of the demand information of the users
and the running circumstances of the software itself.

5.3 Enhance the Establishment of Internet-Based Networked Database

The establishment of internet-based breeding rabbit database can not only extend the
sharing and using of breeding rabbit data, but also conducive to statistical analysis
 Development and Application of Computer Assisted Breeding System 581

and estimation of genetic parameters. On the basis of statistical analysis, technical

personnel can grasp the direction of rabbit breeding easily. Moreover, with the accel-
eration of information superhighway, enterprises gradually begin to improve benefit by
issuing supply and demand information on the web. In fact, the internet-based breeding
rabbit database in our country, which is still quite weak, remains to be strengthened.

References

1. Shi, J., Tang, G.: Development of Visual FoxPro and its Application. Tsinghua University
Press, Beijing (2000)
2. Chang, M.: Database Technology and Development Course. Electronic Industry Press,
Beijing (2000)
 Development of a Web-Based Information Service
Platform for Protected Crop Pests

Chong Huang and Haiguang Wang

Department of Plant Pathology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193 P.R. China
Tel.: +86-10-62733877
wanghaiguang@cau.edu.cn

Abstract. With the rapid development of internet technology and protected cul-
tivation in China, it is impending to implement a web-based information service
system to spread professional agricultural knowledge. In this study, a 3-layer
architecture web-based information service platform (ISP) for protected crop
pests was developed using HTML, JavaScript and active server page (ASP).
The platform included the information management module, the aided diagno-
sis module, the module of instructions for pest control, the technology BBS
module, the system management module and the relative references module.
Two logical algorithms, namely, identification key method and fuzzy diagnostic
method, were designed for aided diagnosis of protected crop pests. The ISP
could provide a technological platform for decision makers, agricultural tech-
nique extension workers and farmers. It is favorable to the effective manage-
ment of protected crop pests.

Keywords: Information service platform, protected crop, pest, aided diagnosis.

1 Introduction
In recent years, protected cultivation has been developing rapidly in China. Protected
agriculture could provide off-season vegetable, fruit and fresh flowers to meet peo-
ples increasingly living demand. Meanwhile, protected agriculture has enhanced the
related farmers income, which makes contributions to solving the question of three
agriculture, namely the question of agriculture, countryside and farmers. However,
high-level technique and management are indispensable in protected agriculture.
Therefore, it is very important to spread the professional knowledge of protected agri-
cultural production.
Protected cultivation has important influence on the occurrence and epidemics of
protected crop pests. It provides favorable conditions for the outbreak of the pests. It
makes the pests occur during the off-season or in the areas where they could not occur
before. Especially, the pest problems are very severe in the fields where protected
cultivation has been applying for many years. Protected crop pests could reduce the
crop yield or affect the quality of agricultural products, and then reduce the income of
the farmers. In addition, some pests occurring severely in protected environment

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 582589, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Development of a Web-Based Information Service Platform for Protected Crop Pests 583

could provide initial inoculums for the crops growing in the open fields. Therefore,
the issue of the pests is a main obstacle for the healthy development of protected agri-
culture. To solve this issue, it is important to identify or diagnose the pests in a timely
and accurate manner, and take suitable control measures consequently. However, the
lack of agricultural technique extension workers in China makes farmer training tech-
nical guidance facing many difficulties. Although the farmers could get some knowl-
edge through watching TV, listening to broadcast or reading the technological books,
they could not timely get related professional knowledge or communicate with related
agricultural technique workers, so in most cases they could not solve the problems in
the agricultural production that they have never met before. With the construction of
agricultural informatization in China, internet construction in rural areas is developing
rapidly. Some agricultural technique extension workers in the rural areas and some
farmers can get access to internet conveniently and easily. Especially in the areas
where protected agriculture has been developing well, the economic conditions are
also good so that the extension workers and the farmers could obtain the agricultural
knowledge and solve the problems that they meet in the agricultural production via
internet. With the development and popularization of computer technology, the com-
puters have been widely applied in the researches on plant protection [1, 2]. Some
web-based plant pests information management systems have been developed [3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8, 9].These systems made the spread of agricultural knowledge and the solution
of some practical agricultural problems more convenient and faster.
Using Delphi, we developed Information Retrieval and Aided Diagnosis System
for Protected Crop Pests (IRADS-PCP) on the Windows operation system platform
[10]. IRADS-PCP provided an opening and tree-shaped knowledge database for the
information management of protected crop pests and for the retrieval of this kind of
information in different ways. It is intelligent and useful for the diagnosis and the con-
trol of protected crop pests. However, IRADS-PCP is a software system and could
only be run on personal computer so that it is not very easy and convenient for the
users. In this study, we developed a web-based information service platform (ISP) for
protected crop pests on the base of IRADS-PCP. The use of the internet enables the
users to get information more efficiently and rapidly. The platform can provide the
latest information of protected crop pests and pest control measures to the users so
that they could identify or diagnose the crop pests and take suitable control measures
timely and efficiently.

2 The Structure of the Information Service Platform

2.1 The Web-Based Information Service Platform

The web-based information service platform (ISP) has been designed as a 3-layer
architecture as shown in Fig. 1. The ISP consists of three layers: the user interface
layer, the application layer and the database layer. The user interface layer running on
an internet environment such as the Internet Explorer has been developed by HTML
(Hypertext Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and JavaScript with
Microsoft FrontPage. This layer transfers the users action to the application layer,
and then the result from the application layer could be displayed on the Internet Ex-
plorer. The application layer uses the internet information server (IIS) and active
584 C. Huang and H. Wang

server page (ASP). The IIS can response the requests from the users and send the cor-
responding results back to the users. All users connect the IIS through the internet and
obtain information by submitting queries. The application layer includes some ser-
vices applications and database applications programmed based on ASP. ASP is a
widely-used scripting language that is suited to web development and can be embed-
ded into HTML running on the internet information server. Actions services applica-
tions analyze the users request from the IIS and the results are provided to the IPS
DB algorithm and programs according to the requests. Then the ISP DB applications
return the necessary data to the action services logic and programs. The database layer
has been built on a SQL server which is a relational database management system,
and provides data for information service including the pests information data, re-
search advance data and diagnosis characteristic values data, etc.

Application Layer
(ASP)

Diagnose logic, Database

logic, etc.

User Interface Layer

Database
Internet Explore
SQL
S
Application Layer
(IIS)
Main page
(HTML, CSS, JavaScript)

Fig. 1. The 3-layer architecture adopted in the web-based ISP

2.2 The Main Logical Algorithm of the Web-Based ISP

Two logical algorithms were adopted in the web-based ISP for the aided diagnosis:
diagnose through binary tree structural taxonomic key (TK) and fuzzy diagnosis
(FD).
Some taxonomic keys were designed in the system, in which each item including
three components, namely id1 (serial number of the retrieval item), diagnostic charac-
teristic and id2 (serial number of the retrieval item related to id1) or result. When diag-
nosing the pests, the items will be provided to the user for selection and then be located
to the next item according to the users selection until the result is given (Fig. 2A).
When fuzzy diagnosis style is used by the user, a characteristic table should be
submitted on the Internet Explorer to make the algorithm on the application layer
partly or completely. The structure of the tables was designed by the experts with
considerations of some diagnostic characteristics that are crucial to the pest diagnosis.
The weight coefficient of each characteristic would be evaluated along to their impor-
tance. And then a specific table will be produced for a crop or a type of pest for
 Development of a Web-Based Information Service Platform for Protected Crop Pests 585

diagnosis. The characteristic values of each kind of pest should be added to the data-
base as many as possible by the experts before diagnosing. When diagnosing, the us-
ers select one crop or one type of pests, and then fill a table partly or completely, the
result or the result list will be given with accurate probability (Fig. 2B).

3 The Construction of the Information Service Platform

3.1 The Modules of the Web-Based ISP

The web-based ISP is composed of six modules as shown in Fig. 3: information of the
pests (pest name, symptoms, incidence, control method, and so on, were included in
this module), search and diagnosis (the main module of the system, by which the us-
ers can search a pest or make diagnosis of an unknown pest), instruction for pest con-
trol (some control methods or some management advice for pests was given in this
module), technology BBS (this module provides a open platform for the users and the
experts to exchange their ideas or ask for help), system management (a module spe-
cific to the web manager), and relative references (some research references about the
protected crop pests were collected in this module).

Fig. 2. Logical algorithms of binary tree structural taxonomic key (A) and fuzzy diagnosis (B)
for the aided diagnosis
586 C. Huang and H. Wang

Fig. 3. The structure of the web-based information service platform

3.2 The Functions of the Web-Based ISP

Information service. In the web-based ISP, it is easy for the users to search some
useful information such as pest information, pest control advice, and relative research
papers through our own search engine or by the Google engine. When searching the
information of a specific pest, the pest name is needed. The users can also search the
information of a specific pest by inputting some information such as infested host,
symptom, infesting period, and so on (Fig. 4A), a pest list satisfying the search
conditions will be provided to the users by the platform, and then the users can choose
what they need from the list. Pest control methods and lots of research advances are
also available in the web-based ISP.

Pest diagnosis. Pest diagnosis is the key function of the web-based ISP. It can not
only help the users to determine what the pest is, but provide some advices for them.
When running the algorithms of taxonomic key (Fig. 4B), some pests are given and
some pests are excluded when the diagnosis going on. When some selections and
decisions have been done by the users on the Internet Explorer according to the items
or the figures to run the logical algorithms of diagnosis in the internet information
services, the result will appear on the computer screen (Fig. 4D).

Technology communication. BBS was designed in the web-based ISP enabling the
experts and the users to exchange their ideas about protected crop pests. In the BBS,
the users can ask questions, and the experts can answer the users questions.

System and database management. System management module was designed for
the web administrator. In the registration interface, the administrator inputs the user
name and the corresponding password, and then log in the system management
interface. The administrator can manage the columns of the system and conduct the
data maintenance including adding data, modifying data, deleting data and so on.
 Development of a Web-Based Information Service Platform for Protected Crop Pests 587

Fig. 4. The diagnostic functions of the web-based ISP

4 Conclusion and Discussion

A web-based information service system has been developed for protected crop pests
to provide information service and aided diagnosis for the users including decision
makers, agricultural technique extension workers and farmers. Through this system,
the users can get pests information and control methods. When an unknown pest oc-
curring, the users can also use the function of aided diagnosis to determine what it is
and how to control it. In the web-based ISP, two logical algorithms were designed for
pest diagnosis. One was based on the identification key that was widely used in the
taxonomic. The accuracy of the method mostly depends on the identification key.
And another was a probabilistic diagnosis.
With the development of information technology and the improvement of living
standard, more and more Chinese farmers who are eager to obtain the technology to
instruct their production, can get access to the internet and obtain the agricultural
588 C. Huang and H. Wang

knowledge and the technology guidance from web-based information service plat-
form. The platform we developed could promote the spread and the popularization of
the knowledge about protected crop pest and could efficiently relieve the shortage of
agricultural experts and agricultural technique extension workers.
In further studies, more pest information would be added into the platform. And
the platform could provide video information in addition to the texts and the images.
The function of image assistant diagnosis could also be added into the platform so
that the users could get diagnosis result when they upload one image of an unknown
pest. The platform could combine with Geographic Information System (GIS) to pro-
vide pest information in certain area [11, 12, 13, 14, 15]. With more understanding of
protected crop pests, the function of pest forecast may be added to the platform. Using
pest forecast, occurrence information of protected crop pests could be provided to the
farmers earlier, so they could make enough preparation as early as possible.
Pest management is a part of protected crop production management. Some crop
production management systems have been developed [16, 17]. Most of them contain
the pest management module or subsystem. On the whole, the crop production man-
agement systems make important contribution to crop production management and
improve the level of agricultural production management. In order to drive the devel-
opment of protected crop industry, it is necessary to develop the production manage-
ment system for protected crops on the base of this platform in further researches.

Acknowledgements. This research was supported by Project in the National Science

& Technology Pillar Program during the Eleventh Five-year Plan Period of China
(Grant No: 2007BAD57B02).

References
1. Wang, H.G., Ma, Z.H., Zhang, M.R., Shi, S.D.: Application of Computer Technology in
Plant Pathology. Agriculture Network Information 10, 3134 (2004) (in Chinese)
2. Ren, H.X., Gao, L.W.: Research Progress on Expert System Technology and its Applica-
tion in Plant Protection. China Plant Protection 11, 1114 (2007) (in Chinese)
3. Liu, Q.H., Xiao, M., Li, K.L.: The Wheat Diseases Expert System Based on the Web and
the Implementation Using the Java Technology. Computer Engineering and Applica-
tions 34, 210212, 225 (2003) (in Chinese)
4. Wu, B.G., Wen, L.B.: Expert Consulting System for the Diagnosis, Prevention and Control
of Important Forest Diseases and Insect Pests. Journal of Beijing Forestry University 28,
113118 (2006) (in Chinese)
5. Shao, G., Li, Z.H., Wang, W.R., Zhou, Q.F., Yan, X.J., Zheng, J.Q., Shi, Y.C.: Study on
Vegetable Pests Remote Diagnosis Expert System (VPRDES). Plant Protection 32, 5154
(2006) (in Chinese)
6. Ying, M., Li, S.Q.: Analysis and Research on Web-based Grape Diseases Intelligent Deci-
sion Support System. Journal of Agricultural Mechanization Research 30, 3538 (2008)
(in Chinese)
7. Jin, Y., Shi, X.H., Xiong, X.Y., Cao, X.J., Wei, Y.: Grape Diseases Diagnose Expert Sys-
tem Based on Artificial Neural Network. Computer Engineering and Applications 45, 215
217 (2009) (in Chinese)
 Development of a Web-Based Information Service Platform for Protected Crop Pests 589

8. Tan, S.Q., Yin, F.Z., Zhang, G., Cao, Y.M.: Realization of Long-distance Diagnosis of
Forest Disease and Pest. Journal of Central South University of Forestry & Technology 29,
189192 (2009) (in Chinese)
9. Li, Y.S., Su, F., Hong, L.F., Fu, L.B., Chen, H.: Study and Development on the Informa-
tion Query System of Tobacco Pests & Diseases. Southwest China Journal of Agricultural
Sciences 22, 324328 (2009) (in Chinese)
10. Huang, C., Wang, H.G., Zhang, Y.: Development of Information Retrieval and Aided Di-
agnosis System for Protected Crop Pests. Journal of Agricultural Mechanization Re-
search 32, 139142 (2010) (in Chinese)
11. Yang, Z.F., Liu, G., Ma, Y.X., Liu, W.: Research on Fruit Tree Plant Diseases and Insect
Pests Publication System Based on WebGIS. Journal of Agricultural University of He-
bei 28, 8891, 96 (2005) (in Chinese)
12. Wang, A.C., Miao, T.Y., Cao, J.: Study of Web-based Expert System for Control Diseases
and Insects in Forest. Computer Technology and Development 18, 228231, 235 (2008)
(in Chinese)
13. Gong, Y.P., Huang, W.J., Pan, Y.C., Xu, X.G., Liu, L.Y., Wang, J.H., Yan, G.J.: Construc-
tion of a WebGIS-based Forecast System of Crop Diseases and Pests. Journal of Natural
Disasters 17, 3641 (2008) (in Chinese)
14. Li, F.J., Liu, X.J., Jing, H.Y., Cao, W.X., Zhu, Y.: Study on WebGIS and Knowledge
Model Based Decision Support System for Disease-pest-weed Management in Wheat.
Journal of Triticeae Crops 29, 934940 (2009) (in Chinese)
15. Liu, T.H., Gao, M.X., Wang, L., Li, X.: The Study and Construction of Winter-Jujube Pest
and Disease Information Forum Based on WebGIS. Northern Horticulture 2, 232234
(2010) (in Chinese)
16. Qiu, J.J., Xiao, Y.N., Dai, Y.M., Hu, X.N., Wang, R., Lin, H.: Cotton Production Man-
agement System Based on the Cotton Plus Model for Xinjiang and Huang-Huai-Hai Re-
gion in China. Transactions of CSAE 18, 161164 (2002) (in Chinese)
17. Li, J.Y., Suo, X.S., Zhang, Z.P., Zhang, S.G.: Expert System of Wheat and Corn Produc-
tion Management Based on WEB. Journal of Agricultural Mechanization Research 27,
128131 (2005) (in Chinese)
 Development of Dairy Cattle Registration and Herd
Management System

Hongchao Wu1,2, Xibo Qiao1, Xin Luan1, Biao Li1, Zhongle Chang1,
Jinghe Tan1, and Xinzhong Fan1,
1
College of Animal Science & Technology, Shandong Agricultural University,
Taian, P.R. China, 271018
sdfxz@163.com
2
Shandong University of Traditional Chinese
Medicine Jinan, P.R. China, 250355

Abstract. In order to meet the requirement of dairy cattle breeding and modern
cattle farm management, the dairy cattle registration and herd management sys-
tem was programmed with Visual FoxPro9.0, which can run on Win-
dows9X/Me/NT/2000/XP, to fit the current implemented Canadian dairy cattle
DHI recorders and 9-point linear comprehensive evaluation. Based on data col-
lection and analysis of basic herd information and individual information on milk
production, reproductive performance, body type score, health status, feeding
and progeny performance, the system can be used for herd management, cow
evaluation and breed registration, intelligent mating selection and suggestion for
improving farm management. The application in several different scale farms
shows it can improve the efficiency of farms management and cattle breeding
significantly.

Keyword: Dairy cattle, Registration, Management software, Visual FoxPro.

1 Introduction

Modern breeding and production of dairy cattle is an open system with a long span
time, a lot affecting factors and much complex structure, which depends on the appli-
cation of accurate and systematic data management and computer software technology.
Compared with the North American and European countries, China dairy cattle
breeding started later and had poor foundation. The organization management was
distemperedness, and software used in cattle registration and herd management was
less. The collection and management of breeding and production data were
relied on manual in small dairy farms, which was not only consuming time no guar-
anteeing the normative of data, but also inconveniencing statistical analysis. With the
rapid development of China dairy husbandry recently, the scale and level of dairy farms
have been continuously improved. New dairy cattle breeding and production

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 590593, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Development of Dairy Cattle Registration and Herd Management System 591

management system is necessary to meet the demand of Dairy Cattle Breeding program
for the extension of Canadian dairy cattle DHI and 9-point linear comprehensive
evaluation.

2 System Design

2.1 System Design Object

Referencing the existing hardware and software foundation in our country, the system
was programmed with Visual FoxPro9.0, combining with modern dairy cattle produc-
tion and management techniques and the requirement of dairy cattle breeding.
According to the modularization method of "I-P-D", relational database technology
and theory of structural life cycle method were applied to ensure the rationality, in-
tegrity and security of data structure and the stable operation of the system. It has many
functions such as collection of dairy cattle breeding and production data, dairy cattle
registration, daily management, semen management and assisted matching. By using
the system, technical personnel can determine the direction of dairy cattle improvement
according to the analysis of performance and body type, arrange daily tasks and make
production report in view of the dairy production rhythm, and do auxiliary production
management in dairy cattle farms.

2.2 System Module Design

Module structure was divided into three layers: control module, Sub-control module
and functional module. Every module was related to key management content of dairy
cattle breeding. System module structure is shown in Figure 1.

3 Function of System

3.1 Password and Permission

Each operator will have own password and permission, which is effective to prevent
illegal and ultra vires operation, and make authorization more impartial and authoritative.

3.2 Data Input, Validation and Transformation

The information of production management in cattle farm includes the data of propa-
gation, milking production, the dry period and cattle registration, etc. In view of the
statistical analysis of the information, technical personnel can discover and solve
problems in production in time. For some relatively fixed data or information, users can
easily select them with mouse. The system can automatic check the data inputted by
users. When the data is unreasonable it can give warning and prompt timely. Mean-
while, the system can provide a data interface to invoke data with other formats, modify
and transform them promptly.
592 H. Wu et al.

3.3 Image Acquisition, Call and Management

It is a difficult problem to easily manage images for non-software professional. The

system applies a series of procedures to identify different kinds of images, automatic
search images with the same prefix name based on cattle numbers and display the card
in the cattle file accurately. Operators only need to get digital photos of cows, turn the
prefix name to the corresponding cattle number, and then transfer them to the systems
picture folder. The management of images becomes simple and effective.

3.4 Body Type Identification and Results Show

According to 9-point linear comprehensive evaluation of Canada, technical personnel

can input the data of 24 traits and 39 common defects of 5 parts about dairy cattle.
Integral and partial score are calculated shown by columnar diagram with standard
deviation from average, which is very direct and visual, meeting the international
popular practice.

3.5 Data Query, Collection and Output

Users can timely change the information according to the change situation of dairy
cattle and achieve a combination of inquiry in variety of conditions. Query results can
be directed to the printer or the other format files. SQL statements and query optimi-
zation technique of RUSHMORE were applied to make the query speed fast as far as
possible.

3.6 Notice of Daily Management Tasks

Daily management and determination of dairy cattle is a very complex matter, because
the management of dairy cattle has long cycle and massive data. The system can
forecast dry period, calving time and the cows need to be measured and improve dairy
management efficiency.

3.7 Management of Transference, Mobilization and Elimination

In daily management, transference, mobilization and elimination of dairy cattle are very
universal. In order to facilitate the daily management, the system provides of mobility
management module, which is close to the reality, and manages kinds of data rationally.

3.8 Semen Managing and Assisted Matching

The system has set up the module of bull/semen registration. Technical personnel can
input all the bull pedigree, photos, body conformation, production performance,
breeding value, etc., and achieve the information of all bulls so as to choose the most
appropriate one to mate cow. The module of assisted matching can provide a list of
unrelated bulls automatically in view of cow pedigree and performance characteristics.
 Development of Dairy Cattle Registration and Herd Management System 593

3.9 Maintenance and Help

The software not only has initialization and running environment settings, but also
applies two database mechanisms: transaction processing and data cache. Log disposal
technology was used, in order to ensure the security and stable operation of the system.
A detailed manual was prepared for operators providing the using method of each
module and some knowledge of dairy cattle breeding.

4 Popularization and Application

At present, the system has been installed and popularized in ten dairy cattle farms and
farming communities in shandong province, such as the first and second dairy cattle
breeding farms of Jinan Jiabao, the Tianyuan dairy cattle farm in Mingshui, etc. It has
been proven that this software has many advantages: (1) Owing to the succinct interface
and the simple operation, people with little computer foundation can operate it easily.
(2) The operation of data input and output is very convenient, and the data can be
transformed among different formats. (3) The installation, maintenance and upgrade of
the system are convenient. (4) The running of the system is fast and stable, and takes up
less system resources. In a word, the system can meet the requirements of dairy cattle
registration, breeding and production and improve the management efficiency. How-
ever, in our country, the application of dairy cattle breeding management software still
belongs to the starting stage. The management of most dairy cattle farms is not stan-
dardized. The production arrangement in various farms is not the same, and might
change with the enhancement of technical level. In order to adapt to the requirements of
modern dairy cattle breeding and production management, we should study the inter-
nationally advanced procedure and strengthen the interaction with users to enhance the
function of software.

References

1. Sun, C., Han, Z.: Chinese version programming foundation and demonstration of Visual
FoxPro6.0. Electronic Industry Press, Beijing (2001)
2. Wang, G., Han, Z., et al.: Development of a software for data management on dairy farm.
Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine 35(9), 1516 (2003)
3. Li, Y.: Design of computer management system on dairy farm. China Dairy Cattle (4), 14
(1999)
Development of the Information Management System for
Monitoring Alien Invasive Species

Hui Li1, Ningning Ge1, Lingwang Gao1,, Zuorui Shen1, Guoliang Zhang2,
Zhiyuan Zang3, and Yi Li3
1
IPMist Lab, College of Agriculture and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University,
Beijing, P.R. China, 100193
Tel.: +86-10-62731884
lwgao@cau.edu.cn
2
Institute of environment and sustainable development in agriculture, The Chinese Academy of
Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), Beijing, P.R. China, 100081
3
Beijing Candid soft Technology Co. Ltd. Beijing, P.R. China, 100083

Abstract. One of the effective methods to prevent the excessive extending of

alien invasive species is to really master their epidemic trends and to take ap-
propriate measures to control them. So, the information management system for
monitoring alien invasive species based on the integrated technology was de-
veloped to provide the information services for the governments, experts and
farmers. The main modules of the system are the sub-system of investigation data
management and the sub-system of real-time epidemic reporting in new ex-
tending area. In the investigation data management sub-system, the dynamic data
of the invasive species in invaded areas can be input into the system. And in the
sub-system of real-time epidemic reporting in new extending area, the epidemic
information can be reported in E-mail, telephone-voice, short message, voice
mail, videoconference or other format with users telephone, cell phone, personal
computer, and personal digital assistant(PDA) based on the integrated technol-
ogy. The system built the information exchanging bridges among the govern-
ments, experts and farmers, letting them to make more effective decisions.

Keywords: the alien invasive species, the epidemic situation, multipath report,
integrated technology.

1 Introduction
At present, the situation of alien invasive species is very serious in China. The whole
country except Tibetan plateau in remote areas has been threaten or been effected by the
alien invasive species in variant degrees [1]. Cattaus study highlights the implications
of conservation of native species and also describes the importance of effects that in-
vading species have on the native species, especially those that are endangered, because
the subtle influences on behavior may have an important significance on population
density [2]. Pine wood nematode had extended into Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Shandong
and Guangdong in 1999, making 15 million trees cumulatively die [3].

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 594599, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Development of the Information Management System 595

Till present a lot of research has been done. Darrens research on the interactions
between a biological control agent (Cleopus japonicas) and its plant host (Buddleja
davidii). It is based on a mess of data, which are precise and reliable and successive
three years data from 2007 to 2009[4]. And some risk assessment models are intro-
duced for preventing alien invasive species. But the reliability of the total risk score
clearly depends on the quality of the available data and the experience of the assessor.
The key principle of international environment law is to prevent the risks and harms
before the insertion of the alien invasive species [4]. The exact investigation data will
help people put the theoretical principle into the factual effect. And they directly in-
fluence the macro decision of the harmful biological control [5].
With the rapid development of the computer and information technology, the agri-
culture in China gets an opportunity of rapid progress. On the fields of agricultural
production and management, computers, as a resource, take a prominent role by its high
speed and large storage, retrieval convenience and quick transmission of information
[6]. From a Japanese report about the computers application on the alien invasive
species, because of their potentially wide spatial coverage, an integrated information
system that presents their epidemic situation needs to be developed [7]. In addition, the
integrated technology mixes sensors, computers, and communication devices and un-
ceasingly change the ways of precision agriculture [8].
In this paper, the development of the information management system for moni-
toring alien invasive species based on the integrated technology was reported. The
system can provide information services for the governments, experts and farmers with
the data of occurrence and dissemination of the alien species and set an entire set of
information interaction in them.

2 Designing of the System

2.1 Environment for the System Development

The system was developed with PHP5.0 based on the Microsoft Windows XP Profes-
sional Service Pack 2 on PC with Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU3.00GHz, 1.25G EMS,
and 120G HD. MySQL DBMS was employed to provide the support of the data
management in the system. The system can be run on Microsoft Windows
2000/XP/2003 and Linux, etc.

2.2 Structure of the System

The platform consists of six main parts by now: (1) The sub-system of investigation
data management; (2) The sub-system of real-time epidemic reporting in new extend-
ing area; (3) The sub-system of monitoring data acquisition and management; (4) The
sub-system of expert response based on the internet and telecommunications networks;
(5) The sub-system of management system of literature; (6) The sub-system of
administration of experts. This passage mainly introduces the first two parts.
596 H. Li et al.

2.3 The Sun-System of Investigation Data Management

In order to meet the need of scientific research and preventive practice, a lot of epi-
demic data will be put into the multifunctional platform by professional workers in this
field. The epidemic data are mainly divided into three parts. The first part includes the
natural information (for example, the area in which the alien invasive species has oc-
curred.); the second part are about the agricultural information, including crops and
their details; and the last one is the fugacious data-the epidemic information, that is, the
occurrence and hazard information of the alien species (Fig. 1). The system provides
investigators the access to inputting the data and recording the information of them. So,
each datum can cast back to a single recorder insuring the reliability and veracity of the
data in the system.
In addition, the environmental data (including the air temperature, air humidity, soil
temperature, soil humidity, etc.) is recorded with automation recorder and transmitted
to database in the system.

2.4 The Sub-system of Real-Time Epidemic Reporting in New Extending Area

When new extending area of the alien invasive species is found, the information can be
easily concentrated on the platform by sending short messages, calling phone or using
Internet and stored to a stable database in the system. After the reporting information
into the platform, the system would send the information to the related departments
and experts automatically, and the information would be verified by professionals.

Fig. 1. The last part- the epidemic information Fig. 2. The flow chart of epidemic
information reporting
 Development of the Information Management System 597

If it is confirmed as a piece of valid new epidemic information, the administrative

departments, experts, and local departments would hold a consultation meeting to
discuss the emergency and develop specific implementation plans. Emergency
measures would be started up. The detailed process is as fig2. So this sub-system saves
more reporting time from finder to decision maker than paper file reporting. It is quite
significant that any person can access to the platform in time no matter who are you and
where are you.

3 Discussion

3.1 The Superiority of the Platform

Till now a lot of researches have largely been referred to plant physiology, plant
ecology, biology and some prediction modules including the dynamic population of
alien invasive species [9, 10, 11]. But all researches will be based on abundant reliable
data. This is also the fetter of promoting recent research. And any ecological systems
are often very complicated involving non-linear responses to environmental factors and
involving density-dependent processes. And every of the alien invasive species might
have wide potential suitable areas in China. For example Flaveria bidentis, a new exotic
invasive plant originating from South America [12]. The potential extended areas of it
in China, which are estimated by using the CLIMEX software, would contain
Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, Hainan, Fujian, Taiwan, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guizhou,
Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu, and Shanghai provinces. Among these,
Guangdong, Guangxi, Taiwan, Hainan, Fujian, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Chongqing
and part of Xizang are at the high risk [13]. But it is obvious that getting dynamic data
of the alien invasive species is an enormous, intricate and lengthy project. So the su-
periority of the platform lies in inputting and saving dynamic information by computer
and web.
In addition, the multipath information report in the platform, which integrates the
internet, mobile and fixed-line telephone, is very convenient especially for farmers in
rural regions to report the extending situation. No matter which is chosen, the extending
information can be stored in a database and be timely transmitted to related government
departments and experts. This would change the situation that most efficiency infor-
mation in the rural and remote regions cannot be timely transmitted to related depart-
ments. And it also resolves this problem that the alien invasive species, in broad china
area, could be hard timely discovered [14] by widening channels of information (mo-
bile, fix-phone and internet) to the related departments and by arousing the broad
masses.
And by means of these interactive methods the government departments are able to
give some instructive and legal advice to the farmers and experts in this region. Si-
multaneously experts also can provide some actual preventative measures through their
decision-making according to the physiological property of alien species and the
natural conditions of this region. This platform becomes an orderly high-speed infor-
mation cyclic system, which breaks the limitation of geographical space and which
simplifies the procedure of the information report.
598 H. Li et al.

3.2 The Development of the Platform

Remote Sensing, Geographical Information System and Global Positioning System

(3S) would be introduced into the platform which can make epidemic data richer and
more precise. 3S technology has been broadly applied in agricultural data inquiry. For
example, the inquiry of slop soil distribution in indifferent slop grades [15].
And even if farmers and researchers hard drives have filled up with images, maps
and data-filled spreadsheets, we are drowning in information. So we need to accelerate
the process from collecting information into making reliable decisions [8]. It is nec-
essary to add a forecasting support system, an identification system and an expert
decision-making system to the integrated platform, such as a forecasting decision
support system [16], the expert system platform for forecast and prediction of agri-
cultural pests [17], and a management system for rice leaf roller [18].
If this platform can be associated with the related webs, for example, the national
quarantine web and the national agricultural web, it would be more advantageous to
government departments, experts, investigators, and formers. More full information,
more sagacious decisions.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Public Welfare Project from Ministry of Agriculture of
the Peoples Republic of China (Grant No: 200803022 and 200803006).

References

[1] Cai, L., Yu, Z., Wang, J., Wang, D.: Control Alien Invasive Species to Conserve Biodi-
versity. J. Environmental Protection (08), 2734 (2003)
[2] Cattau, C.E., Martin, J., Kitchens, W.M.: Effects of an exotic prey species on a native
specialist: example of the snail kite. J. Biological Conservation 143(2), 513520 (2010)
[3] Zhang, R., Zhang, D., Ye, W., Sang, W., Xue, D., Li, W.: Research Progress and Prospects
of Invasive Alien Species. J. Plant Protection 30(3), 59 (2004)
[4] Kriticos, D.J., Watt, M.S., Withers, T.M., Leriche, A., Watson, M.C.: A process-based
population dynamics model to explore target and non-target impacts of a biological control
agent. J. Ecological Modelling (220), 20352050 (2009)
[5] Xing, A.: Principle of International Law and Its Implementing to Prevent Alien Invasive
Species. J. Ecological Economy (12), 2635 (2006)
[6] Qiang, B.: The application prospect of computer-centered information technology on ag-
riculture. J. Computer and Agriculture (2), 13 (2001)
[7] Kitamoto, A., Nakahara, M., Washitani, I., Kadoya, T., Yasukawa, M., Kitsuregawa, M.:
Information visualization and organization for participatory monitoring of invasive alien
species. In: 20th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications,
pp. 345349. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., New York (2009)
[8] Kitchen, N.R.: Emerging technologies for real-time and integrated agriculture decisions. J.
Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 61(1), 13 (2008)
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[9] Bartomeus, I., Vil, M., Steffan-Dewenter, I.: Combined effects of Impatiens glandulifera
invasion and landscape structure on native plant pollination. J. Journal of Ecology 98(2),
440450 (2010)
[10] Smolik, M.G., Dullinger, S., Essl, F., Kleinbauer, I., Leitner, M., Peterseil, J., Stadler,
L.M., Vogl, G.: Integrating species distribution models and interacting particle systems to
predict the spread of an invasive alien plant. J. Journal of Biogeography 37(3), 411422
(2010)
[11] Stanisci, A., Acosta, A.T.R., Di Iorio, A., Vergalito, M.: Leaf and root trait variability of
alien and native species along Adriatic coastal dunes (Italy). J. Plant Biosystems 144(1),
4752 (2010)
[12] Powell, A.M.: Systematics of Flaveria (F1averimae, Asteraceae). J. Annals of the Missouri
Botanical Garden (65), 590636 (1978)
[13] Bai, Y., Cao, X., Chen, C., Hu, B., Liu, F.: Potential distribution areas of alien invasive
plant Flaveria bidentis (Asteraceae) in China. J. Journal of Applied Ecology 20(10),
23772383 (2009)
[14] Fang, Z., Lu, Y., Wu, Y.: The discussion about investigating the agriculture pest. J. Plant
Quarantine 20(3), 185186 (2006)
[15] Su, G.: The Inquiry of Slop Soil Distribution in Indifferent Slop Grade Based on 3S. J.
Journal of Guangxi College of Education (5), 6365 (2007)
[16] Wu, F., Hua, T.: Design and Implementation of a Forecasting Decision Support System. J.
Journal Harbin UNIV 3(6), 6365 (1998)
[17] Gao, L., Chen, J., Yu, X., Wang, C., Bu, B.: Research and development of the expert
system platform for forecast and prediction of agricultural pests. J. Transactions of the
CSAE 22(10), 154158 (2006)
[18] Hu, Q., Xu, R., Wang, Y., Huang, Y., Yu, Z.: A Management System for Rice Leaf Roller.
J. Journal of Anhui Agricultural College 18(3), 227233 (1991)
 Discriminate of Moldy Chestnut Based on Near Infrared
Spectroscopy and Feature Extraction by Fourier
Transform

Zhu Zhou1, Xiaoyu Li1,, Peiwu Li2, Yun Gao1, Jie Liu1, and Wei Wang1
1
College of Engineering, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, P.R. China
2
Oil Crops Research Institute of China Agricultural Science Research Institute,
Wuhan, P.R. China
zhouzhugcxy@webmail.hzau.edu.cn, lixiaoyu@mail.hzau.edu.cn,
peiwuli@public.wh.hb.cn, gaoyun@webmail.hzau.edu.cn,
liujie11028@yahoo.com.cn, wangwei@mail.hzau.edu.cn

Abstract. As near infrared spectra has the characters of multi-variables and strong
correlations, to solve the problem, Fourier transform (FT) was used to extract
feature variables of shelled chestnuts spectra. FT coefficients and the status of 178
chestnuts were selected as inputs and outputs of the back-propagation neural
network (BPNN) classifier to build a recognition model. For comparison, prin-
cipal component analysis (PCA) was utilized to compress the variables, which
then was introduced as input of the neural network model. The results demonstrate
that FT is a powerful feature extraction method and is better than PCA as a feature
extraction method when employed together with BPNN. When the preprocessing
method of standard normal variate transformation(SNV) was carried out and the
first 15-point FT coefficients were used as the input, an optimal network structure
of 15-6-1 was obtained, where discriminating rates of qualified chestnut, surface
moldy chestnut and internal moldy chestnut in prediction set are 100%, 100% and
92.31%, respectively.

Keywords: Near infrared spectroscopy, Fourier Transform, feature extraction,

BP neural network, chestnut.

1 Introduction

Chestnut is one of the most popular nuts in the world and China is the biggest chestnut
producer. It is reported that the annual yield of chestnuts in China is ca. 9.25105
metric tons (in 2007) which accounts for 75.61% of the total world yield [1]. But
chestnuts, which are rich in carbohydrates and low in fat, are susceptible to getting
moldy after harvest. In China, manual sorting or brine floatation is the primary method
to pick out moldy and spoiled chestnuts, which proves low sorting efficient and high

Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 600607, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Discriminate of Moldy Chestnut Based on Near Infrared Spectroscopy 601

misjudgment rate [2]. Therefore, finding a fast, effective and applicable method to sort
moldy chestnut is urgently required.
Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy can record the response of the molecular bonds
(e.g. CH, NH and OH) of chemical constituents to near infrared radiation and
thereby build a characteristic spectrum that performs as a fingerprint of the sample [3,
4]. Being nondestructive, simply applicable and fast, it requires minimal sample proc-
essing prior to analysis [5]. NIR spectroscopy has become a rapid and well-established
technique for the quantitative and qualitative analysis of agricultural products. However,
NIR spectra typically consists of broad, weak, non-specific, and extensively overlapped
bands, and may have hundreds or thousands of wavelength variables [4, 6]. The use of
all variables for classification purposes is not an adequate strategy because it produces
the so-called curse of dimensionality [7]. Moreover, some of these variables may
include useless or irrelevant information for calibration model like noise and back-
ground, which can worsen the predictive ability of the whole model [8]. Therefore, the
data dimensionality needs to be reduced.
Principal component analysis (PCA) [9-12] and Fourier transform (FT) [13-15] can
be applied to reduce the dimensionality of the NIR data. PCA is data set dependent,
whereas FT is independent of the data set. It means that with PCA a whole data set is
simultaneously treated, while with FT each spectrum is treated individually. If changes
occur in one spectrum, this does not affect the FT of the other spectra, but it does affect
in PCA [13, 14].
In our previous work[2], NIR spectroscopy and PCA were used to discriminate
moldy chestnut. This work aims to study the use of FT to reduce data dimensionality for
discriminate classifier and to compare the results with that of PCA method.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Sample Preparation

Chestnuts used in the experiment were from Macheng, Hubei Province in China. The
weight scope of chestnuts was between 8.50g ~ 20.41g. After purchased, they were
stored according to Chinese commercial profession standard SB/T10192-1993. Sam-
ples were divided into two categories: qualified chestnut and moldy chestnut which
include surface moldy chestnut and internal moldy chestnut, the judgment of which is
made in accordance with GH / T 1029-2002 requirements. To determine internal moldy
chestnut, they should be hulled after spectral measurements. All the samples were laid

at room temperature (25 , 60% relatively humidity) for 24 h to equilibrate to ex-
periment environmental before spectra collection. Finally, 69 qualified chestnuts, 66
surface moldy chestnuts and 43 internal moldy chestnuts were analyzed.

2.2 Spectral Measurement

NIR diffuse reflectance spectra of chestnut samples were collected by a FT NIR spec-
trometer (Vector 33, Bruker Optics, German). The system consists of a gold-plated
integrating sphere, a sample rotator, a 12 mm quartz glass and a PbS detector.
602 Z. Zhou et al.

The FT NIR spectrometer was completely software-controlled by the OPUS soft-

ware Version 5.0 which was provided by Bruker Optics. The spectra of chestnut sam-
ples were acquired between 12000 cm-1 to 4000 cm-1 at 8 cm-1 spectral resolution,
taking the average of 64 scans and were analyzed at room temperature. Three replicates
of each sample were taken and their mean values were calculated by using OPUS.
Reference spectrum for air and dark spectrum were measured and stored prior to
sample spectra measurement.

2.3 Fourier Transform

Fourier transform is usually used in signal processing. An NIR spectrum is a signal

measured in the wavelength domain. FT enables transitions between the wavelength

and frequency domain [13].
If f(1) f(2),..., f (N) represents the recorded spectral values at N equally spaced
wavelengths, denoted by 1, 2, 3, , then, the discrete Fourier transform of the signal is
defined as:
N 1 N 1
F (w)= f (k ) exp( j2 wk / N )= f (k ) [cos( j2 wk / N ) sin( j2 wk / N ) ] (1)
k =0 k =0

With j = 1 and the w =1, 2 , N. ,

After Fourier transform, the magnitude of F (w) is defined as:
12
F ( w) = R 2 ( w) + I 2 ( w) (2)

where R( w) , I ( w) are the real and imaginary parts of F (w) , respectively.

In order to save computing time, the fast Fourier transform (FFT) can be used when
the number of variables equals to 2n, where n is a positive integer.

2.4 Back-Propagation Neural Network

The back-propagation neural network (BPNN), owing to its excellent ability of

non-linear mapping, generalization, self-organization and self-learning, it has been
proved to be of widespread utility in pattern recognition [16-20]. BPNN is a
three-layered feed forward architecture. The three layers are input layer, hidden layer
and output layer. It is trained by repeatedly presenting a series of input/output pattern
setting to the network. The network gradually learns the input/output relationship of
the interest by adjusting the weights to minimize the error between the actual and pre-
dicted output patterns of the training set. The trained network is usually examined
through a separate set of data called the train set to monitor its performance and valid-
ity. When the mean squared error (MSE) of the train set reaches a minimum, network
training is considered complete and the weights are fixed [21]. There are many training
algorithms for back propagation neural network, for example, GaussNewton method,
gradient descent algorithm and so on. However, an inappropriate algorithm
 Discriminate of Moldy Chestnut Based on Near Infrared Spectroscopy 603

can cause a wide variety of performance problems, e.g., divergence, slow convergence
or local minimum trapping. LevenbergMarquardt training (LM) algorithm was
originally designed to serve as an intermediate optimization algorithm between the
GaussNewton method and gradient descent algorithm, and it addressed the limitations
of each of those techniques [2, 21].
In this paper, the training of the BPNN was done with LM algorithm. The transfer
function of hidden layer was tansig function and the one of output layer was logsig
function. The train function was trainlm. The goal error was set as 0.001. The time of
training was set as 1000. The optimal architecture of neural network can be achieved by
adjusting nodes of the hidden layer.

3 Results and Analysis

3.1 Processing of NIR Data

Figure.1 shows average spectrums of the qualified chestnut, surface moldy and the
internal moldy chestnuts between the wave number range from 12 000 cm-1 to 4 000
cm-1. As it can be seen from the figure, the spectral shape of three chestnut samples has
little difference, and the spectrum of the qualified and internal moldy chestnuts overlap
in the range of 12000~9000 cm-1, which increases the difficulty of identifying the
internal moldy chestnut. For reducing noise, offset and bias, 6 kinds of preprocessing
techniques including smooth(SavitzkyGolay method, gap size = 9 data points), vector
normalization (VN), max-min normalization (MMN), standard normal variate trans-
form (SNV), first derivative(SavitzkyGolay method, gap size = 17 data points, FD)
and no process(NP) were applied to the original spectrum respectively. The experi-
ments were carried out on a range of 11895 cm-1 to 4000 cm-1 with a total of 2048 data
points so that FFT could be used to the spectrums.

Fig. 1. Chestnuts mean spectra from raw data

604 Z. Zhou et al.

3.2 Fourier Feature Extraction of Chestnuts NIR Spectrum

When BP neural network applies to pattern recognition, and if the input has too many
characteristic quantities, it will reduce the network training speed and efficiency, and
lead to non-convergence in severe case. McClure [22] pointed out that if one transforms
the NIR data, most of the information is in the range of the first 50 Fourier coefficients
and the remainder can be discarded because it is mainly noise, so fewer Fourier coef-
ficients can instead of the original spectral data, make the spectral dimension reduction.
In this paper, we applied FT to transforming the processed NIR data from the
wavelength domain into the frequency domain, and we used the first 5, 10, 15, 20, 25,
30, 35, 40, 45, 50 points of Fourier coefficients in the Fourier spectra respectively as the
input of the BP neural network classifier.

3.3 The BPNN Predicting Model

19 qualified chestnuts, 18 surface moldy chestnuts and 13 internal moldy chestnuts

from each variety were selected randomly as the prediction set. The remaining 128
samples (50 qualified chestnuts, 48 surface moldy chestnuts and 30 internal moldy
chestnuts involved) were used as the training set to build the training model which was
validated by the samples in the prediction set.
Fourier coefficients after different preprocessing were respectively used as the input
of BPNN to build the model, with the figures 0 and 1 expressed the qualified chestnuts
and moldy chestnuts separately. Deviation value was set to 0.1, if the difference of
true value and the predicted value was between 0.1, it meant the correct identification,
otherwise meant the mistake. Trial-and-error method were used to determine the
number of node in hidden layer, when the highest correct discriminating rate reached,
the best network structure were obtained.
Fig.2 shows the optimal results of BP neural network classifier with different
processing methods and numbers of Fourier coefficients. Although the correct classi-
fication rates vary to processing and numbers of Fourier coefficients, the overall correct

Fig. 2. The classification results of BPNN as a function of the number of the selected Fourier
coefficients
 Discriminate of Moldy Chestnut Based on Near Infrared Spectroscopy 605

classification rates are higher than 80%. Since SNV and VN could avoid the effects
caused by chestnut sizes and spectral scattering, the correct classification rates are
higher than the other processing methods.
According to the principle of minimum required network node, table 1 below listed
the parameters when the highest correct classification rates(CCR) acquired under dif-
ferent processing methods and numbers of Fourier coefficients. It showed that, the
qualified chestnut can be fully discriminated under NIR data processing. Different pre-
processing methods such as smooth, SNV, MMN, VN, FD resulted in a greatly different
discriminating rate. The highest discriminating rates of surface moldy chestnut and
internal moldy chestnut were obtained by VN and SNV. The correct discriminating rates
were 100%, 92.31%. When applying original spectrum, the lowest discriminating rate
of surface moldy chestnut was reached, which was 88.89%. The lowest discriminating
rate of internal moldy chestnut obtained by FD method was only 76.92%.

Table 1. Parameters and CCRs of different preprocessing techniques under FT method

Number of Hidden Prediction set /% Training set /%

Method Fourier layer
moldy moldy
coefficients nodes
qualified surface internal qualified surface internal

NP 15 6 100 88.89 84.62 98 100 100

smooth 15 9 100 100 84.62 100 100 100
MMN 25 29 100 100 92.31 100 100 100
VN 30 17 100 100 92.31 100 100 100
FD 15 12 100 94.44 76.92 100 100 100
SNV 15 6 100 100 92.31 98 100 100

3.4 Comparison with PCA

In our previous work[2], six processing methods including smooth(SavitzkyGolay

method, gap size = 9 data points), vector normalization(VN), min-max normaliza-
tion(MMN), standard normal variate transformation(SNV), multiplication scattering
correctionMSCand first derivative(SavitzkyGolay method, gap size = 17 data
points, FD), were processed to the original spectrum, then PCA method was used to
reduce the dimension, and BPNN was utilized to establish the model. Table 2 below
listed the recognition rate and parameters of BP neural network.
From a comparison of the results of table 1 and table 2, it was obvious that both PCA
and FT achieve acceptable results, but FT has higher correct classification rates. By
using PCA method, we can get the optimal predicting model when the NIR data was
pretreated by the vector normalization (VN). The correct discriminating rates of
qualified chestnut and internal moldy chestnut were 94.74%, 94.74% and 92.31%,
respectively. Obviously, the results were lower than the way that they were extracted
by FT. However, the network structure of the BP model with principal component
analysis is 7-4-1, which should be simpler than the 15-6-1 with Fourier feature extrac-
tion. Thus, for a further study, Fourier coefficients should be optimized by genetic
algorithms (GA).
606 Z. Zhou et al.

Table 2. Parameters and CCRs of different preprocessing techniques under PCA method

Hidden Prediction set /% Training set /%

Method Number layer
moldy moldy
of PCs nodes
qualified surface internal qualified surface internal

smooth 4 14 89.47 94.44 53.85 96 100 96.67

SNV 5 4 89.47 94.44 76.92 98 97.92 93.33
MSC 5 10 78.95 94.44 84.62 98 100 100
MMN 5 10 68.42 100 76.92 98 100 100
VN 7 4 94.74 94.44 92.31 98 100 100
FD 10 4 84.21 94.44 84.62 98 100 100

4 Conclusions

The application of BP neural network with NIR data, after different processing methods
and transformation to FT coefficients, was studied. It was found that the preprocessing
methods and the numbers of FT coefficients affect the CCR of the BPNN classifier.
When preprocessing method of standard normal variate transformation was utilized
and the first 15 point of FT coefficients were used as the input, an optimal network
structure of 15-6-1 was obtained, where discriminating rates of qualified chestnut,
surface moldy chestnut and internal moldy chestnut in prediction set were
100% 100% and 92.31%. It is better than the BPNN model which used vector nor-
malization (VN) processing and PCA methods. As the Fourier feature extraction is not
dependent on the spectral data set, only treats each spectrum individually, therefore, we
recommend applying FT as a dimensionality reduction method in pattern recognition of
NIR data.

Acknowledgement

The financial support provided by Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher
Education of China (Grant No. 20090146110018) was appreciated.

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 Discrimination of Ca, Cu, Fe, and Na in Gannan Navel
Orange by Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

Yao Mingyin, Lin Jinlong, Liu Muhua*, Li Qiulian, and Lei Zejian

Optics-Electrics Application of Biomaterials Lab, College of Engineering,

Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, P.R. China
mingyin800@126.com, suikelmh@sohu.com

Abstract. Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has become a power-

ful tool for the direct analysis of a large variety of materials in order to provide
qualitative and/or quantitative information. However, there is a lack of informa-
tion for LIBS analysis of agricultural products. In this work a LIBS system has
been designed for the discrimination of Ca, Cu, Fe, and Na elements in Gannan
Navel orange. An experimental setup was established by using a Nd:YAG laser
operating at 1064 nm and a grating spectrometer with CCD detector. The LIBS
spectra of pericarps and fleshes of Gannan Navel orange were collected. The
typical spectrum lines of mineral elements Ca,Cu,Fe,and Na were chosen and
identified, and the relative content of four elements in pericarps and fleshes
were compared and analyzed respectively. The results showed that the relative
content of elements Ca, Cu, Fe, and Na in pericarps was more than in fleshes.
The LIBS relative intensity of Na, Fe, Ca, Cu elements in pericarps decreased
in turn, while the LIBS relative intensity of Na, Cu, Ca, Fe elements in fleshes
increased in turn. The experimental results also showed that the relative content
of mineral elements in farm product may be analyzed fast by LIBS, and the
LIBS technique is a novel means for rapid detection the quality of farm product.

Keywords: LIBS, Gannan Navel orange, Mineral elements, Discrimination.

1 Introduction

There are plentiful nutrient elements in fruits. The intake of trace mineral elements
from fruits is one of the most important pathways for the human body to absorb
dietary minerals necessary for the healthy development. Detection and analysis of
trace mineral elements in fruits, and more generally in food, can provide useful
assessment and control for safe and healthy alimentation. However, detection and
analysis of trace and ultra-trace elements in these substances need highly sensitive
detection technique.
Usually, the conventional nutrient elements analysis methods, such as ICP-OES (In-
ductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometer), AFS (Atomic Fluorescence

*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 608613, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Discrimination of Ca, Cu, Fe, and Na in Gannan Navel Orange by LIBS 609

Spectrometry), AAS (Atomic Absorption Spectrometry)[1-3], are comprised by the

following steps: taking a sample from the substance or from a processing product
line to be inspected; transporting it to an inspection device or to a laboratory; preparing
it for chemical analysis; and for determination. The sample preparation for chemical
analysis is a required stage for many analytical techniques, which consists in
transforming the sample into an appropriate form for the analysis. For the elemental
analysis, the solid samples are usually changed to solutions, which carry the analytes
free of organic matter. This step is usually the most time consuming analytical
procedure, in addition to generating toxic residues and increasing the probability of
sample contamination.
Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy(LIBS)is an emission spectroscopy
technique that makes use of a high energy laser pulse to simultaneously prepare the
sample and excite the species. LIBS is employed to determine the elemental
composition of a sample, regardless of whether the sample is a solid, liquid or gas,
with no or little sample pretreatment procedures. Due to its instrumental features,
LIBS is a promising technique for in situ analysis, including direct analysis at the
processing line. During solid sample analysis, its surface is irradiated by a high
energy laser pulse, immediately giving rise to material ablation. The sample ablated
generates a high temperature plasma plume. As a result of the temperature, the ablated
material breaks down into excited ionic and atomic species. The excited species
usually return to their fundamental states, emitting characteristic radiation,
consequently the qualitative analysis of the emission spectrum provides the samples
fingerprint regarding its elemental composition [4-5].
However, performing a quantitative analysis is no simple matter, as the element
emission lines in the LIBS spectrum are closely related with the matrix in which they
are embedded. The matrix effects occur in the LIBS spectra for several reasons,
however the major cause of them is the change of temperature and electron density of
the plasma induced on different matrix targets. This is due to variations in both the
ablation and laser plasma interaction processes, resulting also in possible variations of
plume expansion in the background gas. As a result, different excitation and
ionization levels of plasma species are achieved. This signal feature makes it difficult
to find the appropriate calibration standards for the LIBS methods. In some cases the
appearance of the so-called matrix effects can be reduced by using a multivariate
calibration, internal standard or calibration free method [6-7], however significant
efforts have been made to adapt conventional calibration to LIBS methods. Vincent
Juv [8] analyzed fresh vegetables using ultraviolet nanosecond LIBS. Lilian Cristina
Trevizan [9,10] evaluated the macronutrients and micronutrients in plant materials by
a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. Edilene C.Ferreira [11] detected Ca in breakfast cereals
by LIBS.
In this paper, a new proposal for Ca, Cu, Fe, and Na semi-quantitative and quali-
tative determination in the pericarps and fleshes of Gannan Navel orange using LIBS
was evaluated. The method will provide easy sample preparation and fast measure-
ment for agricultural food products, botanical materials and material of similar
matrix.
610 Y. Mingyin et al.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 LIBS Experimental Setup

The experimental setup sees Figure 1.A Q-switched Nd:YAG laser (BeamTech,
Nimma-200,China) operating at the fundamental wavelength(1064 nm) was em-
ployed. Laser pulses with (2002) mJ, 8 ns pulse width at 10 Hz repetition rate were
generated with a 6 mm beam diameter. The laser pulse was focused on the sample
pellet by a convergent lens with 30 mm diameter and 200mm focal length (China Op-
tical Coating Laboratory, Inc). The 35 mm diameter pellet was placed into a plastic
sample holder in single axes automatic controlled rotation stage that moved in the
plane orthogonal to the laser direction.
The plasma emission was colleted by the spectrometer fiber (1.5 m length, 400 um
core diameter) matching its numerical aperture. The optical axis of the collecting sys-
tem was approximately 45 from the laser axis. A eight-channel model AVS-
Rackmount-USB2 spectrometer (Avantes, France) equipped with echelle optics was
used, which provides the wavelength range between 200 and 1100 nm with a resolu-
tion of 0.09 nm at 200 to 317nm, 0.07 nm at 315 to 417nm, 0.06nm at 415-499nm,
0.08nm at 497-565nm, 0.08nm at 563-673nm, 0.12nm at 671-750nm, 0.13nm at 748-
931nm, and 0.11nm at 929-1050nm.The detector is a 2048 pixel ICCD camera. The
dark current of the ICCD was automatically subtracted from the measured spectral
data. The integration time and the delay time were fixed at 2ms and 1.28 us respec-
tively for all measurements presented in this work.

Fig. 1. LIBS experimental setup

2.2 Samples and Materials

Twenty fresh Gannan Navel oranges were chosen to perform preliminary experi-
ments. The fruits were washed separately with running tap water and further rinsed
twice with distilled water. After washing and natural air drying, the fruits were di-
vided into pericarps and fleshes samples. The samples were chopped and placed in
sample chamber with diameter 35mm.Ten spectra of each sample were collected from
different positions. In order to take in account the fluctuations of the laser, the average
of 10 spectra in each sample was considered as a single measurement.
 Discrimination of Ca, Cu, Fe, and Na in Gannan Navel Orange by LIBS 611

3 Results and Discussions

The plasma was induced on the surface of the pericarps and fleshes in fresh Gannan
Navel orange. To represent the relative concentrations of the analyzed elements, the
ICCD counts

Fig. 2. Typical LIBS spectra of Ca, Cu, Fe, Na in pericarps

ICCD counts

Fig. 3. Typical LIBS spectra of Ca, Cu, Fe, Na in fleshes

612 Y. Mingyin et al.

Table 1. LIBS relative intensity of elements Ca, Cu, Fe, Na in samples

SampleNo. Line intensity/Counts

Cu939.0176nm Ca926.5298nm Fe656.2375nm Na588.995nm
Pericarps fleshes pericarps fleshes pericarps fleshes pericarps fleshes
1 246.36 3.80 287.16 4.15 1641.16 39.38 3825.61 4.63
2 156.53 1.82 177.63 3.43 790.50 12.10 2501.94 0.16
3 259.15 32.46 283.74 38.57 1569.98 228.26 2998.77 75.80
4 251.37 23.24 280.93 26.84 1213.13 63.20 4250.79 6.43
5 316.43 5.13 347.54 7.53 1328.67 58.77 2545.45 14.58
6 217.34 136.04 240.56 160.89 1238.56 1334.13 1866.93 75.24
7 352.93 28.45 392.28 35.42 1929.40 301.64 2420.07 51.18
8 294.21 182.69 315.07 217.40 1697.47 2029.83 3442.79 53.91
9 349.78 99.17 381.74 121.68 1934.49 966.53 3340.14 134.21
10 241.35 125.41 264.24 148.06 1405.67 1479.70 3217.03 40.91
11 278.20 130.75 306.24 153.07 1425.14 891.03 2323.60 82.52
12 274.79 178.92 301.39 211.28 1821.67 2421.02 3589.79 69.62
13 281.24 102.46 309.96 120.43 1907.14 734.30 4333.74 135.00
14 196.65 161.30 213.45 193.51 1003.34 2659.31 1257.58 99.60
15 354.59 135.46 392.45 161.87 2122.61 1090.93 2797.61 66.46
16 231.98 204.62 252.44 247.40 2080.04 204.62 3461.32 247.40
17 340.15 155.16 372.02 188.40 2398.25 1256.42 4298.56 49.59
18 160.05 196.61 175.11 231.49 863.38 2910.38 962.67 106.76
19 310.61 77.22 344.12 93.88 1635.43 766.21 3174.70 50.01
20 238.73 262.34 260.64 317.32 1641.44 4582.29 2906.45 100.86
Mean 535.24 224.30 589.88 268.26 3164.75 2403.00 5951.55 146.45

intensity of Cu at 939.0176nm, Ca at 926.5298nm, Fe at 656.2375nm and Na at

588.995nm were considered for the proposed LIBS method. These lines are chosen
for their high intensities and low fluctuations from a spectrum to another. Typical
spectra of pericarps and fleshes are shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3.Table 1 provides
detailed information of Cu 939.0176nm, Ca 926.5298nm, Fe 656.2375nm and Na
588.995nm in the spectrum of fresh Gannan Navel orange.
From Figure 2, Figure 3 and Table 1, the relative intensity of Ca,Cu,Fe and Na was
higher in pericarps than in fleshes. As for same or similar matrix, the relative intensity
of elements LIBS is proportional to their concentration, so, the accumulation of
Ca,Cu,Fe and Na was obvious in pericarps than in fleshes .Moreover, the relative in-
tensity of elements Cu and Ca was twice in pericarps than in fleshes, and the intensity
of Na was far higher in pericarps than in fleshes. The observation and statistics
showed that the difference of concentration of mineral elements in pericarps and
fleshes.

4 Conclusions
In this work, mineral elements detection, qualitative analysis and semi-quantitative
analysis have been demonstrated in fresh Gannan Navel orange using LIBS tech-
nique. However, works are still needed to be accomplished in order to understand in
detail the plasma generation in a complex matrix such as pericarps and fleshes tissue.
Such a detailed understanding would allow a quantitative analysis of trace elements in
fruits. The results obtained in this work show the potential of the LIBS technique to
provide an interesting tool for detection and analysis of trace elements in fresh fruits
 Discrimination of Ca, Cu, Fe, and Na in Gannan Navel Orange by LIBS 613

and more generally in food. Trace element detection and analysis in fruits represent
important issues for the assessment and the control of food quality and safety, as well
as for the detection and the monitoring of the environment pollutions including heavy
metal charges in soil, water and air.

Acknowledgment. The authors are thankful to key laboratory of modern agricultural

equipment and technology (Ministry of Education & Jiangsu province, Jiangsu
University), Program, for, New, Century, Excellent. Talents in University and
National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.30972052) for financial support.

References
[1] Yao, Y., Chen, Y., Wang, C., et al.: Determination of Thallium and Other Heavy Metals
in Rice by ICP-MS and Assessment on Rice Safety by Thallium Contamination. Food
science 29(7), 386388 (2008)
[2] Winefordner, J.D., Gornushkin, I.B., Correll, T.: Comparing several atomic spectrometric
methods to the super stars: special emphasis on laser induced breakdown spectrome-
try,LIBS,a future super star. J. Anal. At. Spectrom 19, 10611083 (2004)
[3] Boevski, I., Daskalova, N., Havezov, I.: Determination of barium, chromium, cadmium,
manganese, lead and zinc in atmospheric particulate matter by inductively coupled
plasma atomic emission spectrometry(ICP-AES). Spectrochimica Acta Part B 55, 1643
1657 (2000)
[4] Cremers, D.A.: Handbook of Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy. The Atrium,
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[5] Singh, J.P., Thakur, S.N.: Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy. Elsevier, Amsterdam
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[6] Mohamed, W.T.Y.: Calibration free laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) iden-
tification of seawater salinity. Optica Applicata XXXVII(1-2), 519 (2007)
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[8] Trevizan, L.C., Santos Jr., D., Samad, R.E., et al.: Evaluation of laser induced breakdown
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[9] Trevizan, L.C., Santos Jr., D., Samad, R.E., et al.: Evaluation of laser induced breakdown
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[10] Juv, V., Portelli, R., Boueri, M., et al.: Space-resolved analysis of trace elements in fresh
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[11] Ferreira, E.C., Menezes, E.A.: Determination of Ca in breakfast cereals by laser induced
breakdown spectroscopy. Food Control 21, 13271330 (2010)
 Dynamic Modeling on Nitrogen Assignment in Tobacco

Peng Zhao, Yuanyuan Shi, Xinming Ma*, and Shuping Xiong

Henan Key Laboratory for Regulating and Controlling Crop Growth and Development,
Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, P.R. China
zhpddy@163.com, xinmingma@126.net

Abstract. Many external and internal studies in based on the relevant litera-
ture and consult to tobacco experts, based on the experimental research of the
years between 2004 and 2005, the basic model of soil-N of distribution was de-
veloped after analysising the content of nitrogen in the whole plant of tobacco.
The model is designed to simulate dynamically absorption and distribution of
nitrogen for tobacco.The diversification of nitrogen in tobacco is exhibited dy-
namically in the form of curve which originates from the software of Visual
Basic 6.0. The result showed that the simulated value of nitrogen content is not
remarkably different from the measured value in root, stem and leaf of to-
bacco in the level of 0.05,and the simulation value of nitrogen content fit the
measured value very well in the model. It proveds a concerning modulus of
0.9934 that the 1:1 graphical comparison between simulation value and meas-
ured data of nitrogen content in tobacco leaf. The simulated and the measured
agreed perfectfull. The model helps to forecast and conduct the management of
nitrogen fertilizer in tobacco field.

Keywords: Tobacco, Nitrogen, Assignment, Model.

1 Introduction

Tobacco is one of the important cash crops. Nitrogen is the most significant nutritious
element to tobacco, and it has remarkable influences on tobaccos growth and devel-
opment as well as yield and quality. Either insufficiency or redundancy of nitrogen
affects the output and quality of tobacco. An appropriate supply of nitrogen can ensure
the normal growth of the plant and the premium yield of tobacco leaves as well as
good quality of the leaves[1-4]. The distribution of nitrogen in the whole plant is of
great significance; it directly influences the quality of tobacco leaves. The proportion

of distribution of nitrogen in root, stem and leaves is leaves stem root. Different
growing positions of leaves can directly affect the whole content of nitrogen[5]. The
total accumulation of the amount of nitrogen of leaves in different leaf positions is

middle leaves upper leaves lower leaves[6]. During the maturity process of flue-
cured tobacco, the nitrogen accumulation amounts and distribution proportion of stem

*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 614622, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Dynamic Modeling on Nitrogen Assignment in Tobacco 615

increase and the nitrogen accumulation amounts and distribution proportion of leaves
decrease[7].
In the field of crop, visual simulation models of crops have been developed. The
models can also simulate nitrogen dynamic. There are CERES, ORYZA and WHEAT-
GRO at abroad[8-10]. In China, GaoLiangzhi[11] has developed RCSODS; Cao
Hongxin[12] has explored simulation-optimization for wheat population, soil moisture
and nitrogen dynamic. Predecessors mainly focus on wheat, corn and rice, but seldom
focus on tobacco. Based on the dynamic simulation of tobaccos absorption and
distribution of nitrogen, this research aims to provide scientific foundation for the im-
provement of the quality of tobacco through the appropriate utilization of nitrogenous
fertilizer.

2 Materials and Method

2.1 Materials

The materials of the research mainly come from experimental research in the
fields, relevant literature and consult to tobacco experts. They are mainly used to fix
the parameter of the model and to verify the model.

2.2 Field Experiments

Experiment was carried out from 2004 to 2005 in Science and Education Insti-
tute of HAU. The tested variety was Zhongyan101. It was sowed on March 5th, and
transplanted on May 1st. The tested soil was sandy soil. The proportion of the or-
ganic substance of the soil was 0.89%; the content of the nitrogen was 0.669gkg-1;
the content of available phosphorus was 14.25mgkg -1and the content of available
potassium was 70.21mgkg-1. pH value was 8.1. The tobacco was cultivated in
pots. Each pot was filled with 30kg dry soil. The amounts of nitrogenous fertilizer
were set at three levels: 0kghm-2, 45kghm-2and 90kghm-2. The amounts were
repeated three times and 30 plants were dealt with at one time. In the nitrogenous
fertilizer, the proportion of nitrogen in nitric form and in ammonium form was both
50%; the amounts of P 2O5 and K2O were respectively 45kghm-2 and 90kghm-2.
KHNO3 and (NH4)2SO4 were used as nitrogenous fertilizer; Ca(H2PO4)2 was used
as phosphate fertilizer and KHNO3 and K2SO4 were used as potash fertilizer. Ex-

periment was carried out in Fenchen Town, Xiangcheng County, Henan Province.
The tested variety was Zhongyan101. It was sowed on March 1 st and transplanted on

April 25th. The growing method was the same as Experiment . The tested soil
was sandy clay.
In the soil, the proportion of the organic substance was 1.25%; the content of ni-
trogen was 0.925gkg-1; the content of available phosphorus was 16.24mgkg-1 and
the content of available potassium was 78.46mgkg-1. pH value was 7.6.
616 P. Zhao et al.

2.3 Measuring Method

The means of measuring the whole content of nitrogen in tobacco plant: to take
the roots, stems and leaves of the tested tobacco at the respective periods of 30days,
45days, 60 days 75days, 90days and 105days after transplantation. Then dried at
the temperature of 105 and the content of nitrogen in the roots, stems and leaves
measured by semi-microkjeldahl[13].

3 The Description of the Model

3.1 The Description of the Absorption of Nitrogen by Roots

The nitrogen tobacco needed was mainly absorbed by roots. The model didnt take
other ways of absorption such as leaves spraying into consideration. Supposing all
the nitrogen was absorbed by roots.
The total uptake of nitrogen equalized the crop s minimum requirement for nitro-
gen plus the small supplier of nitrogen in the maximum amount of soil.

TNUP=MIN(NDEML+NDEMST+NDEMRT, ANSL DELT) (1)

ANSL represented the available nitrogen in the soil; ANSL DELT stood for the total
available nitrogen in a time step; DELT in the model was usually one day. The available
content of nitrogen in the soil on the first day after growing was as follows:
Initial available nitrogen in the soil was ANSL(0)=ANSL0+AFAFNCRF.
ANSL0 represented available nitrogen in the soil without utilizing nitrogenous fertil-
izer; AFA represented the amount of nitrogenous fertilizer not utilized; FNC
represented the content of nitrogen in the nitrogenous fertilizer; RF represented the
ratio of the utilization of the fertilizer. ANSL0 can be calculated by the dynamic
model of nitrogens circulation in the soil; it can also be fixed by statistics from ex-
periment in the fields. The latter means is easy and direct. The method was using the
content of nitrogen absorbed by the whole plant during the whole growing period
without using fertilizer to divide the whole days of the growing period. The model
was as follows: .Nu represented the content of nitrogen absorbed during the whole
growing period in the soil without utilizing fertilizer. Dsum represented the whole
days of the growing period.

3.2 The Description of the Distribution of Nitrogen

The nitrogen absorbed by the root was distributed to root, stem and leaves. The quan-
tity of nitrogen absorbed by the plant was changing with its growing periods. Whats
more, the whole content of nitrogen that the organs held was different in different
growing periods. Thus the whole content of nitrogen that contained by different
organs was in obvious evolutionary patterns.
 Dynamic Modeling on Nitrogen Assignment in Tobacco 617

Supposing the whole content of nitrogen absorbed by root from the soil was dis-
tributed according to the requirement of the organs, then index of distribution in
the organs was as follows:
NCPL=NDEML/(NDEML+NDEMST+NDEMRT) (2)
NCPST=NDEMST/(NDEML+NDEMST+NDEMRT) (3)
NCPRT=NDEMRT/(NDEML+NDEMST+NDEMRT) (4)

NCPL represented the index of distribution of nitrogen in the leaves; NCPST repre-
sented the index of distribution of nitrogen in the stem; NCPRT represented the
index of distribution of nitrogen in the root; NDEML represented the content of ni-
trogen required by the leaves; NDEMST represented the content of nitrogen required
by the stem and NDEMRT represented the content of nitrogen required by the
root.
The accumulation ratio of the content of nitrogen of each organ was calculated
through the index of distribution of nitrogen in the organ multiplied the whole con-

tent of nitrogen absorbed by the root TNUP, kg hm-2 d-1 . The formula was:
NUPL=TNUPNCPL (5)
NUPL=TNUPNCPL (6)
NUPRT=TNUPNCPRT (7)
NUPL stood for the accumulation ratio of the content of nitrogen in the leaves;
NUPST stood for the accumulation ratio of the content of nitrogen in the stem and
NUPRT stood for the accumulation ration of the content in the root. Then the
amount of nitrogen required by each organ at any time was:
NDEML=(WLVXNCEL ANLV)/TC (8)

WLV, WST, and WRT were net weight of the leave, stem and root. XNCST, XNCST
and XNCRT were the maximum nitrogen volume (kg N/kg non-carbon substance) of
the leave, stem and root, respectively which vary with different growing periods.
ANLV, ANST and ANRT were the actual nitrogen volume of the leaves, stem and
root. TC was the corresponding time coefficient which was usually one day in the
model of plant growing. XNCL was the models input coefficient. XNCST and
XNCRT can be ascertained by the following formulas:
XNCST=0.5XNCL (9)
XNCRT=0.5XNCST (10)
Based on the empirical data of the year 2004 and 2005(Table 1), and considering
the influence of tobacco plants nitrogen situation on the index of nitrogen distribu-
tion, the dynamic distribution index of tobacco plants nitrogen situation was
simulated.
618 P. Zhao et al.

Table 1. The change of nitrogen distribution index

Day after translate Root Stem leaf

30 33.3 30.0 36.7
45 33.7 25.3 41.1
60 29.8 26.6 43.6
75 30.4 27.5 42.2
90 31.8 32.8 35.4
105 30.5 46.4 23.1

4 The Models Exploration Tool and Operation Environment

The system was developed on the operation stage of Windows 2000 with PIV 1.8GCPU
and 256MB internal memory. The software of Access 2003 was used to design data
basis, the dominant part and user interface of Chinese version Visual Basic 6.0. The
system was configured by auto structure software. Each constituent part can be used
either separately or linked with other component parts flexibly and conveniently. All
these made the system interface concise and clear and easy to be operated.

5 Verification of the Model

According to the physical and chemical properties together with the cultivation condi-
tion of the soil in Zhengzhou City and Xiangcheng County, first, the module of the dis-
tribution of nitrogen was used to simulate the distribution of nitrogen in the whole plant
during the growing period, both the tobacco in Zhengzhou and the tobacco in Xiang-
cheng were used to simulate. The study selected Zhongyan101 as the representative,
making a comparison between simulation and observation of root nitrogen rate.

Table 2. Comparison between simulation and observation of root nitrogen rate kghm-2
Xiangcheng Zhengzhou
Day after
Prediction Observation Differential Prediction Observation Differential
translate Xc2 Xc2
 value data value value data value
30 1.1 1.07 0.03 0.2068 0.84 0.8 0.04 0.2642
45 3.69 3.62 0.07 0.0521 3.28 3.19 0.09 0.0518
60 12.68 12.56 0.12 0.0117 11.15 11.14 0.01 0.0218
75 11.72 11.77 -0.05 0.0173 10.2 10.21 -0.01 0.0237
90 13.91 14.01 -0.1 0.0112 9.29 9.28 0.01 0.0260
105 15.22 15.67 -0.45 0.0002
2
Xc    0.2992    0.3875
 Dynamic Modeling on Nitrogen Assignment in Tobacco 619

Table 2 showed the comparison between simulation and observation of root nitrogen
rate. It can be worked out that X0.05 5
2

9.89 Xc
2

0.2992 0.3875 , which
revealed that at the level of 0.05, the differential value was not significant; showing that
the simulation and observation of root nitrogen rate fit well through the model.
Table 3 showed the comparison between simulation and observation of stem nitro-
gen rate. It can be worked out that X0.05 5
2
9.89 Xc
2

0.1760 0.1681 , )
which revealed that at thelevel of 0.05, the differential value was not significant;
that is to say, the simulation and observation of stem nitrogen rate fit well through the
model.

Table 3. Comparison between simulation and observation of stem nitrogen rate

Xiangcheng Zhengzhou
Day after Prediction Observation Differential Xc2 Prediction Observation Differential Xc2
translate
  value data value value data value
30 2.25 2.25 0 0.1129 2.31 2.3 0.01 0.1024
45 6.64 6.66 -0.02 0.0348 4.69 4.66 0.03 0.047
60 21.83 21.86 -0.03 0.0102 23.49 23.44 0.06 0.0084
75 25.64 25.63 0.02 0.0092 22.59 22.69 -0.1 0.0072
90 40.25 40.23 0.02 0.0056 42.2 42.34 -0.14 0.0031
105 47.01 47.13 -0.11 0.0032    
2
Xc    0.176    0.1681

Table 4. Comparison between simulation and observation of leaf nitrogen rate

 Xiangcheng Zhengzhou
Day after Prediction Observation Differential Prediction Observation Differential
translate Xc2 Xc2
  value data value value data value
30 13.01 13.03 -0.01 0.0182 14.07 14.08 -0.01 0.0169
45 33.81 33.84 -0.03 0.0065 33.16 33.18 -0.03 0.0067
60 52.22 52.27 -0.05 0.0038 60.92 60.97 -0.05 0.0034
75 55.53 55.71 -0.19 0.0018 54.98 54.76 0.22 0.0015
90 58.64 58.99 -0.35 0.0004 59.81 59.5 0.31 0.0006
105 43.65 43.12 0.53 0.0245    
2
Xc    0.0552    0.0290
620 P. Zhao et al.

Table 4 showed the comparison between simulation and observation of leaves ni-
trogen rate. It can be worked out that X0.05 5
2
9.89 Xc
2

0.0552 0.0290 ,
which revealed that at the level of 0.05, the differential value was not significant;
that is to say, the simulation and observation of leaves nitrogen rate fit well
through the model.
According to the test method of 1:1 charting, figure 1 compared the simulated
value and the observed value with the leaf nitrogen content as representative, and
calculated their correlation coefficient. The result showed that the correlation coeffi-
cient between simulation and observation of tobacco leaf nitrogen rate was 0.9934.
They were in good consistency.




d ( h 2)


Simulation

U 







     

Obvervation data(Kg.hm-

Fig. 1. Comparison between simulation and observation of leaf nitrogen rate

6 Conclusion
The whole growing period of tobaccos needs many nutritional elements, among
which the demand for nitrogen is great. The supply of nitrogen directly influences
the growth, yield and quality of tobacco. The dynamic simulation of nitrogen is a
major part of crop growth simulation[14-18]. The nitrogen accumulations in roots,
stems and leafs change with different growing periods. Simulating the distribution of
nitrogen in tobacco plant could help us understand and learn the nitrogen content
of each organ of tobacco plant. Therefore, we can adjust the amounts of nitrogenous
fertilizer utilized in time and improve the yield and quality of tobacco.
Through the quantitative measurement of tobacco in different growing periods, this
research concludes the pattern of tobaccos absorption of nitrogen. Establishing the
nitrogen absorption and distribution models which are in dynamic changes following
different growing periods can simulate the nitrogen content in each organ of to-
bacco plant at different growing periods. With the comparison between the simulated
and observed value and their insignificant difference at the level of 0.05 shows the
simulated and observed value of nitrogen contents in roots, stems and leaves of to-
bacco by the model are in good consistency. With the 1:1 figure comparison between
the simulated and observed value with nitrogen content of tobacco as representation
 Dynamic Modeling on Nitrogen Assignment in Tobacco 621

and their correlation coefficient at 0.9934 demonstrate they are consistent well.
Therefore, this model is better in decision-making and adaptability and could fore-
cast and guide the administration of nitrogenous fertilizer in the tobacco fields.
What needs explanation is that this model is the nitrogen distribution model of to-
bacco without consideration of the lost nitrogen following the defoliation of tobacco
leaves in the late period of growing. Only by adding blade decaying rate in our
later deeper researches can we describe the nitrogen content of tobacco during the
whole growing periods more accurately.

Acknowledgements
This study has been funded by invitation to tender project of China State Tobacco
Monopoly Administration (Contract Number: 110200201005).

References
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duction of flue-cured tobacco in China. Plant Nutrition and Fertilizer Science 2, 331337
(2007) (in Chinese)
3. Collins, W.K., Hawks Jr., S.N.: Principles of flue-cured tobacco production. North Caro-
lina State University, Raleigh (1994)
4. Jie, X., Huang, X., Liu, S., et al.: Effect of Different Nitrogen Formson Tobacco Quality
Indices. Chinese Journalof Soil Science 6, 11501153 (2007) (in Chinese)
5. Liu, W., Guo, Q., Wang, Q., et al.: Influence of Different Nitrogen Levels on Yield, Qual-
ity, Dry Matter and Nitrogen Accumulation and Distribution of Flue-cured Tobacco. Jour-
nal of Henan Agricultural Sciences 8, 2828 (2004)
6. Wei, C., Qian, X., Yang, H., et al.: Studies on Nitrogen Absorption and Utilization in To-
bacco. Tillage and Cultivation 3, 3741 (1995) (in Chinese)
7. Ma, X., Zhang, Z., Rong, F., et al.: Studies on Nitrogen Absorption, Distribution and Utili-
zation in Flue-cured Tobacco under Higher and Lower Fertility Conditions. Chinese To-
bacco Science 1, 14 (2009) (in Chinese)
8. Ritchie, J.T.: CERESWHEAT. Michigan State University (1988)
9. Drenth, H., Ten Berge, H.F.M.: O- RYZA simulation modules for potential and nitrogen
limited rice. In: SARP Research Proceedings (1994)
10. Aggarwal, P.K.: Analyzing the limitations set by climate factors, genotype, water and ni-
trogen availability on productivity of wheat I. The model description, parameterization and
validation. Field Crops Res. 38, 7391 (1994)
11. Gao, L., Jin, Z., Huang, Y., et al.: Rice cultivational simulation-optimization-decision
making system (RCSODS). China Agricultural Science and Technology Press, Beijing
(1992)
12. Cao, H.: Studies on simulation-optimization-decision making for wheat population, soil
moisture and nitrogen dynamic. Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing (1997)
13. Shidan, B.: Soil and Agricultural Chemistry Analysis. China Agricultural Press, Beijing
(2000) (in Chinese)
622 P. Zhao et al.

14. Yun, X., Kiniry, J.R.: A Review on the Development of Crop Modeling and its Applica-
tion. Acta Agronomica Sinica 2, 190195 (2002) (in Chinese)
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Press, Beijing (2000)
16. Luo, S., Peng, S.: Agroecosystem Analysis. Guangdong Science and Technology Press,
Guangzhou (1996) (in Chinese)
17. Tian, S., Ren, Z., Bu, Y., et al.: Experimental Researches and Dynamic Modeling on the
Partitioning Index of Nitrogen in Rice. Journal of Inner Mongolia University for Nationali-
ties 5, 516520 (2006) (in Chinese)
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(in Chinese)
 Dynamic Study of Farmers Information Adoption in
China

Jingjing Zhang 1, Lu Liu1, Jian Zhang 2, and Jinyou Hu1,*

1
College of Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100083, P.R. China
2
Beijing Information Science & Technology University, Beijing, 100192, P.R. China
zhangjingjing1982@126.com

Abstract. Agriculture information has played an important part in recently

years. The adoption of agriculture information is a dynamic process and many
factors have influences on farmers information usage motivation and willing-
ness. The main objective of this paper is to analyze and predict the variations of
farmers decisions in order to make the information more reachable to farmers.
In this study, farmers are divided into three categories based on the style of risk
preference, which are the risk evaders, risk likers and risk neutrals. To compare
the difference of the information adoption rates across varied sections of farm-
ers, we extend our research and the factor of time is added into the model. A
sample of 34 farmers takes part in the continuous surveys with the duration of
one year. By the simulation and analysis in the light of the information usage
intention equation, it is found that farmers information demand presents a
characteristic of seasonality and keeps stable after a period.

Keywords: Information Demand, Adoption, Risk Preference, Dynamic

Behavior.

1 Introduction

Agriculture information has presented a significant role. At present, farmers are sup-
plied with a considerable variety of agriculture information in China. However, the
proportion of the information that farmers can make full use of is small, which is
mainly due to the distance between information supply and acceptance.
In the past years, the agriculture information acceptance has been given special at-
tention in academic studies in China. Many studies were concerned about the variety
of information which farmers cared about mostly and the efficient ways of transfer-
ring agricultural information. Few researches were carried out from the point of farm-
ers dynamic behavior. Researchers and practitioners have long been of great interest
to the process in which consumers make their purchase decisions (Tao Zhang al.,
2007). Researches into farmers information decision-making increase the under-
standing of the dynamic behavior. Therefore, it is significant to explain and predict
*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 623629, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
624 J. Zhang et al.

farmers information adoption decision. This article aims to enhance our current un-
derstanding about farmers decision-making as time goes by.

2 Methodology

In the previous studies, a skeleton questionnaire was designed to guide the structured
interviews with information usage intention, the purpose of which was to collect
more in-depth knowledge about the farmers difficulties and reflection for adopting
agriculture information. It was more likely to provide the factors which have impact
on their decisions. The items in the questionnaires were measured on a 5-point
Likert-type scale (1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree). Data in the study were
collected with a sample of two hundred and thirty-one farmers from thirteen different
areas in China.
Farmers agriculture information acceptance regression function was gained by the
binary logistic regression. The determinants of farmers agriculture information ac-
ceptance were derived, which were experience, searching motivation, perceived use-
fulness, risk preference and income. Results are shown as Figure 1.

X1: Perceived
Usefulness (.661)

X5: Income X2: Risk

(.259) Preference (.423)

Y: Intention

X3: Experience X4: Searching

(.309) Motivation (.576)

Fig. 1. The information usage intention model

The logistic regression equation is as (1), and the information usage intention
equation is as (2). Here, Y means the possibility that the intention is positive.

P ( yes )
g 1 = Logit = 3.102 + 0.259 x5 + 0.309 x3 (1)
P ( no )
+ 0.423 x 2 + 0.576 x 4 + 0.661 x1
 Dynamic Study of Farmers Information Adoption in China 625

e g1
Y ( yes) = (2)
1 + e g1

3 Survey
There have been a large number of studies that examined the interplay between per-
sonality and information processing (Edwards, 2003). Decisions are influenced by the
subjective consciousness. Consumers may have the different decisions towards the
same product based on the characteristics.
Farmers information behavior is a changing process. But it will take a long time to
observe the behavior of farmers. Having obtained the logistic regression model of
farmers information usage intention, the study has selected a small sample of 34
people who are in the same condition as the sample of the first round, as is shown in
table1.

Table 1. Characteristics of the sample

Categories Number Percentage %

Gender
Male 24 70.6
Female 10 29.4
Age group
From 18-30 7 20.6
From 31-40 11 32.4
From 41-50 10 29.4
From 51-60 5 14.7
Over 60 1 2.9
Education level
None 3 8.8
Primary education 9 26.5
Secondary education 15 44.1
Higher education 6 17.6
Over 1 2.9

In this study, farmers are divided into three categories based on the style of risk
preference, which are the risk evaders, risk neutrals and risk likers.The ratio of three
types is about 1:11:5. Five surveys at the same intervals have been carried out for one
year in this study.

4 Analysis
The analysis presents that there is no significant difference and characteristics of the
need among different types of information. Basically, the usage intention for the five
type information is intensively, as is shown in figure 2.
626 J. Zhang et al.

Farmers intention of different types of information does not show a prominent fea-
ture from the point of time. In the word, at the beginning and the end of the year, the
demand for the information keeps high, as is shown in figure 3. The information
usage intention of the farmers who are risk likers keeps stable, however, the risk
evaders information usage intention fluctuates largely and farmers are more inter-
ested in the information which is easy to understand, for example, the information of
agricultural product price and wealth experience.

1
y
g 0.8
i
l
i 0.6
b
i 0.4
s
s
o 0.2
P
0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33

Number
Fig. 2.1. The agriculture technology information

y0.8
t
i
l0.6
b
i
s0.4
s
o
P
0.2

0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33

Number
Fig. 2.2. The wealth experience
g
1

y 0.8
t
i
l 0.6
i
b
i
s 0.4
s
o
P
0.2

0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33
Number
Fig. 2.3. The brand information

Fig. 2. The variety of usage intention for different types of information

 Dynamic Study of Farmers Information Adoption in China 627

Fig. 2.4. The market analysis report

Fig. 2.5. The agricultural product price

Fig. 2. (continued)

y 0.8
t
i
l 0.6
i
b
i
s 0.4
s
o
p
0.2

0
2008-1 2008-4 2008-7 2008-10 2009-1
time
risk evaders risk neutrals risk likers

Fig. 3. The variety of the usage intention of three types of farmers

In order to analyze the process of farmers information adoption behavior exactly,

the paper adjusts the sample of 34 farmers according to the personal characteristics.
The initiation time and 12 farmers are selected to analyze in detail.
628 J. Zhang et al.

The time point of January 2008 is taken as the base point and a week (7 days) is
regarded as the time interval. The original data are transformed to the data of a farmer
in 60 time points. After compilation of the 60 sets data, the paper analyses the chang-
ing process of the farmers information usage intention, as is shown in figure 4.

Fig. 4. The variety of the usage intention of the individual

As is presented in the time angle, the intention for the information is highest during
the period from December to February of next year and lowest from July to September.
It can be explained from the point of farmers geographical environment and the crops
growth cycle. The information usage intention almost tends to be stable after 49 weeks.
It may be concluded that farmers confidence for the information product and the ser-
vice will increase after a period and the demand will not fluctuate violently.

5 Conclusion
In this paper, a small scale sample is selected and continuous surveys are carried out
to exam farmers information usage intention variation in China. It is found that farm-
ers information behavior is a dynamic process and has presented seasonal character-
istics. The findings also highlight that farmers confidence on the information product
and the information service may be stable after a period of time.
The results might not be rather correct because of the small sample. In the future
study, it could be focused on the variation of the determinants based on a larger sam-
ple in order to investigate farmers agriculture information decision-making deeply.

References
1. Davis, F.D.: Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Informa-
tion Technology. IS Quarterly, 319340 (1989)
2. Lee, H.-H., Fiore, A.M., Kim, J.: The Role of the Technology Acceptance Model in Ex-
plaining Effects of Image Interactivity Technology on Consumer Responses. International
Journal of Retail & Distribution Management 8, 621644 (2006)
 Dynamic Study of Farmers Information Adoption in China 629

3. Edwards, J.A.: The Interactive Effects of Processing Preference and Motivation on Informa-
tion Processing: Causal Uncertainty and the MBTI in a Persuasion Context. Journal of Re-
search in Personality 37, 8999 (2003)
4. Horst, M., Kuttschreuter, M., Gutteling, J.M.: Perceived Usefulness, Personal Experinces,
Risk Perception and Trust as Determinants of Adoption of E-government Services in The
Netherlands. Computers in Human Behavior 23, 18381852 (2007)
5. Lynch, N., Berry, D.: Differences in Perceived Risks nd Benefits of Herbal, over-the-
counter Conventional, and Prescribed Conventional, Medicines, and the Implications of this
for the Safe and Effective Use of Herbal Products. Complementary Therapies in Medi-
cine 15, 8491 (2007)
6. McKechnie, S., Winklhofer, H., Ennew, C.: Applying the Technology Acceptance Model to
the Online Retailing of Financial Services. International Journal of Retail & Distribution
Management 34, 388410 (2006)
7. Zhang, T., Zhang, D.: Agent-based Simulation of Consumer Purchase Decision-making and
the Decoy Effect. Journal of Business Research 60, 912922 (2007)
8. King, W.R., He, J.: A Meta-analysis of the Technology Acceptance Model. Information &
Management 43, 740755 (2006)
9. Wang, Y.-S., Wang, H.-Y., Shee, D.Y.: Measuring E-learning Systems Success in an Organ-
izational Context: Scale Development and Validation. Computers in Human Behavior 23,
17921808 (2007)
 Estimation of the Number of Apples in Color Images
Recorded in Orchards

Oded Cohen1, Raphael Linker1, and Amos Naor2

1
Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion Israel Institute of Technology,
Haifa, 32000, Israel
2
Golan Research Institute P. O. Box 97 Katzrin, 12900, Israel
oded@odedcohen.com, linkerr@tx.technion.ac.il,
amosnaor@research.haifa

Abstract. This work presents an algorithm for estimating the number of apples
on trees using images acquired with a standard color CCD camera. The pro-
posed system is capable of correctly identifying and localizing more than 85%
of the apples in the images. To achieve this high detection rate, color and tex-
ture analyses are combined together with shape analysis. In the first step, pixels
with a high probability of belonging to an "apple object" are detected according
to their color and texture. In the second step, "seed areas" consisting of con-
nected sets of pixels with a high probability of belonging to an apple object are
detected. Each seed area is then extended to cover the entire visible area of the
apple to which it belongs. Finally, each blob is segmented into simple compo-
nents that can either be combined into circles or are discarded, so that each of
the resulting circles corresponds to an apple.

Keywords: artificial vision; imagine processing; yield estimation.

1 Introduction

Early estimation of the future yield has always been a major challenge in agriculture.
In orchards, such predictions are of interest to growers, packing and storage houses,
and compensation funds. For growers, flowering intensity and yield forecast would be
valuable at several stages of the season to optimize the intensity of chemical and hand
thinning. Today, in the absence of accurate flowering and yield forecast, growers tend
to perform insufficient thinning, preferring to be on the safe side rather than causing
irreversibly low yield. This has significant repercussions later in the season when la-
bor-consuming hand thinning is required to compensate for the insufficient chemical
thinning. In addition, hand thinning is performed only after the process of natural
thinning has ended and the fruits have reached a size where experienced growers can
roughly estimated yield by visual inspection. This delay has two serious horticulturist
consequences: (1) it results in smaller fruits at harvest, which, in addition to having a
lower market value, require more time for harvesting, and (2) high crop load before

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 630642, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Estimation of the Number of Apples in Color Images Recorded in Orchards 631

the late thinning reduces flower bud initiation, which lowers the potential bloom in
the subsequent season. For packing and storing houses, accurate yield forecast is
needed toward the middle of the season. Such information would enable proper plan-
ning and adequate allocation of storage spaces. Finally, the compensation funds need
a yield estimate early in the season when unexpected fruit drop or hail damage may
occur.
Currently, yield forecasts are based on manual counting of the number of apples on
selected trees. This method is extremely time-consuming and the small number of
trees that can be inspected is insufficient due to the high variability of the yield that
exists in apple orchards. More accurate forecast of flowering intensity and yield will
increase the confidence of growers to perform early chemical thinning, which will
minimize the needs for hand thinning, will increase the fruits size and will increase
potential flowering in subsequent seasons.
The present study focused on the development of a color-imaging system for
automatic estimation of the number of apples present on a tree. The more general task
of fruits localization on trees using artificial vision has been investigated in numerous
studies, and most of these are summarized in the excellent review paper of Jimenez et
al. [3]. These studies used either standard color cameras as in the present study (e.g.
[1], [2], [5]), multispectral or hypersectral imaging (e.g. [4],[6]), or thermal imaging
(e.g. [7]). As noted in some of these studies, the task is especially challenging under
natural illumination, and under such conditions shading and high contrast transitions
are a main problem. For instance, sunlit fruits are ten times brighter than shadowed
leaves, and sunlit leaves are four times brighter than shadowed fruits [4]. When the
fruits of interest are green as in the present study, the task is made more complex by
the low color contrast between the background and the fruits.

2 Problem Description and Challenges

In ideal conditions, apples would appear as non-touching circular objects with smooth
surface and distinctive color such as shown in Figure 1. In such a situation, finding

Fig. 1. Apples in ideal image

632 O. Cohen, R. Linker, and A. Naor

and counting the apples within the image would be quite simple and would basically
consist of finding blobs (clusters) of pixels within some predefined color range. How-
ever, such ideal situations are rarely found in images recorded in natural outdoor con-
ditions. In such images, most apples are partially hidden by other apples and leaves,
and their color is influenced by the environment, the light conditions and the photog-
raphy parameters.

Fig. 2. Apples exposed to direct sunlight that causes saturation of the CCD and strong shadows

Light conditions have a major influence on detection feasibility. Figure 2 shows

the two major effects of direct sunlight: (1) in some areas the CCD sensor is saturated
and therefore any color information is lost, and (2) shading makes it impossible to
recognize some of the apples as smooth surfaces. Having identified these negative
factors, we tried to determine photography parameters that would eliminate or
significantly reduce such problems. The best results were achieved by acquiring the
images under diffusive sunlight conditions (pictures taken near sunset), and by
manually underexposing the images compared to the camera's automatic setting
(exposure reduction 0.7 units). Lowering the amount of light that reaches the sensor in
such a manner brings the apples to the middle of the dynamic range of the sensor and
avoids saturation.
Figure 3 shows a typical image obtained with such optimal photography
parameters. Although to the human eye such an image may seem too dark and "flat",
it is much more suitable for computer analysis than a bright and shiny image.
Visual inspection of the numerous images collected during this study led to
identifying the following common situations and developing an algorithm that could
handle them accordingly:
 Estimation of the Number of Apples in Color Images Recorded in Orchards 633

Fig. 3. Optimal image recorded under diffuse light (close to sunset) and with manually reduced
exposure

2.1 Apple Clusters and Leaf Occultation

Most apples are partially hidden by other apples and/or by leaves (Figure 4)

Fig. 4. Detail of a typical image with partial occultation of some of the apples

2.2 Shading

The natural light source (sun) causes shades and non-uniform illumination. In
particular, as shown in Figure 5, parts of an apple may appear much darker than the
rest.
634 O. Cohen, R. Linker, and A. Naor

Fig. 5. Detail of an image showing non-uniform light distribution on the apples

2.3 Saturation

Sunlight can be reflected more intensely from some apples or from the apple surface
regions that are perpendicular to the light source and this might cause local saturation.
In such regions the red, green and blue components reach their maximum value (or
close to it), and all color information is lost (Figure 6). Manual under-exposure of the
images eliminates most, but not all, of these cases.

Fig. 6. Detail of an image with saturated regions in which all color information is lost

2.4 Color Inference

The color of an object is influenced by the light reflected from surrounding objects. In
the present case, apples that are deeper within the tree will not only appear darker but
will also be more similar in color to the leaves surrounding them (Figure 7).
 Estimation of the Number of Apples in Color Images Recorded in Orchards 635

Fig. 7. Detail of an image showing the large color differences that exist between the apples on
the outside of the tree and those deeper within the tree

3 The Data
Images were recorded in a Golden Delicious orchard in the Matityahu Research
Station located in Northern Israel. The images were taken during two consecutive
seasons during the months of June-August, under natural daylight conditions.
A first set of images was taken using the fully automatic mode of operation of the
camera (Fujifilm FinePix S8000fd). Eight of these images were selected as
"calibration images", which were used to develop the algorithm, and another nine
were selected as "validation images". About 70% of the apples present in the
calibration images were marked manually to provide "apple" calibration pixels.
A second set of images was taken in the following season with a different camera
(Olympus C740UZ) and new photographic parameters in an attempt to overcome
some of the problems identified when analyzing the first set of images:
1. The camera shutter was set manually to 0.7 units lower than the automatic
camera setting in order to darken all the objects and bring the apple pixels
close to the middle of the dynamic range of the sensor.
2. The pictures were taken close to sunset, when there was nearly no direct
sunlight and lighting was diffusive.
Nine of these images were used to calibrate the detection algorithm, which was then
tested on another eight images.

4 Algorithm Description

The algorithm includes three main steps which are described below. The algorithm
was developed in the ImagingChef environment (a full description of this imaging
development environment can be found at: www.odedcohen.com), which supported
the entire development process, from reference object marking to algorithm
development and result visualization
636 O. Cohen, R. Linker, and A. Naor

4.1 Step 1 - Apple Pixels Detection by Color and Texture

In the first step, pixels with high likelihood of belonging to an "apple object" are
detected according to their color and texture. To achieve this, a K-nearest-neighbors
(KNN) classifier was built using pixels belonging to "apple" and "non-apple" objects
that were manually marked in the images belonging to the calibration set. Objects
overlapping the apples, such as leaves, branches and the petal area were also marked
in order to exclude them from the study process. Figure 8 shows some marked objects
on part of a typical image. Although this is not visible in the image, the properties
defined for each object include (in addition to the object type) the relative depth of the
object, so that the analysis takes into account partial occultations.
Each pixel in the calibration set was characterized by its Red-Green-Blue (RGB)
components and its smoothness, which was estimated as the variance of the RGB
components on a small area (6-by-6 pixels).
An example of the classification result is shown in Picture 9, in which the lighter
pixels have a higher probability of belonging to an apple object.

Fig. 8. Detail of an image with objects marked using the ImagingChef software. In addition to
the apples (indicated by circles), regions that should be ignored at the calibration stage (such as
apples that are barely visible or parts of apples that are occulted by leaves and branches) are
marked by rectangles or ellipses.

Fig. 9. (Top) Original image and (Bottom) image showing the classification results, in which
the lighter pixels have a higher probability to belong to an apple. The yellow and pink arrows
point to typical incorrect classifications as explained in the text.
 Estimation of the Number of Apples in Color Images Recorded in Orchards 637

Two typical problems are visible in Figure 9:

1. Saturated (bright) areas get low probability, as their color is practically white
(e.g. area indicated by yellow arrow);
2. Pixels that belong to the bottom side of leaves are incorrectly recognized as
"most probably apple" since this side of the leaves is lighter and its color is
similar to that of apples (e.g. area indicated by pink arrow). In order to
minimize this problem, the camera should be located high enough and
pointing downward so that only the top side of the leaves is visible.

4.2 Step 2 - Apple Surface Detection by Seed Area Detection and Growth

In this step connected sets (blobs) of apple pixels are detected and extended to cover
the area of the apple to which they belong. Each seed area consists of a connected
set of pixels that have a high probability of belonging to an apple object. Ideally, each
apple should result in one seed area that should cover most, if not all, of the apple. In
practice, parts of the apple surface might be considerably darker or lighter, because of
the amount of light that reaches it and of the way this light is reflected. Such areas are
misclassified as "non-apple", resulting in a smaller seed area. Also, some apples
appear as split objects due to partial occultation by branches or leaves, which results
in several seed areas for the same apple (Figure 10).

Fig. 10. Detail of an image that shows that a single apple may contain more than one seed
region (purple contour) as a result of partial occultation

Figure 11 shows typical results of the seed areas detection procedure. It can be
seen that both saturated and darker pixels of the apple surfaces are not included in the
seed areas.
638 O. Cohen, R. Linker, and A. Naor

Fig. 11. (Top) Typical image. (Bottom) Detected "seed areas" (in orange)

After detecting the seed areas, these areas are expanded to contain similar
neighboring pixels. This compensates for the misclassification of the very bright and
very dark pixels described above. The expansion is performed by extending each blob
to include neighboring pixels with low variance. Picture 12a shows a variance map of
Picture 11a in which the darker pixels indicate a higher variance while smooth
surfaces appear as lighter regions. Picture 12b shows the results of the seed area
expansion: both saturated and dark areas around the seed areas are now included in
the "apple" area.

Fig. 12. (Top) Variance map of Picture 11a. (Bottom) Seed areas obtained by expanding the
areas shown in Picture 11b using the variance map shown in Picture 12a.

4.3 Step 3 - Contour Segmentation and Apple Detection

A seed area may correspond to any of the following situations (Picture 13):

a. A fully visible apple.

b. Part of an apple. Other parts of the same apple might be associated with other
seed areas.
c. Several apples merged into one blob.
d. Apple and a leaf merged into one blob.
e. Misclassified non-apple pixels, most usually leaf under intense light.
 Estimation of the Number of Apples in Color Images Recorded in Orchards 639

a  b

 c  d

 e

Fig. 13. Typical seed areas

Transforming the blobs into apples requires shape analysis. For this, the contour of
each blob is segmented into the following components (Picture 14):
arcs,
linear segments,
anamorphic segments.
In the next step, the arcs are grouped into circles and at the end of this stage each
circle indicates one apple.

Fig. 14. Contours obtained after segmenting the contour of each seed region into arcs, linear
segments and anamorphic segments
640 O. Cohen, R. Linker, and A. Naor

5 Results
5.1 First Set of Images Images Recorded in Automatic Exposure Mode

The results are summarized in Table 1, which shows the number of correctly detected
apples and the number of false positive detection (incorrect detection of apple where
there is none). These results are compared to a number of apples visible to a human
observer inspecting the images for about 20-30 seconds. The overall rate of correct
detection is above 85% for both the calibration and validation images while the false
positive rate is 12% and 19%, respectively.

Table 1. Results of the analysis of the images recorded using automatic light exposure

Calibration images
Number of Number of Number of
apples apples false
visible detected detections
Image 1 31 26 2
Image 2 29 25 2
Image 3 45 34 1
Image 4 37 33 8
Image 5 22 17 4
Image 6 31 26 3
Image 7 19 19 2
Image 8 49 44 9
Total 263 224 (85%) 31 (12%)
Validation images
Image 1 44 44 6
Image 2 26 23 4
Image 3 40 38 12
Image 4 19 17 9
Image 5 22 21 5
Image 6 60 53 4
Image 7 47 37 10
Image 8 38 33 0
Image 9 44 34 11
Total 296 256 (86%) 55 (19%)

A detailed analysis of the results led to the following conclusions:

As apples are much lighter than leaves, automatic setting of the exposure by
the camera resulted in apple pixel values too close to the end of the dynamic
range of the sensor, which often caused some of the pixels to be saturated.
The light was not diffusive enough. Even though the pictures were taken
early in the morning, the light distribution was still not uniform enough to
enable better detection.
 Estimation of the Number of Apples in Color Images Recorded in Orchards 641

5.2 Second Set of Images Images Recorded with Manually-Lowered Light

Exposure

Adjusting the photography parameters as detailed in Section 3 improved the pictures

quality for subsequent analysis. There were no cases of color saturation and the apples
appeared as more uniform. As a result, the overall rate of correct detection increased
to 90% and the false positive rate decreased to less than 10% (Table 2).

Table 2. Results of the analysis of the images recorded under diffuse light and after setting
manually the camera shutter 0.7 units lower than prescribed by the automatic setting

Calibration images
Number of Number of Number of
apples apples false
visible detected detections
Image 1 66 61 4
Image 2 68 61 7
Image 3 29 28 7
Image 4 28 25 5
Image 5 37 33 2
Image 6 13 13 3
Image 7 36 33 3
Image 8 58 53 7
Image 9 29 28 1
Total 364 335 (92%) 39 (11%)
Validation images
Image 1 57 47 12
Image 2 48 39 2
Image 3 60 52 4
Image 4 17 14 2
Image 5 31 29 2
Image 6 24 17 1
Image 7 53 48 1
Image 8 62 57 7
Total 295 256 (87%) 19 (6%)

6 Conclusions
Apple detection in images taken under natural daylight conditions has two main
inherent difficulties: (1) the natural light is not diffusive enough and might cause
shades and saturation, and (2) the apples have different shapes and colors, overlap
other objects, and are rarely fully visible. Nonetheless, the present algorithm is
capable of detecting correctly more than 85% of the apples present in an image
obtained using the automatic settings of a standard color camera. The performance
can be improved by taking care of recording the images under diffuse light conditions
642 O. Cohen, R. Linker, and A. Naor

and manually lowering the exposure in to order to avoid light saturation. In such cases
close to 90% of the apples are correctly detected. The proposed algorithm should be
further validated using a larger dataset and its extension to other apple varieties
should be considered.

References
[1] Annamalai, P., Lee, W.S.: Citrus yield mapping system using machine vision. ASAE paper
03-1002 (2003)
[2] Bulanon, D.M., Kataoka, T., Zhang, S., Ota, Y., Hiroma, T.: Optimal thresholding for the
automatic recognition of apple fruits. ASAE paper 01-3133 (2001)
[3] Jimenez, A.R., Ceres, R., Pons, J.L.: A survey of computer vision methods for locating
fruit on trees. Transactions of the ASAE 43, 19911920 (2000)
[4] Kim, Y., Reid, J.: Apple Yield Mapping Using a Multispectral Imaging Sensor. In: Pro-
ceedings of the AgEng 2004 Conference (2004)
[5] Pla, F., Juste, F., Ferri, F., Vicens, M.: Colour segmentation based on a light reflection
model to locate citrus fruits for robotic harvesting. Computers and Electronics in Agricul-
ture 9, 5370 (1993b)
[6] Safren, O., Alchanatis, V., Ostrovsky, V., Levi, O.: Detection of green apples in hyper-
spectral images of apple-tree foliage using machine vision. Transactions of the ASABE 50,
23032313 (2007)
[7] Stajnko, D., Lakota, M., Hocevar, M.: Estimation of number and diameter of apple fruits
in an orchard during the growing season by thermal imaging. Computers and Electronics
in Agriculture 42, 3142 (2004)
 Impact of Hydraulic Conductivity on Solute Transport
in Highly Heterogeneous Aquifer

Kaili Wang1,2 and Guanhua Huang1,2

1
College of Water Conservancy and Civil Engineering,
China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100083, P.R. China
2
Chinese-Israeli International Center for Research and Training in Agriculture, China
Agricultural University, Beijing, 100083, P.R. China

Abstract. The impact of hydraulic conductivity on solute transport process in a

highly heterogeneous aquifer was analyzed using the Monte-Carlo method. The
logarithm of the hydraulic conductivity (lnK) of aquifer was considered as a
non-stationary field with increments being a truncated fractional Lvy motion
(fLm) generated using the SRA3DC code. MODFLOW and MT3DMS code
were used to solve the flow and solute equations, respectively. Results indicate
that larger C lead to a more heterogeneous hydraulic conductivity field. As C
increases, solute plumes show more significant anomaly with sharper leading
edge and wider tailing edge. The solute plume extends and its second spatial
moments increase as C increases, while the first spatial moments of the solute
plume are independent of C values. The longitudinal macrodispersivity is scale-
dependent and increases as a power law function of time. Increasing C results in
an increase in longitudinal macrodispersivity. It was concluded that the nature
of transport process is highly dependent on the heterogeneity of the hydraulic
conductivity field.

Keywords: hydraulic conductivity, transport, Monte-Carlo, heterogeneous,

moments.

1 Introduction
Groundwater contamination has become one of the most important environmental
issues all over the world. It is necessary to predict flow and contaminant spreading in
the subsurface for the control of groundwater quality. However, the heterogeneity of
porous media and incomplete knowledge of data information lead to difficulty in the
estimation of hydraulic properties and geophysical variables, and thus, bring about
difficulty in estimating or predicting subsurface flow and transport. The stochastic
methods have been developed and used to deal with these difficulties [1]. There are
mainly two categories of stochastic methods in widespread use including the moment
equation method (MEM) and the Monte Carlo method (MCM). Compared with the
MEM, the MCM is conceptually and computationally straightforward, and most im-
portantly, once the properties distributions are established in details, the MCM can
be applied to highly heterogeneous media. Up to present, the MCM has been widely

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 643655, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
644 K. Wang and G. Huang

used in researches on flow and transport process with the more accurate subsurface
simulation models and the availability of high-speed supercomputers [2-6].
In the MCM simulation, the first step is to determine the distributions of the prop-
erties of geological formations. Researches have shown that the hydraulic conductiv-
ity (K) has a relative large spatial variability with its maximum value several orders
being larger than its minimum value, while the spatial variability of porosity and other
geophysical parameters are relatively small [7]. In classical stochastic theories, K is
treated as a lognormal, stationary and spatially correlated random function, which can
be characterized by its mean, variance and single finite-range integral scale [1]. It has
been proved that such a treatment can be only used for those media with relatively
small heterogeneities [8]. In recent years, several researches have shown that the geo-
logical media can be highly heterogeneous and exhibit very large and abrupt changes
in K field [9, 10]. And such a hydraulic field with continuously evolving heterogenei-
ties can be described using the fractal scaling model [4, 11, and 12]. One of the com-
monly used fractal model to characterize the non-stationary K field is the fractional
Brownian motion (fBm), with which the probability density function (PDF) of lnK
increments for any given lag are assumed to be Gaussian. However, researches show
that the lnK increments of heterogeneous formations are often non-Gaussian with an
increased peak value around its mean and heavy (slow-decaying) tails [10]. These
non-Gaussian behaviors can be characterized using the probability distributions of the
Lvy-stable family, which is referred to as the fractional Lvy motion (fLm). Com-
pared with the Gaussian distribution, the Lvy distribution can better mimic the sharp
property contrasts associated to the geological formations. However, the heavy tails
also give the Lvy-stable distribution an infinite variance. Painter [11] argued that the
increments cannot have an infinite-variance distribution because the incremental val-
ues must be bounded in order to prevent porosity or permeability from taking on non-
physical values, and strictly speaking, this is correct. The truncated PDF have finite
variance with power-law decay tails over a large but finite range, resulting in behavior
similar to that of the infinite-variance PDF. Therefore, the truncated PDF for lnK in-
crements will be used in the following analysis.
Several approaches have been developed to generate fBm or truncated fLm fields.
These methods include the midpoint displacements method, the successive random
addition (SRA) method [13], the Fourier filtering method [13], and the modified turn-
ing band method [14]. Lu et al. [15] recently compared these methods in detail and
concluded that with the SRA algorithm it is easy to understand the geometry and the
scaling properties of the stochastic fractals and it is associated with a very attractive
computational speed. They developed a simple and efficient three-dimensional simu-
lation code named SRA3DC in Fortran to generate the fBm and the truncated fLm K
fields. In addition, dispersional and quantile analyses were employed to analyze the
increments of the generated fBm and truncated fLm fields to validate the algorithm.
Many researches have been conducted to investigate solute transport in porous me-
dia with fBm and / or fLm hydraulic conductivity fields. For example, Painter [6]
investigated the statistical moments of travel time for a conservative tracer in the me-
dia with an fBm K field and a bounded fLm K field. Herrick et al. [16] investigated
the tritium transport at the highly heterogeneous MADE site; they found that the
Impact of Hydraulic Conductivity on Solute Transport in Highly Heterogeneous Aquifer 645

heavy-tailed K fields gave rise to the heavy-tailed velocity fields. Kohlbecker et al.
[17] found that a heavy-tailed Levy-stable lnK increment field resulted in a heavy-
tailed increment field of logarithm velocity (ln v). However, to our knowledge, few
researches were about the analysis of plume spatial moment and dispersivity in those
media with fLm hydraulic conductivity fields.
In this study, we will use the MCM to investigate solute transport process in the
highly heterogeneous aquifer with a truncated fLm field for the lnK increments. The
SRA3DC code will be modified and used to generate lnK fields for the MCM analy-
sis. MODFLOW2000 code [18] and MT3DMS code [19] will be used to solve the
flow and solute transport problems, respectively. The simulated concentration will be
averaged to obtain the ensemble mean concentration for analyzing the plume spatial
moments and the longitudinal macro-dispersivity.

2 Theoretical Consideration

2.1 Lvy-Stable Distributions

The Lvy-stable distributions have been studied since the 1930s [20]. Their probabil-
ity density functions (PDFs) do not have a closed analytic form except for some spe-
cial cases. Instead, they are expressed by their characteristic function:

( k ) = exp{C k {1 isign (k ) tan( 2 )} + iuk } 1 .

(1)

where is the Lvy index with a range of (0,2], is the skewness parameter with a
range of [-1,1], C is the width parameter in the interval (0,), is the location pa-
rameter, k is the Fourier variable, i2=-1, tan() represents the tangent function and
sign(k) is the sign function of the variable k. These characterizing parameters , C,
and describe the index of stability, the spread, the skewness, and the location of the
density, respectively .
When the Lvy-stable distribution is a standard symmetric function with and
values equal to zero, Eq. (1) can be simplified as:

(k ) = exp(C k . (2)

The PDF of symmetric Lvy-stable distribution can be calculated by inverse Fourier

transform of Eq. (2)

1


L ( x) = exp{ Ck cos(kx)}dk . (3)
0

In Eq. (3) the Lvy index distinguishes the PDFs from one another and character-
izes the degree of deviation from the Gaussian distribution which corresponds to the
special case L = 2 ( x ) . The width parameter C characterizes the discrete extent of vari-
ables relative to the mean value, which is similar to the standard deviation of a Gaus-
sian distribution.
646 K. Wang and G. Huang

2.2 Fractional Lvy Motion

The fractional Lvy motion (fLm) is defined as a random and continuous function
which has Lvy-stable increments over any lag. The statistical self-affinity or scaling
property can be expressed as [21]

Crh = Ch r H Crh = r H Ch . (4)

where Crh and Ch are the width parameters for lag distance rh and h, respectively. H is
the Hurst coefficient, quantifying the degree of interdependence between the incre-
ments of fractal process.
When =2, the Lvy-stable distribution becomes a Gaussian distribution, and the
fLm model is the same as the fBm model. rh and h are the standard deviation of
the Gaussian distribution for lag rh and h, respectively, corresponding to the width
parameters of the Lvy-stable distribution. Substituting rh and h into Eq. (4)
yields:

rh
2
= h2 r 2 H rh = r H h . (5)

In general, the Lvy-stable distribution of increments and the scaling property deter-
mine the essential features of fLm process. In this paper, we modified Lus SRA3DC
code based on these two features to generate a two- dimensional lnK field character-
ized by the truncated fLm distribution. It is necessary to point out that the width pa-
rameters C1 and C2 are replaced in the modified code by
H H 2
C1 = C0 ( 1 ) 2 (1 2 2 )1 (6)
2 .

H
C2 = C1 ( 1 ) 2 . (7)
2
where C0 is the given width parameter for random numbers at corner points, C1 and
C2 are the width parameters for random numbers at center points and edge middle
points, respectively (see Lu et al. [15] for more information).
A truncated fLm realization with H=0.3, C=0.2 and =1.3 was generated for lnK
field, with which quantile analysis was used to analyze the increments of lnK to esti-
mate C and . The relationship between the estimated C and the lag is shown in
Fig. 1(a). The fitted H value is 0.3259 which is close to the input 0.3 value, and the
approximate straight line on the double logarithmic scale over a wide range is consis-
tent with fractal model characterized by Eq. (4). In addition, the estimated Lvy index
equals 1.35 for lag=1 which is slightly larger than the input value of 1.3. On the
other hand, as shown in Fig. 1(b), the Lvy-stable PDF fits the sampled data over a
wider range and can track the power-law decay better into the tails of the distribution
compared with the Gaussian PDF.
Impact of Hydraulic Conductivity on Solute Transport in Highly Heterogeneous Aquifer 647

0 1
Sample
y = 0.3259x - 1.4009 Levy-stable PDF

Probability density
0.1 Gaussian PDF
R2 = 0.9601

0.01
ln C

-1

0.001
a b
0.0001
-2
-8 -4 0 4 8
0 1 2 3 4
Increments for lag=1
lnh

Fig. 1(a). The relationship between the esti- Fig. 1(b). Plots of probability density for sam-
mated width parameters and the lag distance ple and theoretical Lvy-stable probability
density function (PDF) for lag=1

3 Numerical Simulation

3.1 Problem Setup

A two-dimensional confined aquifer with a domain size 128 m x 128 m was consid-
ered with the grid size equaling to 1m (as shown in Fig. 2). Upstream and downstream
boundaries were specified as constant head with a head difference of 0.7m in the mean
flow direction. No-flow conditions were prescribed at the transverse, upper and lower
boundaries. The porosity was considered to be spatially homogeneous with a value of
unity for convenience. The geometric mean of lnK was chosen to be 2.5m/d and the
increments of lnK were treated as a truncated fLm distribution. The local longitudinal
and transverse dispersivities were 1m and 0.1m, respectively. To avoid the boundary
effects, a total mass of 1kg was released at (10m, 64m) as a small point source of con-
tamination. And the duration time was finished on the first transport step size.

Fig. 2. Schematic illustration of the computational domain

648 K. Wang and G. Huang

3.2 Monte-Carlo Simulation

The MCM was used to simulate solute transport process in the domain. As shown in
Table 1, three width parameters, i.e. C=0.05 (case 1), 0.1(case 2) and 0.2 (case 3)
were chosen to analyze the impact of width parameters on solute transport process,
respectively. Five hundred realizations for each case were carried out in the MCM to
satisfy the convergence requirements. The simulation algorithm consists of the fol-
lowing steps:
(1) Using the modified SRA3DC code to generate the random lnK field with its in-
crements following the truncated fLm distribution of given random seed number,
mean, C, H and values, respectively. The corresponding K can be obtained with the
exponential transformation of the generated lnK random field for each realization.
(2) Solving the flow equation to obtain the velocity field for each realization of the
K field. Firstly, flow problem was solved using MODFLOW with the Pre Conditioned
Gradient solver (PCG2). Secondly, the cell by cell flow terms were then extracted
from the MODFLOW solution and converted from mass flux to velocity.
(3) Solving the transport equation to obtain the concentration field for each realiza-
tion of the velocity field using MT3DMS with the central finite difference scheme for
advection solution. Each realization was stopped when 10% of the initial mass exited
the domain.
(4) Repeating steps (1)-(3) for all the realizations and averaging over all realiza-
tions to obtain the ensemble mean concentration distribution. The average concentra-
tion distribution will be used for moment analysis

Table 1. Chatacerizing parameyters considered in this study

Case C0 H
1 1.3 0.05 0.3
2 1.3 0.1 0.3
3 1.3 0.2 0.3

3.3 Moment Analysis

Spatial moments of solute concentration are widely used to analyze solute transport
process. The zero-order spatial moment indicating the mass of the system can be ex-
pressed as [22]:

M 0 (t ) = c( x, y, t )dxdy .

(8)

where M0(t) is the mass of the solute in the system at time t; is the effective poros-
ity; c(x, y, t) is the concentration at location (x, y) for time t, and represents the
interest area.
Impact of Hydraulic Conductivity on Solute Transport in Highly Heterogeneous Aquifer 649

The first-order moments about the origin are the mass center of solute plume,
which can be expressed as:

c( x, y, t ) xdxdy .
1
xc (t ) = (9a)
M0

1
yc (t ) =
M0 c( x, y, t ) ydxdy .

(9b)

where xc(t), yc(t) are the first moments representing the centroid coordinate of
solute plume along the longitudinal and transverse directions at time t,
respectively.
The second-order moments about the plumes center of mass characterizing the
macrodispersion can be expressed as:
1
M xx (t ) = c( x, y, t )( x x ) dxdy
2
c
M0

. (10)
1
= c( x, y, t ) x dxdy x (t )
2 2
c
M0

1
M yy (t ) = c( x, y, t ) y dxdy y (t )
2 2
c . (11)
M0

where Mxx(t), Myy(t) are the second central moments of the concentration plume along
the longitudinal and transverse directions at time t, respectively.
The longitudinal macrodispersion coefficient D can be expressed as follows:
1 dM xx
D= . (12)
2 dt

Under the assumption of a uniform flow field, the longitudinal macrodispersivity is

defined as
1
x (t ) = dM xx . (13)
2 vdt

where v is the average seepage velocity along the x coordinate, which can be deter-
mined by Darcys law

v = K h
. (14)

where h is the hydraulic gradient, K is the geometric mean of the hydraulic con-
ductivity, is the porosity which can be treated as a constant.
650 K. Wang and G. Huang

4 Results and Discussions

4.1 Hydraulic Conductivity Field Properties

Fig. 3 represents realizations of the lnK fields for case 1-3. It can be found that the
spatial distribution patterns of the lnK fields are similar for different C values. How-
ever, the increase in C values leads to the wider disperse range of the lnK field. Spe-
cially, the value of lnK deviates from 2.5 gradually represented by the enlarged range
of smaller and larger values as C increases. The largest K value is about seven and
four orders above its smallest value for C=0.2 and C=0.1, respectively, while the larg-
est K value is one order larger than its smallest value for C=0.05. The results are at-
tributable to the fact that the width parameter C characterizes the dispersion extent of
the lnK increments and a larger C value means a larger variation on the lnK incre-
ments, which then results in a larger variation in K fields.

Fig. 3. Comparison of the lnK field for (1) case 1; (2) case 2; (3) case 3

4.2 Velocity Field Properties

Fig. 4 shows the contours of velocity magnitude (vx2+vy2)1/2 in the domain for a realiza-
tion of case 1-3. It can be found that the increase in C leads to larger variation in the
velocity field. The largest value of the velocity magnitude is about 0.12, 0.24 and 0.45
for case 1, 2 and 3, respectively. These results are consistent with the hydraulic con-
ductivity field properties. This is attributed to Darcys law on condition that the hy-
draulic gradient and porosity are constant in this study. Consequently, the differences
in the permeability field leads to the same trend of the differences in the velocity field.
Combined with the research of Kohlbecker et al. [17] and our present study, it was
necessary to make further investigation of the probability distribution of the velocity
field. In this study, we mainly examine the impact of lnK with the increments follow-
ing the truncated fLm distribution on the resulting increments of lnv. For conven-
ience, the longitudinal component velocity vector (i.e. vx) is chosen to be discussed.
Fig. 5 is the sampled probability density plot of the increments for lag=1 in lnvx for
for different C (i.e. case 2 and 3) values. It indicates that the probability densities of
the increments in lnvx deviate significantly from Gaussian distribution and shift from
the body to the tails, which can be approximated well by the Levy-stable distribution.
These results are consistent with the results of Kohlbecker et al. that a heavy-tailed
distribution of increments in lnK results in a heavy-tailed distribution of increments in
Impact of Hydraulic Conductivity on Solute Transport in Highly Heterogeneous Aquifer 651

lnv. Furthermore, as C increases, the probability densities cover a greater range of

values, signifying a lager variation of vx. This is consistent with the variations in the
velocity magnitude as show in Figure 4. In next section, we will discuss solute trans-
port process obtained from these heavy-tailed velocity fields.

Fig. 4. Comparison of the contours of velocity magnitude for case 1-3: (1) case 1; (2) case 2;
(3) case 3

1 1
Sample Sample
Levy-stable PDF Levy-stable PDF
Probability density
Probability density

0.1 Gaussian PDF 0.1 Gaussian PDF

0.01 0.01

0.001 0.001

0.0001 0.0001
-6 -3 0 3 6 -3 -1.5 0 1.5 3
Increments for lag=1 Increments for lag=1

Fig. 5. Comparison of probability density plot of the increments for lag=1 in lnvx for case 2 Nd
3: (1) case 2; (2) case 3

4.3 Contour Maps of Solute Concentration

Contour maps of solute concentration are one of the best ways to interpret solute
transport process. Fig. 6 shows the comparison of contour maps for case 1-3 at 400
days including a homogeneous case (i.e. C=0) for better analysis. It can be found that
solute plume is in Gaussian distribution for C=0 in Fig. 6(a). As C increases, it cover
a grater range with a corresponding decrease in peak value, i.e., 7-8 for case 1 in
Fig. 6(b), 5-6 for case 2 in Fig. 6(c) and 3-4 for case 3 in Fig. 6(d), respectively.
Compared with the homogeneous case, solute plumes for larger C values have a
more significant anomalous shape with a sharper leading edge and a wider tailing
edge. The concentration gradient decreases with the increase of the C value. All
these features reflect more significantly anomalous transport process in a more
highly heterogeneous media.
652 K. Wang and G. Huang

Fig. 6. The contour maps of the solute concentration for different width parameters C at 400
days: (a) C=0 (i.e. homogeneous case); (b) case 1; (c) case 2; (d) case 3

4.4 Spatial Moments

Fig. 7 is about the temporal variation of the first spatial moments of solute plume for
different C (i.e. case 2 and 3) values. First of all, the component coordinates of cen-
troids xc and yc are basically superposition for different cases through the entire calcu-
lation time. Secondly, xc increases linearly with time while yc keeps constant for both
the cases. These results are consistent with Yan and Wus study in which the first
spatial moments of solute plume are not influenced by the variance of lnK but domi-
nated by the mean of lnK. This is because that the first spatial moments reflecting the
mass central position of solute plume are determined by its mean velocity. As can be
seen from Eq. (14), the mean velocity is a linear function of the mean of K with con-
stant hydraulic gradient and porosity. Hence, it was concluded that the first spatial
moments are determined by the mean of lnK and independent of the width parameter.
Fig. 8 shows the second spatial longitudinal and transverse moments for different
C (i.e. case 2 and 3) values. Fig. 9 shows the longitudinal macrodispersivity x ob-
tained using Eq. (13) with the second longitudinal moments from Fig. 8. Its known
that for the hypothetical case of homogeneous conditions, with constant velocity and
dispersion coefficients and instantaneous point injection, solute plume is Gaussian
and the second moments increase linearly with time while the longitudinal macrodis-
persivity is constant Our results show that Mxx and Myy increase linearly with time on
the double logarithmic scale, implying that the second spatial moments can be
approximated by a power law function of time, which leads to x increase as a power
law function of time as shown in Fig. 9. These results may be attributable to that
the hydraulic properties are random variables characterized by the Lvy-stable
Impact of Hydraulic Conductivity on Solute Transport in Highly Heterogeneous Aquifer 653

distribution, resulting in the spatial distribution of solute concentration deviates from

Gaussian distribution and the second spatial moments of solute plume are nonlinear
functions of time. This implies that non-Ficken dispersion occurs. Zou et al. [23] have
discussed the parabolic relationship between the dispersivity and time, and they have
argued that the non-linearly dispersive process is caused by the heterogeneity of the
hydraulic properties. Additionally, Mxx, Myy and x increase as C increases, meaning
that larger degree of heterogeneity causes larger dispersion of solute plume.

80

60
Distance/m

40

20

x 2
c
0.1
0.2
x 3
c

y 5
c
0.1
0.2
y 6
c
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
Time/d

Fig. 7. The first spatial moments (i.e. xc and yc) of the solute plume versus time for different
width parameters C (i.e. case 2 and 3)

1000 100
C=0.1 C=0.2
C=0.1
2
C=0.2
3

100 10
M xx /m 2

M yy/m 2

10 1

a b
1 0.1
10 100 1000 10 100 1000
Time/d Time/d

Fig. 8. The second spatial moments of the solute plume versus time for different width parame-
ters C (i.e. case 2 and 3): (a) Moments at the longitudinal direction Mxx; (b) Moments at the
transverse direction Myy

5

C=0.1
2
C=0.2
3
4

3
ax/m

0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
Time/d

Fig. 9. Macrodispersivity at the longitudinal direction versus time for different width parame-
ters C (i.e. case 2 and 3)
654 K. Wang and G. Huang

5 Conclusion
In this study, we used the Monte Carlo simulation method to investigate the sensitiv-
ity of solute transport to the characteristics of the highly heterogeneous and non-
stationary random fields. Based on the comparison results as discussed in Section 4,
the following conclusions are reached:
Firstly, the heterogeneity of the hydraulic conductivity field is sensitive to the val-
ues of the fLm characterizing parameters. A more heterogeneous hydraulic conductiv-
ity field is characterized by a larger C value. This is determined by the features of C,
which characterizes the discrete extent of variables relative to the mean value and a
larger C value leads to a larger variation in K fields.
Secondly, a larger C value value lead to a larger variation in the velocity field
which are consistent with the hydraulic conductivity field properties. The investiga-
tion of the probability distribution shows that the probability density plot of the in-
crements in lnvx can be approximated well by the Lvy-stable distribution. In addi-
tion, as C increases, the probability densities cover a greater range of values, signify-
ing a larger variation of velocity.
Thirdly, contour maps of solute concentration show that larger C leads to more
significantly anomalous transport with a sharper leading edge and a wider tailing edge
in the plume. The basic reason for this phenomenon is that larger C lead to heavy-
tailed K distribution, which directly give rise to heavy-tailed velocity field and then
results in more significant anomalous transport.
Forthly, the first spatial moments of the solute plumes are independent of the fLm
characterizing parameters C. The second spatial moments can be approximated by a
power law function of time, which leads to the longitudinal macrodispersivities in-
crease as a power law function of time. In addition, both the second spatial moments
and the longitudinal macrodispersivities increase as C increases, meaning that a larger
degree of heterogeneity causes a larger dispersion of solute plume.
The results summarized above imply that solute transport process is highly de-
pendent on the heterogeneity of the hydraulic conductivity field. The sensitivity
analysis underscores the need for careful aquifer characterization for accurate estima-
tion or prediction of subsurface flow and transport. However, our present study only
considered two-dimensional case with relatively simple boundary conditions. Further
investigation will be conducted for three-dimensional case in highly heterogeneous
aquifer with more complex conditions.

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 Effects of Different Physical Characteristics on the
Compression Molding Quality of Dried Fish Floss

Hongmei Xu, Li Zong, and Shengfa Yuan

College of Engineering and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University,

Wuhan 430070, China
xhm790912 163.com

Abstract. The compression molding of dried fish floss is of great significance

to the development of fish product and the storage and transport of fish. In this
issue, the compression ratio, relaxation ratio and shatter resistance are selected
as the evaluation indicators, effects of particle size, moisture content, amount,
and processing methods (whether cooked or not) on the compression molding
quality of dried fish floss are analyzed. The results showed that: 1) the moisture
content and amount of dried fish floss have a significant impact on the thickness
of molding block, and the lower the moisture content is, the larger the thickness
of molding block is, the thickness of molding block decreases with the amount
of dried fish floss; 2) processing methods have great effect on the relaxation ra-
tio of molding block, the relaxation ratio of molding block will increase if the
dried fish floss is cooked;3) the amount and moisture content affect the shatter
resistance of molding block observably, the greater the amount and moisture
content of dried fish floss ,the better the shatter resistance of molding block is
when the amount and moisture content respectively varies in the range of 3g-5g
and 5.13% -23.57%.

Keywords: Dried Fish Floss, Compression Molding, Relaxation Ratio, Shatter

Resistance, Moisture Content, Particle Size.

1 Introduction
Fish food is not only delicious and tasty, but also rich in nutrients. Many nutrients,
such as protein, vitamins, various mineral elements necessary for human body, are
derived from the fish food. As it turns out, fish food has always been popular with
people. Dried fish floss is a kind of fish product, which is made with delicate tech-
niques such as cooking, meat picking, seasoning, squeezing, frying etc.The compres-
sion molding is to suppress the loose dried fish floss under external force. As a result,
the volume of dried fish floss decreases, while the density increases. Nowadays, the
process of compression molding has been widely used in different fields. The experi-
mental study of food and biomass forming has become a research focus. Regarding
the relationship between the physical characteristics of materials, compression proc-
ess parameters and the relaxation ratio and durability of molding block, many re-
search results and conclusions have been achieved[1-5]. However, the research on
compression molding mainly focus on the processing of agricultural materials, the

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 656668, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Effects of Different Physical Characteristics on the Compression Molding Quality 657

compression molding of meat product is less involved. The compression molding of

meat product is lack of reference.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Materials

For this experiment, the salted and dried chub was broken into fish floss by a high-
speed meatball machine.

2.2 Devices

(1) RGT2000-10 Microcomputer Control Electronic Universal Testing Machine

Maximum load: 5KN; Test speed: 0.01-500mm/min; Manufacturer: Shenzhen Reger
instrument Co., Ltd.
(2) YXQ.SG41.280 Portable Pressure Steam Sterilizer
Maximum working pressure: 0.15MPa; Maximum working temperature: 126 ; Net
weight: 15.5kg.
(3) 202-00 Desktop Electric Oven

Temperature fluctuation: 0.1 ; Temperature range: 50-250 ; Manufacturer: Tianjin
Taisite instrument Co., Ltd.
(4) HSN-22 high-speed meatball machine
Productivity: 80kg/h; Power: 2.2kw.
(5) MP200-1 electronic scale
Range: 200g; Accuracy: 0.01g.
(6) Mold
A set of steel cylinder mold (Figure1) with a pressure device was designed for the
experiment. The internal diameter of the mold is 30mm. As shown in figure 1, the
part 2 and 3 respectively denote the punch and die of the mold.

Fig. 1. Sketch map of the mold

1. Upper platen 2. Punch 3. Die 4. Bottom platen
658 H. Xu, L. Zong, and S. Yuan

2.3 Methods

The compression molding test was conducted on the RGT2000-10 computer-

controlled electronic universal testing machine. Different from other common testing
machines, the compression speed and load of the universal testing machine can be
adjusted. The compression experiment of the dried fish floss material was carried out
at the room temperature. During the measurement, the die was placed on the bottom
platen. The dried fish floss was first metered into the die, and then the punch was in-
serted in the die. Afterwards, adjust the location of the upper and bottom platen, so
that the upper platen just contact with the punch.
Since the testing machine cant control the compression load precisely, the experi-
ment accomplishes the indirect control of compression load by controlling the com-
pressive strength. The compressive strength remains unchanged for sixty seconds
when it reaches the pre-set maximum value. Extract the molding block, and measure
the thickness of molding block within ten seconds. In order to reduce the measure-
ment error, the thickness of molding block was measured continuously two times in
the two different directions of diameter, and the final value was the averaged one.
The objective of our study was to investigate the relaxation characteristics of dried
fish floss and analyze the influence of processing methods, amount, particle size, and
moisture content on the quality of molding block. Accordingly, the testing program
was compiled on the principle of multi-level and single-factor.
The specific programs were described as follows:
(1) In order to investigate the effect of processing methods (whether cooked or
not) on the compression molding quality of dried fish floss, the comparative
tests of compression molding were carried out when the other conditions re-
main the same. Table 1 shows the test sequence. As shown in the table, eight
molding blocks were compressed for each kind of fish floss.
(2) Other things being equal, the compression molding test was performed to study
on the effects of amount on the compression molding quality of fish floss. For
each amount level, three molding blocks were compressed to reduce the meas-
urement error. Table 2 shows the test sequence.
(3) In the case of other identical conditions, the compression molding test was car-
ried out to analyze the effects of particle size on the compression molding qual-
ity of fish floss. As a matter of convenience, the experiment accomplishes the
indirect control of particle size by controlling the smashing time of dried fish.
Table 3 shows the test sequence. As shown in the table, four molding blocks
were compressed for each particle size.
(4) Other factors being equal, the compression molding test was performed to in-
vestigate the effects of moisture content on the compression molding quality of
fish floss. For convenience, the experiment accomplishes the indirect control of
moisture content by controlling the drying time of fish floss. Table 4 shows the
test sequence of specimens with different moisture content. Three molding
blocks were compressed for each kind of fish floss with specific moisture
content.
 Effects of Different Physical Characteristics on the Compression Molding Quality 659

3 Results and Discussion

3.1 Relaxation Characteristics of Molding Block

Cook chub for twenty minutes, and break it into fish floss in a high-speed meatball ma-
chine. Afterwards, the weighted fish floss was compressed into molding blocks. Figure 2
shows the relaxation characteristic curve of molding block. As shown in the figure, the
thickness of molding block increases with time. Thirty minutes later, there is no signifi-
cant change of thickness, and the molding block is in a state of complete relaxation.

Fig. 2. Relaxation characteristic curve of molding block

3.2 Effect of Processing Methods on the Compressibility of Fish Floss and Block
Quality
Figure 3 shows the compression curves of fish floss with different processing methods.
As shown in the figure, there is a consistent variation tendency for the curves. In the
beginning, a smaller compressive force can usually result in a large amount of compres-
sion. With the increase of compressive force, the displacement variation of fish floss
decreased gradually. When the compressive force increases to a certain extent, the dis-
placement variation falls to almost zero. Compare the compression curves of cooked
floss with those of the uncooked, it can be found that the compression curves of cooked
floss are mainly concentrated in the first half part of map, and share higher similarity
with each other, whereas, those of the uncooked are loosely distributed in the second
half of map. This phenomenon shows that the uncooked fish floss can obtain larger
compression ratio when pressed with the identical compressive force.
Most material contracts when subjected to external forces, which usually results in
the reduction of volume and increase of density. The contraction characteristic is
known as compressibility. Compressibility is usually represented by the percentage of
volume reduction (compression ratio) or bulk modulus.
In the study, the compressibility of fish floss is expressed as the volume compres-
sion ratio C, which can be calculated as follows:
V R2h ' h'
C= 100% = 100% = 100% (1)
V R h
2
h
where h ' refers to the displacement of upper platen during the process of compression
molding, h denotes the thickness of fish floss in the die before compression.
660 H. Xu, L. Zong, and S. Yuan

Fig. 3. Compression curves of fish floss with different processing methods 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 13,
and 16: compression curves of the cooked fish floss 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14, and 15: compression
curves of the uncooked fish floss

Table 1. Test sequence of the specimens when using different processing methods

Test number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Method Y N N Y Y N N Y Y N N Y Y N N Y

Note: Y (Yes) shows cooked; N (No) shows uncooked

Table 2. Test sequence of the specimens with different amount

Test number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Amount / g 4 4 6 4 5 7 3 6 3 5 6 3 7 7 5

Table 3. Test sequence of the specimens with different particle size

Test number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Smashing
30 30 10 40 20 10 30 10 20 40 20 40 20 10 30 40
time / s
 Effects of Different Physical Characteristics on the Compression Molding Quality 661

Table 4. Test sequence of the specimens with different moisture content (drying time)

Test
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
number
Drying
0 0 0 10 10 10 20 20 20 40 40 40
time / s

Table 5. Average and variance of the fish floss compression ratio when using different process-
ing methods

Group Point Sum Average Variance

Uncooked 8 5.52 0.69 0.00
Cooked 8 4.89 0.61 0.00

Table 5 shows the compression ratio of fish floss when employing different proc-
essing methods (whether cooked or not). It can be seen that processing methods have
a great impact on the compression ratio of dried fish floss, and the uncooked fish floss
can obtain better compressibility.

Table 6. Average and variance of the molding block thickness when using different processing
methods

Group Point Sum Average Variance

Uncooked 8 51.6 6.45 0.02
Cooked 8 49.2 6.15 0.06

Table 6 shows the average and variance of molding block thickness when using
different processing methods. The results show that processing methods affect the
thickness of molding block significantly, and the molding block of uncooked fish
floss is much thicker than that of the cooked.

Table 7. Average and variance of the molding block relaxation ratio when using different proc-
essing methods

Group Point Sum Average Variance

Uncooked 8 10.1 1.26 0.00
Cooked 8 10.9 1.37 0.00

Table 7 shows the average and variance of molding block relaxation ratio when us-
ing different processing methods. As shown in the table, processing methods have
great effect on the relaxation ratio of molding block; the relaxation ratio of molding
block will increase if fish floss is cooked.
662 H. Xu, L. Zong, and S. Yuan

Table 8. Average and variance of the molding block shatter resistance when using different
processing methods

Group Point Sum Average Variance

Uncooked 8 7.88 0.98 0.00
Cooked 8 6.94 0.99 0.00

Table 8 shows the average and variance of molding block shatter resistance when
using different processing methods. The results indicate that processing methods have
no significant effect on the shatter resistance of molding block, and there is no obvi-
ous difference in the shatter resistance between the cooked and uncooked.

3.3 Effect of Amount on the Compressibility and Block Quality of Fish Floss

Figure 4 shows the compression curves of fish floss with different amount. As shown
in the figure, the three compression curves of 3g fish floss are located in the farthest
left of map, followed by those of 4g, 5g and 6g fish floss. The compression curves of
7g fish floss are located in the farthest right. Additionally, the larger the amount of
fish floss is, the longer the distance traveled by testing machine platen is. Moreover,
with the increase of fish floss amount, the gradients of the compression curves de-
crease. It is, therefore, believed that the fish floss has taken shape when the increase
of compressive force hardly gives rise to the displacement variation. That is to say,
the less the fish floss amount is, the smaller the force required for taking shape is.

Fig. 4. Compression curves of fish floss with different amount

7, 9 and 12: compression curves of 3g fish floss;
1, 2 and 4: compression curves of 4g fish floss
5, 10 and 15: compression curves of 5g fish floss;
3, 8 and 11: compression curves of 6g fish floss
6, 13 and 14: compression curves of 7g fish floss

In order to investigate the effect of amount on the compressibility of fish floss, the
compression ratio of fish floss was calculated according to Eq. (1). Table 9 shows the
fish floss compression ratio with different amounts. The results of variance analysis
reveal that the amount of fish floss has no significant effect on the compressibility.
 Effects of Different Physical Characteristics on the Compression Molding Quality 663

In addition, the thickness, relaxation ratio and shatter times were also calculated to
analyze the effect of amount on block quality, and the results were respectively shown
in Table 10, Table 11 and Table 12.

Table 9. Compression ratio of fish floss with different amounts

Amount / g 3 4 5 6 7
Compression
59.6 59.6 58.9 59.0 58.3
ratio %

Table 10. Thickness of molding block with different amounts

Amount / g 3 4 5 6 7
Thickness
3.69 4.86 6.23 7.56 9.01
/ mm

Table 11. Average and variance of the molding block relaxation ratio with different amounts

Group Point Sum Average Variance

3g 3 4.09 1.36 0.00
4g 2 2.79 1.40 0.00
5g 3 4.08 1.36 0.00
6g 3 4.06 1.35 0.00
7g 3 4.02 1.34 0.00

Table 12. Average and variance of the molding block shatter times with different amounts

Group Point Sum Average Variance

3g 3 2.95 0.98 0.00
4g 2 1.98 0.99 0.00
5g 3 2.96 0.99 0.00
6g 3 2.98 0.99 0.00
7g 3 2.98 0.99 0.00

On the basis of the variance analysis of experimental data, the following conclu-
sions were derived:
1) The amount of fish floss affects the molding block thickness significantly, and
the relationship between amount and thickness can be represented mathemati-
cally as follows:
h = 1.334 w 0.4
where h and w respectively denote the molding block thickness and amount of fish
floss.
664 H. Xu, L. Zong, and S. Yuan

2) The amount of fish floss has no significant effect on the relaxation ratio of
molding block.
3) The amount of fish floss does not significantly affect the shatter times, that is, it
has no great impact on the shatter resistance of molding block.

3.4 Effect of Particle Size on the Compressibility and Block Quality of Fish
Floss

Figure 5 displays the compression curves of fish floss with different particle size or
drying time. Its clear that there are no significant differences between the curves in
their variation tendency. Beyond that, these curves course irregularly. This demon-
strates that in the smashing time range of 10s~40s, the forming speed doesnt subject
to the impact of particle size. Namely, particle size has no significant effect on the
compression process of fish floss.

Fig. 5. Compression curves of fish floss with different particle sizes

3, 6, 8 and 14: compression curves of fish floss with the drying time of 10s
5, 9, 11 and 13: compression curves of fish floss with the drying time of 20s
1, 2, 7 and 15: compression curves of fish floss with the drying time of 30s
4, 10, 12 and 16: compression curves of fish floss with the drying time of 40s

Document research indicates that particle size might be a factor affecting the com-
pressibility and block quality of fish floss. To illustrate this point, the compression
ratio of fish floss, thickness, relaxation ratio, and shatter resistance of molding block
were tested and calculated, and the results were respectively displayed in Table
13~16.The results suggest that particle size has no significant effect on the compres-
sion ratio of fish floss, thickness, relaxation ratio, and shatter resistance of molding
block. That is to say, particle size does not affect the compressibility and block qual-
ity of fish floss significantly.

Table 13. Compression ratio of the fish floss with different particle size

Smash time/s 10 20 30 40
Compression
60.46 61.76 61.89 62.69
ratio %
 Effects of Different Physical Characteristics on the Compression Molding Quality 665

Table 14. Average and variance of the molding block thickness with different particle size

Group Point Sum Average Variance

10s 4 25.91 6.48 0.01
20s 4 25.53 6.38 0.01
30s 4 25.36 6.34 0.01
40s 4 25.47 6.37 0.01

Table 15. Average and variance of the molding block relaxation ratio with different particle
size

Group Point Sum Average Variance

10s 4 5.44 1.36 0.00
20s 4 5.56 1.39 0.00
30s 4 5.39 1.35 0.00
40s 4 5.44 1.36 0.00

Table 16. Average and variance of the molding block shatter resistance with different particle
size

Group Point Sum Average Variance

10s 4 3.96 0.99 0.00
20s 4 3.90 0.97 0.00
30s 4 3.96 0.99 0.00
40s 4 3.95 0.99 0.00

Fig. 6. Compression curves of fish floss with different moisture content

1, 2 and 3: compression curves of fish floss with the moisture content of 23.57%
4, 5 and 6: compression curves of fish floss with the moisture content of 19.32%
7, 8 and 9: compression curves of fish floss with the moisture content of 10.39%
10, 11 and 12: compression curves of fish floss with the moisture content of 5.13%
666 H. Xu, L. Zong, and S. Yuan

3.5 Effect of Moisture Content on the Compressibility and Block Quality of Fish
Floss

Figure 6 shows the compression curves of fish floss with different moisture content.
As shown in the figure, the compression curves of fish floss with the moisture content
of 23.57% and 5.13% are concentrated in the first half of figure, and share great simi-
larity with each other, whereas, those of fish floss with moisture content of 19.32%
and 10.39% are mainly located in the second half part. Additionally, the gradient
variation of compression curve varies with its location in the figure. The gradient
variation of compression curves with moisture content of 23.57% and 5.13% is much
larger than those of the others, which shows that the compressibility of fish floss var-
ies with its moisture content.
The moisture content of fish floss mainly depends on its drying time. Table 17
shows the moisture content and compression ratio of fish floss with different drying
time. Its clear that the moisture content has great impact on the compression ratio of
fish floss. The correlation between the compression ratio and moisture content is pre-
sented in Fig.7.The figure reveals that compression ratio increases nonlinearly with
the moisture content of fish floss, and the maximal compression ratio is achieved at
the moisture content of 20%.After that, the compression ratio decreases with the
increase of moisture content. In other words, the moisture content is not as high as
possible. In order to obtain better compressibility, the moisture content must be con-
trolled in a certain range.

Table 17. Moisture content and compression ratio of fish floss with different drying time

Drying time/min 0 10 20 40
Moisture content % 23.57 19.32 10.39 5.13
Compression ratio% 61.26 71.54 66.46 55.80

Fig. 7. Relationship between the compression ratio and moisture content of fish floss

Furthermore, in order to investigate the effect of moisture content on molding block

quality, the thickness and relaxation ratio of block were also measured and calculated.
Since the molding block with drying time of 40 minutes is relatively loose, its difficult
 Effects of Different Physical Characteristics on the Compression Molding Quality 667

to analyze the variance of relaxation ratio and shatter resistance. Consequently, the tests
and variance analysis dont allow for the particular case. Table 18 and Table 19 respec-
tively display the variance analysis results of the block thickness and relaxation ratio. It
can be seen that the moisture content has extremely notable effect on the thickness of
molding block. Generally, the longer the drying time of fish floss, the thicker the mold-
ing block. Moreover, the drying time or moisture content has no significant effect on the
relaxation ratio of molding block.

Table 18. Average and variance of the molding block thickness with different drying time

Group Point Sum Average Variance

0min 3 17.95 5.98 0.00
10min 3 17.09 5.70 0.01
20min 3 23.65 7.88 0.02
40min 3 26.17 8.72 0.35

Table 19. Average and variance of the molding block relaxation ratio with different drying
time

Group Point Sum Average Variance

0min 3 4.20 1.40 0.00
10min 3 4.06 1.35 0.00
20min 3 3.89 1.30 0.01

4 Conclusions
Taking the compression ratio, relaxation ratio and shatter resistance as evaluation
indicators, the effects of floss amount, processing methods, particle size and moisture
content on the compressibility and block quality were discussed. The conclusions are
summarized as follows:
1) Processing methods (whether cooked or not) affect the relaxation ratio signifi-
cantly, and the block relaxation ratio will increase if fish floss is cooked;
processing methods have no significant effect on the block thickness and shatter
resistance.
2) When the floss amount varies in the range of 3g~5g, amount has great impact on
the block thickness and shatter resistance. Generally, the greater the floss
amount is, the thicker the molding block is, and the better the shatter resistance
is, too. However, for the relaxation ratio, floss amount is not a significant influ-
ence factor.
3) In the smashing time range from 10s to 40s, smashing time or particle size has
no significant effect on the compression ratio of fish floss, thickness, relaxation
ratio, and shatter resistance of molding block.
668 H. Xu, L. Zong, and S. Yuan

4) When the moisture content varies in the range of 5.13% -23.57%, moisture con-
tent has strong influence on the block thickness. The lower the moisture content
of fish floss, the thicker the molding block. The moisture content has no signifi-
cant effect on the relaxation ratio of molding block. Moreover, the moisture
content affects the compression ratio of fish floss significantly. With the in-
crease of moisture content, the compression ratio of fish floss increases firstly
and then decreases. The maximal compression ratio is achieved at the moisture
content of 20%.

Acknowledgement
This research was supported by Scientific Research Foundation of Huazhong Agricul-
tural University for the Introduced Talents Research on the Evaluation Index System
of Rice Moisture for Safe Storage under grant Nos. 52204-08079.

References
[1] Hu, J.J.: Straw Pellet Fuel Cold Molding by Compression Experimental Study and Nu-
merical Simulation.Thesis for doctor degree, Dalian University of Technology (2008)
[2] He, X.F., Lei, T.Z., Li, Z.F.: Experimental study on the cold forming technology of bio-
mass pellet fuel. Acta Energiae Solaris Sinica 9, 937941 (2006)
[3] Wu, J., Sheng, K.C.: Experimental Studies on Chopping Cotton Stalk When Compressed
to High Densities. Journal of Shihezi University (Natural Science) 7(3), 235238 (2003)
[4] Xing, L., Wang, S.Y., Liu, X.D.: Experiment and Analysis of Straw Compression. Journal
of Jiamusi University (Natural Science Edition) 23(4), 574576 (2005)
[5] Wang, H.B., Wang, C.G.: Study on the Stress-relaxation of Hay. Journal of Agricultural
Mechanization Research 1, 134137 (2008)

Biography
XU Hongmei received the B.S and M.S degree from Huazhong Agriculture Univer-
sity, and the Ph.D. degree from Zhejiang University, in 2001 ,2004,and
2008,respectively. she is currently the lecturer of the Department of Engineering and
Technology at Huazhong Agricultural University. Her primary professional interests
lie in digital simulation and analysis of the NVH performance for automobiles, ad-
vanced design theory and method of engine, vibration and noise control of automobile
and engine, modern signal process research on vibration-noise signal, and agricultural
product processing technology.
 Electronic Agriculture Resources and Agriculture
Industrialization Support Information Service Platform
Structure and Implementation

Zhao Xiaoming

Ningxia Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences,

Yinchuan,750002, P.R. China
Zhaoxm9@tom.com

Abstract. Agriculture resources and agriculture industrialization support infor-

mation service platform is an important part of Agriculture affair support plat-
form of west part national area of P. R. China, a key projects in the National
Science & Technology Pillar Program in the Eleventh Five-year Plan Period.
The system is designed as a 3 layers structure. Database support subsystem is
the base layer. The middle layer contains GIS model and general reuse models;
the upper layer is affair process interface and the entire manager interface.
Consider of the country situation of China west, nature village is setup as a in-
formation manage unit. Famers in the village act as the registered user. Other
government layer monitor the system running and distribute their index inde-
pendently, system managed in the province layer. Software implement under
Microsoft Windows server 2003, running as a Server/Browser style.

1 Introduction

The west of China is a territory living many different minorities; agriculture is the
bases of economy in this area. Agriculture developments depend on agriculture indus-
trialization and modern technique application, such as IT. Information system will
support agriculture technique spread and the product process management. With
growth of e-commerce, agriculture products selling on-line became an effective way
for famer and Agriculture Company. Information of agriculture and rural could man-
age and spread thought the web.
People in Ningxia recognized the importance of agriculture and rural information
system, government spread internet to each village during 2007-2008. In order to
support the progress of informatization of minorities living area, serial key projects
were arranged in the National Science & Technology Pillar Program. Those projects
help agriculture of minorities living area transmits from tradition to modern.
Building an agriculture resources and agriculture industrialization support informa-
tion service platform for west of China based on Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region
and setup a test platform in Yinchuan is a part of work in those key projects. This
paper describes the software structure design and implementation.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 669673, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
670 X. Zhao

2 Software System Design

2.1 The Goal of Software System Design

Villages are the base units of agriculture produce organizer and farmers life circle in
Chinese rural area. Agriculture industrialization developed on traditional village and
enriches the farmers. Electronic Agriculture Resources and agriculture Industrializa-
tion Support information service Platform (eARISP) designed as a village oriented,
and farmers participated information system, which provide agriculture products price
and selling information system, village affair management system, and industrial
chain support system, agriculture resources development service system.
A province is an agriculture management domain; and it is also an information ser-
vice domain. Province data center setups in province agriculture department. The
middle government units, town and county act as manager who release information
and do data statistic. Villages are the base units have its web page; farmers are end
user of system.
The design innovation is Province-village model. eARISP is not a e-government
system, it is an agriculture industrialization support information service platform.
Farmer needs freedom to learn technique, manage their field products, get and put
information. We design town and county as a limited manager user to reduce manage
layer, create a free virtual society server to agriculture industrialization development.
eARISP is also act as an agriculture technique query system, provide technique
graph and document, online agriculture expert interview and question answer. An
agriculture science and technique knowledgebase were build as an encyclopedia for
end user. Agriculture experts registered as adviser user without administration bound-
ary, who was authorized to edit the content of knowledgebase and answer the ques-
tions provided by the end users.
Super user work in province data centre manages whole system. Figure 1 shows
users role arrangement and relationships.

Fig. 1. Users role arrangement and relationships

2.2 The Division of System Function

System function divided into several groups. Each group functioned as an aspect of
application.
 eARISP Structure and Implementation 671

2.2.1 Village Affair Management System

Village affair manage system focus on agriculture product produce, organize farmers
as member, share agriculture information and put their products information on the
web. Traditional Chinese village member have stronger traditional value, whole vil-
lage honor concerned to each member which is the bases of e-selling credit. Village
affair manage system does not concern with political issues which integrate in another
system of the project.

2.2.2 Industrialization Chain Support System

Agriculture industrialization chain are including about agriculture products process
from land, seeding to products selling and concerned agriculture material providing.
How does information system support agriculture industrialization chain? Experts
have different viewpoints. According to current status of agriculture and rural in
China west, technique information obtain and products selling are two most important
factors in agriculture industrialization chain building. An encyclopedia like agricul-
ture technique system included as a part of this system. Agriculture experts in a prov-
ince range are organized as online adviser, their technique answer will add to corre-
spond item in technique encyclopedia. An agriculture products information system
was designed to support products selling on line.

2.2.3 Rural Area Planning Management System

Rural planning is a great problem during China new country building process. The
goal of manage system in eARISP will provide guideline or models suggested by
government. It works as an interview platform. GIS data of rural collected and store
in database, user query and display planning graph by WebGIS. First time we image
rural planning management as 3D environment and people can design a village and its
facilities, and virtual walk through. But rural area is too large to build 3D data set to
describe whole area. So first step, we design rural planning management by support of
WebGis. 3D environment will build in future.

2.2.4 Agriculture Resource Development Management System

At the view of the whole management domain, agriculture resource show and manage
for different user with different authority.
District and its basic information.
Crop distribution: species, area, field product etc.
Environment resource data.
Land use information.
Commercial information and data.
Policy, tax.

2.2.5 Database Management

Database in eARISP may include several subjects:
Agriculture technique knowledge base
Agriculture commercial database
Agriculture planning information and GIS
Agriculture product database
Statistical database
User and system management database
672 X. Zhao

Database manages all data used in system. Data used in the system include user data,
geographic data, agriculture knowledge, and some spatial data. MySQL is used in the
test platform.

3 Software Structure
Well-designed software structure will help developer integrate different software
models. eARISP was designed as a structure software in order to use software com-
ponents, such as GIS, database system, transaction process system and other common
middle ware designed by company.

Fig. 2. Software structure

3.1 Agriculture Industrialization Resource Modeling

Agriculture resource includes soil, water, fertilizer, nature character (temperature,
humidity etc.) and industry produced agriculture materials. Those resources are
evaluated in several evaluation models. The brief models are:
Country vegetable market evaluation
Country commercial environment evaluation
Agriculture industry development evaluation
Village affair process
Chinese farmers are group of people who lack agriculture and computer skills. Simple
end user skills will help user use system in a short time. That is so called Putting
Technique upper, providing service lower. Most of the system functions are imple-
mented on the server ends, end user just use a internet browser visit all the functions
supported by the server without any plug-in or add-on component.

3.2 Multi-layer Structure

eARISP was designed as a 3 layer system. Each layer could maintain and expend eas-
ily. Database support subsystem is the base layer. All of the database management
 eARISP Structure and Implementation 673

and maintaining are based on the lower layer components. The middle layer contains
GIS model and general reuse models, such as transaction process. the middle layer
can expended by adding software in future. The upper layer is affair process interface
and all of the manager interface. Figure 2 shows software structure.
GIS is a complex but important technique in eARISP, so do other common,
reusable transaction process models. All of those were designed as middleware. Mid-
dleware connect base layer and application and user interface. It provides system
stability and expendability.

4 System Implementation
Most popular network server operate system are Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and
various Linux server editions. The first edition of eARISP was implemented under
support of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft .net development system
and MySQL database system. Web server and GIS server work together. An agricul-
ture data integrate networks works as a supplement system to collect agriculture data
from various agriculture concerned department.
eARISP was built into two main interface, front interface and management inter-
face. Front interface faces to end user, management user of town and county and
adviser user who maintain the knowledgebase and answer questions. Management
interface faces to super user and some user who has duty to maintain the system. Most
GIS graph process and data maintain on the desktop software and store data to
database in management interface.

5 Discussion
Agriculture industrialization information support system is a complex subject and
different development stage have different requirement. The platform we setup during
the project period is just a beginning and a test. GIS technique application and agri-
culture knowledge effective manage are developing. This paper try to describe whole
system structure, technique detail are ignored. With eARISP application spreading,
improvement will made and apply to the new edition.

References
[1] Bernstein, P.A., Newcomer, E.: Principles of Transaction Processing, 2nd edn. Elsevier
Inc., Burlington (2009)
[2] Simsion, G.C., Witt, G.C.: Data Modeling Essentials, 3rd edn. Elsevier Inc., San Francisco
(2005)
[3] Wu, H.-r., Wang, Z.-l., Yang, B.-z., Sun, X.: Research and Implementation on Platform for
Electronic Agriculture with Web Application Server. Journal, Microcomputer Develop-
ment 14(1), 7578 (2004)
[4] Xu, Y., Qi, W.-H., Xie, G.-D., Zhang, Y.-S.: The Factor-Energy Evaluation Model Of
Agricultural Natural Resources Utilization Efficiency And Its Application. Journal, Re-
sources Science 24(3), 8691 (2002)
 Evaluation on the Agricultural Website's Efficiency
Based on DEA Method

Shangmin Deng1 and Weili Men2

1
Headmaster's Office of Shandong
University of Technology, Zibo, P.R.China
deng2132@sdut.edu.cn
2
Science and Technology Information Research Institute
of Shandong University of Technology
346380987@163.com

Abstract. An information-driven agriculture is firstly agriculture digitalization,

the foundation of which is the construction of agricultural information net-
works. Based on the methods of website evaluation, an indicator system of effi-
ciency evaluation for agricultural information websites is constructed in this
thesis. Then the efficiency of 17 municipal websites in Shandong province are
analyzed by the C2R Model in DEA. The result declares that 3 of these web-
sites are related effective and the other 14 are non-effective. By an analysis of
projection, this thesis also gives suggestions to improve the performance of the
non-effective.

Keywords: Agricultural information website, Efficiency of website, Data En-

velopment Analysis (DEA), Evaluation research.

1 Introduction

Issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers, are called Three Rural Ques-
tions, which take an crucial part in the realization of the goal of a well-to-do society
and the development of our country's economy. It is acknowledged that it will be
harder for uninformed districts to develop their own agriculture. Nowadays, the
information gap between urban and rural areas has attracted wide attention of experts
from Information Science. The Party Central Committee, since 16th party congress
,hammers away at the point that we should always take addressing the problems
facing China's agriculture as the top priority of our economic, and also put forward
to boost the county economy at the same time. One of the Three Most Require-
ment, raised on the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the
C.P.C, is that the position of agriculture as the foundation is still weak and need to
brush up on the most. In March 2010,the government of Shandong province makes
the implementation of the plan named Powerful Province of information and the
development of Digital Agriculture positively as key points to promote new Informa-
tion Industries.[1]

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 674680, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Evaluation on the Agricultural Website's Efficiency Based on DEA Method 675

The informationization of agriculture, in the first place, is digitalization, which

means to devote major efforts to develop the digital agriculture. As we all know that,
the foundation of digitalization is the construction of information networks and the
service level is determined by such factors as the resources ,the infrastructural facili-
ties and the environment of informationization, as well as the human resources and
the effectiveness of agricultural information services .In another word ,the informa-
tionization of agricultural service can be demonstrated by that of agriculture.[2] So, it
is reasonable to estimate the present situation of agriculture services .However, be-
cause of the difference in geographical conditions and culture backgrounds, we need a
appropriate method to selected samples comprehensively and objectively. Fortunately
there is a successful precedent created by the DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis for
short) which is convenient and practical.[3]

2 Data Envelopment Analysis

DEA which is short for Data Envelopment Analysis is a new system analytic me-
thod.It was firstly put forward by two operational research experts, A.Charnes and
W.W.Copper, to deal with inputs and outputs subject to random disturbances, accord-
ing to the relative efficiency and evaluation of returns for familiar departments. Based
on the concept of relative efficiencies, this method evaluates the relative efficiency of
DMUs (Decision Making Units for short) by linear programming model. Besides
evaluate and list DMUs as relative efficiency, the results also will point out existing
problems and improvement for non-efficient DMUs. Furthermore, instead of setting
the weight of inputs/outputs beforehand, DEA gets objective value for each random
variable by computing actual datas, which makes the conclusion independently and
impartially.[4]
In the light of different research purposes, there are many different DEA models. In
this thesis, we select the C2R model just because we want to study whether the DMUs
are technique and scale simultaneously efficient when to decrease its inputs by suit-
able times with its unchanged outputs. The DMU is technique or scale efficient unless
it is DEA efficient; otherwise, it will be not efficient.

3 Description of the Model of C2R

As the first evaluation model, the results of C2R can be used to demonstrate the effi-
cient of DMUs. For the sake of our discussion we assume that the number of DMUs is
n, and the number of input and output variables each DUM has is "m" and "s" respec-
tively. we also set up a mathematical formula of the relationship for the two kinds of
variables to fulfill:
Xj=(X1j,X2j,X3j,,Xmj)T0,

Yj=(Y1j Y2j Y3j Ysj)T0, j=1,,n;
At the same time ,other certain conditions should be satisfied:
Xij 0, Yrj0,i=1,2,,m;r=1,2,,s.
676 S. Deng and W. Men

The model is known as efficiency evaluation of decision-making units such as j0,

subject to meeting the efficiency of all the DUMs at checkpoints, then we come to a
C2R modle with non archimedean infinitesimal vector. The optimality is relative
efficiency of a DMU, as contrasted with other DUMs, according to what have we
suggested. [5]
Here, we useas the input proportional variable, as the non archimedean infini-
tesimal vector (usually, we let it be 10-6 ); = 111Em,
= 1
1Es; =(
1 ) is slack variables correspond to inputs, =
is the variable to output and the j is the decision variable for the
appointed DMU.
When this model is applied to data, we will get the optimal solution composed of

j S*- S*+ and *.There are several results that we should make into our consid-
eration:

(1)When 0=1, s0-=0 and s0+=0, we think the DMU is efficiency which means
technique and scale are simultaneously efficient.
(2) When 0=1, -, but s0-0 or s0+0, we believe that under some conditions the

DMU is weak DEA efficient. In other words, the either technique or scale is efficient.
(3) When 0 1, the performance of this DUM is of non-effective.
Therefore, we consider it as Effective Decision-making Units when 0=1;
otherwise, it is ineffective. [6]

4 Efficiency Evaluation on Agriculture Websites

Now, the number of municipal cities in Shandong province is about 91,which counts
for 65%. Intra-county economy plays a vital role in the development in the informa-
tionalization of our province. Even though, much attention has been paid on the in-
formationization of agriculture, there are still many problems that should take into our
focus. Researches on agriculture websites will not only improve the design and
maintenance for websites of corporations, but also promote the standardization of the
management and speed up the process of agricultural modernization in Shandong
Province. [7]
 Evaluation on the Agricultural Website's Efficiency Based on DEA Method 677

4.1 Evaluating Index

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the agriculture websites in Shandong prov-
ince. The main method is to study the inputs effectiveness while keep outputs steady.
To make the result objective and easy to analyze, we choose such inputs (inps for
short) variables as TAG (Total number of web pages), APS (Average page size), TFS
(Total foreign sites that link to this site), UDR (Updata rating), NBL (No broken
links), FRP (Foreign (external) pages referenced), NRP (Non returning percentage)
and CP (Connected percentage).[8]
TAG is the number of static and dynamic pages belonging to the same root direc-
tory. APS describes the average pages size classified by 10k times.TFS evaluates the
networks, inputs variables effectiveness from the perspective of website promotion.
UDR is a relative concept. Maintainers usually update different content types in dif-
ferent times. So before we estimate the upiea objectively, we need to classified differ-
ent updating periods in sorts. In this thesis, we divide the periods into four catalogues.
According to the different influence, we give weights to the periods respectively.
NBL means using this kind of links, we can not find the target website. Though this,
we have another way to measure the effective of websites. The more FRP is, the long-
er time it will take to operate the website. NRP have the similar function as CP. Both
of them evaluate the effectiveness of website from the eye of site navigations.
Output (outp for short) variables we choose means the number of visitors to the
site, which has a certain relation with TFS. Because a visitor may glance over many
different documents or more than one websites, the clicks may be much larger. [9]

4.2 Sample

To determine the Agricultural Website's Efficiency, we choose 17 sites as DMUs set,

built by Agricultural Information Centre of Shandong province and subordinate de-
partments. They have common in many aspects such as contents, receivers and func-
tions, which meet the requirements for application of C2R model in DEA.

4.3 Data

Using Maxamine[10], a specialized profiler to make a analysis of networks, the men-

tioned sites were scanned. The objective datas we collected includes the internal in-
formation of the sites and interconnection information between networks, among
which, the UDR are calculated as table 1.
The output consult verified test results from alexa.com, an authoritative Third-
party certification website, applying the number of visitor for the targeted site.

Table 1. Calculation methods of update rate of website

update cycle of pages update rate Ri Weight update rate of website
1 week R1 0.50
1 week ~6 weeks R2 0.30
6 weeks ~6 months R3 0.15
6 months R4 0.05
678 S. Deng and W. Men

Table 2. Appraisal index of the efficiency of websites in shandong province

name of the efficiency name of the efficiency

counties of website counties of website
Qingdao 1.000 Dongying 0.284
Weihai 1.000 Weifang 0.243
Jinan 1.000 Binzhou 0.143
Zibo 0.662 Linyi 0.122
Liaocheng 0.494 Dezhou 0.057
Laiwu 0.439 Tai-an 0.055
Jining 0.395 Zaozhuang 0.050
Yantai 0.362 Rizhao 0.042
Heze 0.315

Form table 2, we can see that three DUMS are of effective units in DEA. In other
words, the others 14 are non DEA efficient, among which, there are four websites
have an effectiveness below 0.01. Therefore, it can be concluded that, the agricultural
sites, efficiency in Shandong are lower than expected. Then, we make an projection
analysis for the non DEA efficient based on the DEAP2.1 results. The main task is to
analyze relative improvement of inputs when outputs is remain unchanged. We also
calculate potential improvements of inputs and outputs under ideal condition.
The average potential improvements are showed in table 3.The potential improve-
ments demonstrate that, reference to the non DEA efficient DMUs, we have not make
full use of each input already, so, in theory at least, we can promote the sites effi-
ciency and induce inputs. If we keep inputs still, the output is also can be promoted by
61%. In other words, if inputs can not be reduced, theoretical, efficiency can be raised
by the increasing number of visitors.
Table 4 shows main factors influencing websites efficiency, including FRP, TAG,
NRP and APS.

4.4 Recommendations

From table 2, we know that the operation efficiencies are very different among these
17 municipal agriculture websites, even though most of them are inefficient. Refer-
ence to non DEA efficient, combined with the analysis of table 3 and table 4, we
suggest that the relative departments should take such actions as following to improve
the performance of the non DEA efficient:

Table 3. The mean potential improvements for input and output indexes

LWHP ,QS  ,QS  ,QS  ,QS  ,QS  ,QS  ,QS  ,QS 2XWS
7$* $36 7)6 8'5 1%/ )35 153 &3 5HDFK
PHDQ
                 

 Evaluation on the Agricultural Website's Efficiency Based on DEA Method 679

Table 4. Analysis on the main influence factors for inefficient DMUs

website Compared Item website Compared Item

www.zbny.gov.cn APS www.wfny.gov.cn TFS,FPR
www.lcagr.cn TAG,FPR,NRP www.bzny.gov.cn TFS,NRP
agri.laiwu.gov.cn TAG,APS,NBL, www.lyny.gov.cn TAG
www.kelawang.com TAG,FPR www.dzny.gov.cn TAG,NBL,NRP
www.ytny.gov.cn TAG,UDR,NBL, www.tany.gov.cn TFS,FPR,NRP
www.hzsny.gov.cn TAG,APS,UDR, www.zznjh.gov.cn FPR,NRP
www.dyny.gov.cn FPR www.rzny.gov.cn APS,FPR,NRP

Abstract contents. The target of this action is to reduce TAG and lower APS. The
two aspects not only reflect the information website contents, but also the website's
usability and security. Agriculture sites are made for agriculture participants and
relative departments. So early in the website construction, we need to consider how to
design the pages reasonably, and abstract the content to ensure its usability and
security.

Cut down NRP. NRP evaluates websites from the perspective of navigation. This
aspect means reducing inputs of navigation. If the site has a set Robustness, the more
complexity the navigation is, the easier visitors will be lost. This, finally, will indi-
rectly affect the website's efficiency. If the navigation is simplified, not only the us-
ability is improved, but also the inputs of the operation can be cut down.

Reduce TFS. This method includes reducing inputs of website promotion or increase
the number of the visitors. On some degree, TFS represents the stability of a website,
yet the more external links are, the higher it will cost. Checking dead links, updating
old links and other resources maintenance will affect the operation efficiency. So, in
order to promote the efficiency, we need to reduce TFS while the quality of the web is
ensured. Only in this way, can we attract more attention and keep the site authority.

5 Conclusions

Though all the above mentioned, we have a clear idea that there are 14 websites are
non DEA efficient, which counts for 84.3% of all municipal websites in Shandong
province. We have presented a detailed accounting of efficiency of agricultural web-
sites and suggestions are also given to improve the current situation. Evaluation of the
agriculture websites' efficiency can not only reflect the present situation of Shandong
agriculture, but also be valuable for further development in the construction of infor-
mation agriculture and application of related net resources.
680 S. Deng and W. Men

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Level in China. J. Library and Information Service, 3336 (1981)
2. Han, X.S., Pan, H.F., Wen, J.H., et al.: Evaluation and Study on Development of Agricul-
ture Information Service. J. Journal of Agricultural Mechanization Research, 2023 (2007)
3. Hu, P., Fu, Y.Y., Gan, L.: Evaluation on agriculture sites in western area Based on DEA
and Cluster analysis. J. Science and Management, 2022 (2005)
4. Du, D., Pang, Q.H.: Contemporary Comprehensive evaluation methods and classic docu-
mentation. Tsinghua University Press, Beijing (2005)
5. Lan, F.: The Evaluation of China s Circulation Economy Efficiency Based on DEA.
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6. Wu, L.: Evaluation on the efficiency of eco-technology Innovation based on DEA.
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Agricultural Sciences, 18761882 (2007)
8. Sun, Y.L., He, Y., Zhao, Z.N.: Evaluation on the Western Agricultural Website s Effi-
ciency Based on DEA Method. Journal of Intelligence, 1417 (2009)
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University Press, New York (2005)
10. Web Analyst Software Package, http://www.maxamine.com
 Examination Method and Implementation for Field
Survey Data of Crop Types Based on Multi-resolution
Satellite Images

Yang Liu1, Mingyi Du1, and Wenquan Zhu2

1
School of Geomatics and Urban Information, Beijing University of Civil Engineering and
Architecture, Beijing, China
2
College of Resources Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
liuyang@bucea.edu.cn

Abstract. In order to examine the accuracy of large amount of the field survey
data with less accurate, an examination method based on multi-resolution satel-
lite images was proposed in this paper. As there were so large amount of data,
stratified random sampling was used to obtain effective samples. Firstly, vege-
tation index derived from low-resolution satellite images at different times has
been adopted as analysis factor. And wave curve charts were drawn with the
vegetation index. From those charts, the statistics law of wave curves for differ-
ent crop types was recognized using for crop types classification. Secondly,
high-resolution satellite images were used to correct the area of crop types to
get the final classification results. Finally, the accuracy of the field survey data
can be calculated by comparing the original survey data with the final classifi-
cation results. Moreover, for convenience using, a software has been developed
according to the above examination method.

Keywords: Examination method and implementation, Stratified random sam-

pling, Automatic processing, Crop types, Multi-resolution satellite images.

1 Introduction
Planting area and yields of crops are the important basis for government's economic
policy making. For a long time, the two kinds of traditional methods were used for the
statistics of panting area of crops [1]. One way is the comprehensive statistical report
coming from statistical and administrative units at various levels step by step [2].
Another way is to sample field survey of reported data. This method is suitable for a
large degree on the discrete variables; frequency distribution was highly skewed
socio-economic phenomena for investigation [3]. But, no matter whichever method
was used, one step can not be omitted, that is examining the accuracy of large amount
data of the field survey. Only in this way, the data can become the reliable argument
for the decision analysis.
In recent years, with the extensive application of remote sensing technology, the
study of estimation and examination of crop area using remote sensing techniques has
made significant progress, and is steadily moving towards the direction of business

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 681690, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
682 Y. Liu, M. Du, and W. Zhu

[4][5]. Compared with traditional ground survey and verification, the demand for
manpower and costs are significantly reduced, using remote sensing image data [6].
However, from the level of remote sensing technology for carrying out, large-scale
remote sensing examination of crop area is facing three problems, namely, precision,
efficiency and cost problems [7] [8].

2 Research Process
This article aims to use multi-resolution remote sensing imaging technology(two
kinds of resolution images: the high-resolution images, such as ASTER images, and
the low resolution images , such as MODIS images, Utilizing their own advantage,
combined with the traditional random, stratified sampling method [9], the examina-
tion scheme for field survey data of crop types was designed, In the scheme, stratified
random sampling was used to ensure minimum sample size and stability, and the
difference spectrum of low resolution remote sensing images was used to match the
types of corps, and high-resolution remote sensing images was used to the visual
identification of the types and area of corps. We try to solve the confliction of preci-
sion and cost, and try to provide methodological guidance for a large-scale examina-
tion for field survey data of the types and area [10].
The flow chart of technology route in this work, see Fig.1, is expressed as follows:

Fig. 1. This shows the flow chart of technology route.

In order to make the multi-resolution satellite images matched each other strictly
and be in correspondence with the field survey data, the procedure of remote sensing
data processing should be done. And stratified random sampling was used to obtain
effective samples of field survey data of crop types. Vegetation index derived from
low-resolution satellite images at different times has been adopted as analysis factor.
After all the data have processed, the identification and verification should be done
through visual observation method. The statistics law of wave curves of vegetation
index at different times was recognized using for crop types classification of the
samples. While, high-resolution satellite images were used to correct the classified
crop area of samples to get the classification results. Finally, the accuracy of the
 Examination Method and Implementation for Field Survey Data of Crop Types 683

survey data of crop types can be calculated by comparing the original survey data
with the final classification results using statistical analysis methods.
In this paper, we focus on stratified random sampling in this work.

3 Stratified Random Sampling

The effectiveness of stratified random sampling can be evaluated along two dimen-
sions. First, it might reduce the total quantity of measurements required. Second, it
can do a reduction of measurements would imply cost savings [11].

3.1 Overview

In the sampling method, stratified sampling is one of the most effective methods.
Compared with simple random sampling, stratified sampling has its several great
advantages, such as the fewer number of samples, higher sampling precision and the
lower cost. It is the effective way of large-scale statistical sampling surveys [12]. So
stratified sampling was adopted in the paper.
Stratified sampling, also known as type sampling, is one of the most commonly
used sampling techniques in practical work [13][14]. Firstly, overall sample is divided
into several strata (groups) in accordance with certain rules in stratified sampling.
Secondly, sampling was done within each stratum independently. The resulting sam-
ple is called stratified sample. Accordingly, the sample of each stratum is independent
also [15]. Furthermore, if the sampling method of each stratum is simple random
sample, the sample is called stratified random sampling. Thus the resulting samples
are called stratified random samples.

3.2 Determination of Stratified Number

In practice, the number of strata can not exceed half of the sample size, because of
ensuring that each stratum has at least two samples and having the need to calculate
the standard deviation of each stratum in the method [16].In this paper, we stratify the
population into six strata.

3.3 Determination of Stratified Boundaries

It is usually to determinate the boundaries of strata in accordance with characteristics

or features of population in the stratification [17]. However, when the obvious charac-
teristics or features is not easily recognized, the general way to determinate the
boundaries of strata is studying general distribution of some properties in population
or studying a relative relationship of the variable X and the variable Y which are sub-
features of population by means of some mathematical methods.
In this paper, the Optimal Stratification Method(also known as Accumulative
Square Root Method) is used to determinate the boundaries of strata, which was pro-
posed by Dalenius and Hodges [18], Firstly, a characteristic property of population
should be determined, according to which population is stratified. Secondly, popula-
tion is sorted by the values of the property of population from small to large. Then,
the sum of the values of the property of population is calculated, and the square root
684 Y. Liu, M. Du, and W. Zhu

of the sum should be obtained [19]. Finally, population was divided into several strata
by equal division method of the square root.

3.4 Calculation of Sample Size

There are two main steps in the calculation of sample size of each stratum as show in
the below.

Computation of the total sample size. The total sample size calculations generally
use the following:
L 2 2
Wh S h

h =1 wh (1)
n= L
rY 2 1
(
t
) +
N
W S
h =1
h h
2

In Equation (1), n is the total sample size, and h is the strata-specific variable which
ranges from 1 to L. L is number of strata. Wh is the Weight of stratum h, which can be
calculate by means of Nh (the population for stratum h) divide by the total stratified
sample size N. Sh2 is the population deviation of stratum h, which is calculated using
Equation (2). And wh is the sampling radio of stratum h, which is calculated using
Equation (3). And r is the relative error limit (also as known the confidence interval)
for (general set 95%). While, Y is the population mean, and t is the percentile of the
standard normal distribution (z=0.05 for 95% confidence).
Sh2 is determined by:
1 Nh
Sh = ( y hi Yh ) 2 (2)
2

N i =1

Note that the value of sample i of stratum h is marked with a hat as yhi, Yh is the
population mean for stratum h. Other symbols are the same as Equation (1).
And wh is determined by:
Wh S h (3)
wh = L

W S
h =1
h h

Where, Sh is the population standard deviation of stratum h, namely the square root of
Sh2. Also, other symbols are the same as Equation (1) or Equation (2).

Sample allocation in each stratum. For stratified sampling, the sample size of each
stratum still need to determine after the total sample size is fixed. When doing the
population estimation, the population variance which can be estimated is related not
only to the variance of each stratum, but also to the sample size of each stratum.
There are a lot of sample allocation methods in practice [20]. You can allocate the
samples in accordance with the radio of between the sample size of each stratum and
 Examination Method and Implementation for Field Survey Data of Crop Types 685

the sample size of population, or according to desired overall confidence interval with
minimum total sample size.
The sample allocation of each stratum was done using the Optimal Sample Alloca-
tion, which was proposed by Neyman [21]. It is expressed mathematically as follows:
N hSh (n h shall be as an integer) (4)
nh = n L

N
h =1
h Sh

where, Nh is the sample size of stratum h. Also, other symbols are the same as Equa-
tion (1) or Equation (3).
However, the two problems should be noted in the Optimal Sample Allocation.
There are:
y One is in the case of the sampling ratio f = n / N is very large. This situation
leads to Sh (the standard deviation of each stratum) is relatively large, and nh
(the sample size of each stratum) may be larger than Nh (the population for
stratum h). At this situation, it required for 100% sampling to the population
for stratum h.
y The other case is that nh is less than 2 after the calculation using the Optimal
Sample Allocation. The value of nh needs to be set to 2 to reduce the impact of
random error on the results and the stability when the sample size is 1.

4 Examination
The process of examination for field survey data of crop types can be mainly divided
into the following four steps. Note that, the experiment of examination itself only use
a small part of the test data.

4.1 Data

The entire test data used in this paper was shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. This shows the experimental data in this work. From left to right is successively vegeta-
tion index at different times, high-resolution satellite images, field survey data and the overlay
of the above three data which share the same region in the rectangular box.

We have collected the latest report information of field survey data of crop types
of county-level, the multi-resolution satellite images which can cover the survey re-
gion in this step and prepare for the next step of Sampling.
686 Y. Liu, M. Du, and W. Zhu

The field survey data of crop types are Shape-file data, which should include the
type and area property fields. High-resolution satellite data now is ASTER images. But
if required, it can be higher resolution images. Vegetation index at different times were
derived from MODIS time series data, which were formed as a multi-band image
(namely one time corresponds to one band). And all test data was matched strictly.

4.2 Sampling

Fig. 3 shows sampling result comparing with raw data, and the raw data was covered
by the sampling data. So the visible parts of the raw data are not sampled.

Fig. 3. This shows the sampling result comparing with raw data

We also do the statistics to the sampling result which is convenient for customers
to find out sampling information to decide whether to re-sampling, shown as the Ta-
ble 1 below.

Table 1. Statistics of sampling data

Num of Num of Standard

Index of Strata Boundaries Means
Population Samples Deviations
1 100.00 - 890.13 109 2 119.42 388.07
2 890.13 - 1780.25 41 2 81.26 1212.19
3 1780.25 - 2670.38 22 2 61.56 2136.36
4 2670.38 - 3560.50 12 2 33.11 2974.99
5 3560.50 - 4450.63 2 2 14.76 4000.00
6 4450.63 - 3217100.00 181 166 273122.73 108427.62
Total is 100.00 - 3217100.00 367 176

4.3 Crop Types Identification and Areas Correction

In this step, multi-resolution satellite images were used to determine crop types and area
of the samples by visual observation method. So there are two factors as following:

Crop types identification. Wave curve charts were drawn with the index of bands as
X-axis and the value of vegetation index as Y axis, as shown in Fig. 4. There are 17
bands in this work.
 Examination Method and Implementation for Field Survey Data of Crop Types 687

Fig. 4. This shows the wave curve charts of vegetation index

Fig. 5 show wave curve charts of four different positions. From those charts, the
statistics law of wave curves for different crop types was identified using for crop
types classification.

Fig. 5. This shows the schematic diagram of comparison with different wave curves

Crop areas verification. It provides a tool to draw polygons and calculate area of
those. By intercomparison between high-resolution satellite images and samples of
the same region, you can get the area of samples by measuring. The Area of all sam-
ples should be measured, which has been regarded as hypothetical real value.

4.4 Statistical Analysis

It needs to get error situation of the field survey data by doing statistics for result of
type identification and area verification of samples.

Table 2. Examination result

Index of Boundaries Num of Num of Num of Num of Num of

Strata Population Samples qualified qualified qualified
area type Both
1 100.00 - 890.13 109 2 2 1 1
2 890.13 - 1780.25 41 2 2 2 2
3 1780.25 - 2670.38 22 2 1 1 0
4 2670.38 - 3560.50 12 2 2 2 2
5 3560.50 - 4450.63 2 2 1 1 0
6 4450.63 - 3217100.00 181 166 83 81 23
Total is 100.00 - 3217100.00 367 176 91 88 28
Conclusion is Qualified rate of area is 72.07% Qualified rate of Overall qualified rate is
type is 56.63% 36.12%
688 Y. Liu, M. Du, and W. Zhu

As shown in Table 2, the number of qualified area, the number of qualified type
and the number of qualified both of each stratum was obtained by statistics. Also,
qualified rate of area, qualified rate of type, and overall qualified rate (area and type
are both qualified) of samples were calculated by anti-deduction.
In statistics, we can find out the abnormal samples which are the types is right, but
the rate of area change exceeding a certain threshold, as shown in Figure 6.In this
works, the threshold was set to 10%. These abnormal samples should be report to the
related departments of doing field survey to redo site verification.

Fig. 6. This shows the abnormal samples

5 System Implementation
An Examination System for Field Survey Data (ESFSD) has been developed based on
the above examination method. The system (ESFSD) provides integrated and process-
oriented functions, such as data processing, stratified random sampling, sample identi-
fication and verification, statistical analysis of samples, and so on. Using the system,
you can easily complete the entire process of examination for field survey data of
crop types.
The system (ESFSD) adopts C/S (client/server) software system structure, C# as
the programming language and SQL Server 2000 as back database server. Using Ar-
cEngine as development tools, the application program developed has been closely

Fig. 7. This shows the system interface

 Examination Method and Implementation for Field Survey Data of Crop Types 689

integrated with system by UG/Open MenuScript. Figure 7 presents the interface of

ESFSD.
ESFSD also provides data management statistics information of examination re-
sult, and supply better decision supports for re-sampling of samples.

6 Conclusion
In order to examine the accuracy of large amount of the field survey data, an exami-
nation method based on multi-resolution satellite images was proposed in this paper.
For reducing the number of data and cost in the examination, stratified random sam-
pling was used to obtain effective samples. For determining crop types and area of the
samples correctly and quickly, multi-resolution satellite images were used utilizing
their own advantage. Low-resolution satellite images are used to identify the corps
type of samples, and high-resolution satellite images were used to verify the area of
samples. Finally, the accuracy of the field survey data can be calculated by comparing
the original survey data with the final examination results by statistics. By the testing
of actual data, the examination method is very effective to solve the confliction of
precision and cost. And it also provides methodological guidance for a large-scale
examination for field survey data of the types and area.
Moreover, for convenience using, the system (ESFSD) has been developed ac-
cording to the above examination method. The results of system testing show ESFSD
is comprehensive processing platform which has realized integrated and process-
oriented functions for the examination. And it has strong robustness and stability.

Acknowledgments. The research performed is supported by Beijing Natural Science

Foundation (No: 4102019), and is partially funded by Jurisdiction of Beijing Munici-
pality under Grant No. PHR200906138, PHR200907127 and PHR 20070101. The
work was performed under Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture
(No:100901405). We wish to thank Guoyin Cai for his careful proofreading of the
manuscript.

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with Stratification. Journal of Remote Sensing 8(6), 551569 (2004)
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of Cultivated Land. International Journal of Remote Sensing 23(2), 263284 (2002)
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6. Woodcock, C.E., Strahler, A.H.: The Factor of Scale in Remote Sensing. In: Remote Sens-
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11. Chen, Y.K., Hu, R.: The Theoretic Structure and Computerized Realization of Stratified
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 Experimental Study of the Parameters of High Pulsed
Electrical Field Pretreatment to Fruits and Vegetables in
Vacuum Freeze-Drying

Yali Wu and Yuming Guo*

College of Engineering, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taigu 030801, Shanxi, P.R. China
sxauwyl@126.com, guoyuming99@sina.com

Abstract. High pulsed electrical field as pre-processing step for fruits and vege-
tables in the vacuum freeze drying could increase drying rate efficiency and
preserve nutritional ingredients in maximum. Moreover, high pulsed electrical
field pretreatment has been successfully used to solve practical problems in the
vacuum freeze drying, such as energy consumption, high production costs and
long drying time etc. The drying experiments were conducted with apples
which were pretreated by high pulsed electrical field, and the results showed
that high pulsed electrical field pretreatment could increase the drying rate ob-
viously. According to the range analysis, the optimal parameters of high pulsed
electrical field for drying were obtained as follows: pulse strength was 1000
Vcm-1, pulse time was 120 s, and pulse number was 30. By using the above
optimal conditions, energy consumption per unit of water was reduced by
17.74%, freeze drying time was shortened by 22.50%, and productivity per unit
area was increased by 28.50% than results of the untreated group. In addition, it
was found that the most important physical factors of high pulsed electrical
field which affected the vacuum freeze drying were the pulse duration, pulse
strength and pulse number.

Keywords: high pulsed electrical field, freeze-drying, fruits and vegetables, op-
timization of process parameters.

1 Introduction
Vacuum freeze drying technology can ensure the original taste and preserve nutri-
tional ingredients of fruits and vegetables in maximum, and has extensive application
foreground in fruits and vegetables processing industry. But commonly used freeze-
drying techniques were limited by high energy consumption and long drying times. In
general, the drying processes consume an appreciable part of the total energy used in
food industry and so, it is very important to develop the new hybrid drying technolo-
gies for energy consumption reduction and preserving of food qualities[1]. High
pulsed electrical field (HPEF) treatment has been reported to increase the permeabil-
ity of plant cells[2,3,4]. It could enhance extraction and dehydration processes in
*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 691697, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
692 Y. Wu and Y. Guo

fruits and vegetables tissues. The choice of suitable HPEF parameters is determined
by application, technological, energy consumption and economical considerations.
The phenomenon of increasing permeability of biological tissue cells after electric
field application was called electropermeabilization[5,6]. The viewpoint that the
HPEF could affect the permeability of a cell membrane was put forward by Sale et
al.[7]. Depending on the electric field strength, duration and number of pulses applied
the induced membrane breakdown and subsequent permeabilization could be reversi-
ble or irreversible[8]. Alexander et al. reported that the cell membrane permeability
was reversible breakdown when the cell size was 50 ~ 120 m and the electric field
strength was greater than the critical electric field strength (400 ~ 800 Vcm-1). Their
research showed that the processing time of the cell membrane damaged was varied
with the structure of materials. For example, the time of potato cell injured was 0.7s,
but the apple cell was 1.41 s[9]. Ade-Omowaye et al. studied the effect of different
process parameters and high transmission rate on the dehydration characteristics for
paprika. They found that HPEF pre-treatment could increase the cell membrane per-
meability and improve the drying rate[10]. When a plant was treated with HPEF, the
cell membranes were ruptured leading to an increase in permeability of the cell walls
and subsequent increase in juice yield[11]. In Weiqin Wangs paper, the HPEF proc-
essing experiment was conducted to investigate the changes of drying rate for sweet
potato after pretreated by HPEF. The results showed that the weight of treated sam-
ples was relatively increased by the osmotic dehydration, the pulse strength and the
pulse number had influence on the drying rate[12]. Zhenyu Liu and Yuming Guo re-
ported the condition to ensure the high drying rate and the quality of fruits and vege-
tables was 1000 ~ 1500 Vcm-1 pulse strength, 60 ~ 110 s pulse duration and 2 ~ 30
pulse number[13].
Our research group has systematically studied on HPEF pre-treatment to fruits and
vegetables for vacuum freeze drying in recent years[14,15,16], such as the influence
mechanism of HPEF pre-treatment and optimization of process parameters for HPEF
pre-treatment technology. The influence of HPEF pre-treatment on the dehydration
characteristics and quality for fruits and vegetables are also studied. Optimization of
the freeze drying operation could ensure rapid processing operation yielding an ac-
ceptable quality product with less cost. On the basis of above mentioned studies, the
drying experiments were conducted, studied the influence mechanism of the HPEF
processing, and the optimal parameter combination was obtained by experiments.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Materials and Equipments

Fuji apple was chosen as an object of the investigation. Fuji apples of good and uni-
form quality were purchased from the local market. The specimens were cut into
small pieces approximately 17 mm long, 17 mm wide and 10 mm thick. According to
the test scheme, 40 samples were treated each time. BTX ECM 830 square wave elec-
troporation system was used.
The drying tests were performed using an on-line moisture monitoring system was
designed by Shanxi Agricultural University of China, which based on the reconfigur-
able virtual instrument considered the working condition of JDG-0.2 pattern of
 Experimental Study of the Parameters of High Pulsed Electrical Field Pretreatment 693

freeze-drying testing machine. All the output data (weight, moisture content and real
time) were recorded by the designed monitoring system. The freeze-drying process

parameters were set to the temperature was 70 , vacuum degree was 40~45 Pa in

the sublimation process and the temperature was 90 , vacuum degree was 30~35 Pa
in the desorption process, respectively.

2.2 Experimental Methods

On the basis of the preliminary experiment results, the orthogonal experiment was
conducted with pulse strength, pulse duration and pulse number as the independent
variables, energy consumption per unit of water, freeze drying time and productivity
per unit area as the experiment indicators (Table1).
In the drying experiments, the value of test indexes was determined as follows:
Productivity per unit area= Md / T / (0.360.20), Energy consumption per unit of wa-
ter= P / (Mf W). Where: Md was the drying weight, T was the drying time, P was
power consumption, Mf was initial mass, and W was the moisture content.

Table 1. Factors and levels of L9 (33) orthogonal design

Factor
Level A--Pulse strength B--Pulse duration C--Pulse number
(Vcm-1) (s) (ind)
1 1000 60 15
2 1250 90 30
3 1500 120 45

3 Results and Discussion

From the table 2 results, the productivity per unit area of the pretreated samples was
higher than the untreated samples, the energy consumption per unit of water and the
drying time were lower than the untreated samples. The reason was that HPEF pre-
treatment could cause the cell membrane breakdown occurs and increase the perme-
ability of fruits and vegetables membrane. When electric field was applied to a cell in
a suspension, an induced voltage was formed across the membrane owing to the ca-
pacitance of membrane. As the voltage was increased, the opposite charges on either
side of the membrane were attracted to each other with greater force, and the mem-
brane became thinner. At a sufficiently high voltage, pores were formed in the mem-
brane and the cell ruptured. Therefore, HPEF pretreatment could improve the drying
rate, save the drying time and increase the production rate.
But the membrane permeability of the untreated samples was low, the temperature
and moisture were not easily evaporated, which led to the collapse phenomenon oc-
curs. The collapse phenomenon would extend the drying time, increase the energy
consumption and decrease the production rate.
694 Y. Wu and Y. Guo

Table 2. The L9 (33) orthogonal design and data processing

Level Indicator

Energy con-
Trial number A--Pulse B--Pulse C--Pulse Productivity
sumption per
Drying
strength duration number per unit area time
unit of water
(Vcm-1) (s) (ind) (gh-1m-2) (h)
(kJg-1)

1 1 1 1 23.46 395.20 7.18

2 1 2 2 25.32 424.88 7.00
3 1 3 3 25.34 393.35 6.83
4 2 1 2 23.60 431.53 7.18
5 2 2 3 24.00 419.09 7.27
6 2 3 1 26.60 435.38 7.07
7 3 1 3 24.08 467.44 7.37
8 3 2 1 21.38 438.45 7.57
9 3 3 2 27.12 428.87 7.00
K1 74.22 71.14 71.44
Productivity K2 74.20 70.80 76.14 Optimal combination
per unit area K3 72.58 79.06 73.42 B3C2A1
R 1.64 8.26 4.70
K1 1213.42 1299.16 1269.02
Energy
consumption K2 1285.99 1282.41 1285.28 Optimal combination
per unit of K3 1339.75 1257.59 1274.87 A1B3C1
water
R 126.33 41.57 16.26
K1 21.01 21.73 21.82
Drying K2 21.52 21.84 21.18 Optimal combination
time K3 21.94 20.90 21.47 B3A1C2
R 0.93 0.94 0.64

Experimental results showed that the most important physical factors of high
pulsed electrical field which affected the response value were the pulse duration,
pulse strength and pulse number. If taking the productivity per unit area as the indica-
tor, the optimal combination was B3C2A1. If taking the energy consumption per unit
of water as the indicator, the optimal combination was A1B3C1. If taking the freeze
drying time as the indicator, the optimal combination was B3A1C2. By comprehensive
consideration, the optimal parameters of HPEF processing was B3A1C, namely the
pulse strength was 1000 Vcm-1, the pulse duration was 120 s and the pulse number
was 30.
 Experimental Study of the Parameters of High Pulsed Electrical Field Pretreatment 695

100

80

Moisture content (%)

60

40

20

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time (h)

Fig. 1. Changes in moisture content of pretreated samples by HPEF

100

80
Moisture content (%)

60

40

20

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Time (h)

Fig. 2. Changes in moisture content of untreated samples

Fig.1 and Fig.2 showed the change in moisture content of apple samples. From the
Fig.1 and Fig.2, the moisture content of the HPEF pretreated samples could reach
about 0.01% after drying, but the untreated samples was essentially kept constant
when the moisture content descended to 5%. Therefore, the result of completely dry
could be achieved by HPEF pretreatment. The drying time of apples which were pre-
treated by HPEF was shorted more than 1 hour than untreated apples, and the water
content was decreased rapidly in the sublimation process, while those was opposite
for the untreated group.

4 Verification Test
In order to ensure the feasibility of optimal processing, the verification test was con-
ducted using the optimum technological parameters (1000 Vcm-1, 120 s, 30). The
results were listed in Table 3. It could be concluded from the comparison and analysis
696 Y. Wu and Y. Guo

that all values of the optimal scheme were superior to results of the orthogonal test.
The results indicated that the choice of parameters was reasonable. With the opti-
mized processing conditions, productivity per unit area was increased by 28.50%,
energy consumption per unit of water was reduced by 17.74%, and freeze drying time
was shortened by 22.50% compared with untreated.

Table 3. Results of the verification & untreated tests

Productivity per unit Energy consumption per

Trial Drying time (h)
area (gh-1m-2) unit of water (kJg-1)
Untreated group 22.63 473.38 8.00
Verification test 29.08 389.41 6.20

5 Conclusion
By considering the result above, the main conclusions drawn from the study were: (i)
The pulse duration, pulse strength and pulse number were in order of importance
among the obtained parameters. (ii) The optimum parameters were obtained as fol-
lows: pulse strength was 1000 Vcm-1, pulse duration was 120 s, and pulse number
was 30. With the optimized processing conditions, productivity per unit area was in-
creased by 28.50%, energy consumption per unit of water was reduced by 17.74%,
and freeze drying time was shortened by 22.50% than results of the untreated groups.
(iii) HPEF could increase the cell membrane permeability and intracellular water was
more easily diffused out of the cells, so the drying rate was improved.
HPEF as pre-processing for drying is important to solve the processing problems in
the vacuum freeze drying, such as energy consumption, processing cost and low dry-
ing rate etc. The optimal vacuum processing technology of freeze-drying will provide
support for exploring low energy consumption in the freeze-dried process for fruits
and vegetables.

Acknowledgments. Funding for this research was supported by National Natural Sci-
ence Foundation of China (No. 30771242).

References
1. Chou, S.K., Chua, K.J.: New Hybrid Drying Technologies for Heat Sensitive Foodstuffs.
Trends in Food Science and Technology 12, 359369 (2001)
2. Geulen, M., Teichgrber, P., Knorr, D.: High Electric Field Pulses for Cell Permeabilisa-
tion (ZFL) Z. Lebensmittelwirtschaft 45, 2427 (1994)
3. Knorr, D., Geulen, W., Grahl, T., Sitzmann, W.: Food Application of High Electric Field
Pulses. Trends Food Sci. Technol. 5, 7175 (1994)
4. Knorr, D., Angersbach, A.: Impact of High Electric Field Pulses on Plant Membrane Per-
meabilization. Trends Food Sci. Technol. 9, 185191 (1998)
5. Teissie, J., Eynard, N., et al.: Electropermeabilization of Cell Membranes. Advanced Drug
Delivery Reviews 35(1), 319 (1999)
 Experimental Study of the Parameters of High Pulsed Electrical Field Pretreatment 697

6. Angersbach, A., Heinz, V., Knorr, D.: Evaluation of Process-Induced Dimentional

Changes in the Membrane Structure of Biological Cells Using Impedance Measurement.
Biotechnology Progress. 18(3), 597603 (2002)
7. Sale, A.J.H., Hamilton, W.A.: Effects of High Electric Fields on Microorganisms: I Killing
of Bacteria and Yeasts. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta. 148(3), 781788 (1967)
8. Benz, R., Zimmermann, U.: Relaxation Studies on Cell Membranes and Lipid Bilayers in
the High Electric Field Range Bioelectrochem. Bioenerg. 7, 723739 (1980)
9. Benz, R., Zimmermann, U.: High Electric Field Effects on the Cell Membranes of Halicys-
tic Parvular. Planta 152(4), 314318 (1981)
10. Ade-Omowaye, B.I.O., Rastogi, N.K., et al.: Osmotic Dehydration of Bell Peppers: Influ-
ence of High Intensity Electric Field Pulses and Elevated Temperature Treatment. Journal
of Food Engineering 54(1), 3543 (2002)
11. Eshtiaghi, M.N., Knorr, D.: High Electric Field Pulse Pretreatment: Potential for Sugar
Beet Processing. Journal of Food Engineering 52, 265272 (2002)
12. Wang, W., Gai, L., Wang, J.: The Effect of High Pulsed Electrical Field Pretreatment to
Sweet Potato for Dehydration. Transactions of the Chinese Society for Agricultural Ma-
chinery 36(8), 154156 (2005)
13. Liu, Z., Guo, Y.: The Effect of High Pulsed Electrical Field Pretreatment to Fruit and
Vegetable for Dehydration. Journal of Agricultural Mechanization Research 31(12), 912
(2008)
14. Guo, Y., Yao, Z., Cui, Q.: Combined Experimental Study on the Effects of the Operational
Parameters on Energy Consumption of Sublimation-Drying During Vacuum Freeze-
Drying. Transactions of the CSAE 20(4), 180184 (2004)
15. Cui, Q., Guo, Y., et al.: Design and Test of On-Line Measurement System for the Moisture
Content of the Freeze-Drying Materials. Transactions of the Chinese Society for Agricul-
tural Machinery 39(4), 9196 (2008)
16. Liu, Z., Guo, Y.: BP Neural Network Prediction of the Effects of Drying Rate of Fruits and
Vegetables Pretreated by High-Pulsed Electric Field. Transactions of the CSAE 25(2),
235239 (2009)
 Experimental Study on the Effects of Compression
Parameters on Molding Quality of Dried Fish Floss

Hongmei Xu, Li Zong, Ling Li, and Jing Zhang

College of Engineering and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University,

Wuhan 430070, China
xhm790912 163.com

Abstract. Taking the molding block thickness, relaxation ratio and shatter re-
sistance as evaluation indicators, the effects of compression parameters, which
include mold form, compressive force, pressure-holding time and loading rate,
on molding block quality of fish floss were investigated by means of single fac-
tor and orthogonal test. The results showed that: 1) the mold form, compressive
force, pressure-holding time and loading rate have great impact on the molding
block thickness, and the block thickness decreases with the increase of com-
pressive force and pressure-holding time; 2) the loading rate and pressure-
holding time affect the relaxation ratio of molding block significantly; 3) the
pressure-holding time highly affects the shatter resistance of molding block, and
the shatter resistance will be greatly improved after a period of pressure
holding;4) the interactions between different parameters have no significant ef-
fect on the molding block quality. The results can provide references for the de-
velopment of compression molding equipment and selection of the technique
parameters.

Keywords: Compression Molding, Technique Parameters, Molding Quality,

Relaxation Ratio, Shatter Resistance.

1 Introduction
Dried fish floss is a kind of fish product, which is made with delicate techniques such
as cooking, meat picking, seasoning, squeezing, frying etc. The compression molding
is to suppress the loose dried fish floss under external force. As a result, the volume of
dried fish floss decreases, while the density increases.
At present, the research of compression molding mainly focuses on the compres-
sion molding of agricultural material, such as food, biomass, and so on. Regarding the
relationship between the physical characteristics of materials, compression parameters
and the quality of molding block, many research results and conclusions have been
achieved[1-4]. However, the research on the compression molding of meat product,
such as fish floss, is less involved.
Taking the salted and dried fish floss as the research object, the effects of compres-
sion parameters, which include mold form, compressive force, pressure-holding time
and loading rate, on molding block quality of fish floss were investigated by means of
single factor and orthogonal test. On the basis of this, the reasonable mold form, loading

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 698710, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
 Effects of Compression Parameters on Molding Quality of Dried Fish Floss 699

method and pressure-holding time were determined. The results can provide references
for the development of compression molding equipment and selection of the technique
parameters.

2 Materials and Devices

2.1 Materials

For this experiment, the salted and dried chub was broken into fish floss by a high-
speed meatball machine.

2.2 Devices

A set of steel cylinder mold (Fig.1) with a pressure device was designed for the ex-
periment. As shown in figure1, the part 2 and 3 respectively denote the punch and die
of the mold.

Fig. 1. Sketch map of the mold

1. Upper platen 2. Punch 3. Die 4. Bottom platen

2.3 Instruments

(1) RGT2000-10 Microcomputer Control Electronic Universal Testing Machine

Maximum load: 5KN; Test speed: 0.01-500mm/min; Manufacturer: Shenzhen Reger
instrument Co., Ltd.
(2) YXQ.SG41.280 Portable Pressure Steam Sterilizer
Maximum working pressure: 0.15MPa; Maximum working temperature: 126 ; Net
weight: 15.5kg.
(3) 202-00 Desktop Electric Oven

Temperature fluctuation: 0.1 ; Temperature range: 50-250 ; Manufacturer: Tianjin
Taisite instrument Co., Ltd.
(4) HSN-22 high-speed meatball machine
Productivity: 80kg/h; Power: 2.2kw.
700 H. Xu et al.

3 Methods
The compression molding test was conducted on the RGT2000-10 computer-
controlled electronic universal testing machine. A set of steel cylinder molds with the
square and round hole were designed for the experiment.
During the measurement, the die was placed on the bottom platen. The dried fish
floss was first metered into the die, and then the punch was inserted in the die. After-
wards, adjust the location of the upper and bottom platen, so that the upper platen just
contacts with the punch.
In order to investigate the effects of compression parameters on molding quality of
fish floss, the single-factor experiments were successively carried out on the condi-
tions of different mold forms, compressive forces, loading rates and pressure-holding
times, while the physical characteristics, such as moisture content and particle size,
remain the same. Additionally, the effects of interaction of loading rate with compres-
sive force and pressure-holding time on the quality of molding block were determined
by means of orthogonal test.

4 Results and Discussion

4.1 Effect of Mold Form on the Quality of Molding Block

In order to investigate the effect of mold form on the compression molding quality of
fish floss, the single-factor experiments were carried out in the case of constant com-
pressive force(3Mpa), pressure-holding time(60s) and loading rate(30mm/min),while
the mold form is various. Specifically, the molds with the square or round inner hole,
which is 25 mm and 30mm in diameter or edge, were employed to carry out the sin-
gle-factor experiments of four levels.

4.1.1 Effect of Mold Form on the Thickness of Molding Block

Table 1 shows the variance analysis results of molding block thickness when using
different mold forms. As shown in the table, when the significance level is equal to
0.05, F-statistics is greater than the critical value F , and the P-value ,which denotes
the probability of having no significant effect on the experimental results, is greater
than 0.01,but less than 0.05. The results indicate that mold form affects the thickness
of molding block significantly. Additionally, observe the mean value of molding
block thicknesses, it can be found that the thickness of molding block is relatively
small when using the mold with the diameter of 30mm.

Table 1. Variance analysis of the molding block thickness when using different mold forms

Error P
SS df MS F F
source value
Inter 0.242 3 0.081 5.093 0.019 3.587
Intra 0.174 11 0.016
Total 0.416
Note: Inter shows Inter-group error; Intra shows Intra-group error.
 Effects of Compression Parameters on Molding Quality of Dried Fish Floss 701

4.1.2 Effect of Mold Form on the Relaxation Ratio of Molding Block

Table 2 shows the variance analysis results of molding block relaxation ratio when
using different mold forms. When the significance level is equal to 0.05, F-statistics
is less than F , and P-value is greater than 0.05. The results clearly show that mold
form has no significant effect on the relaxation ratio of molding block.

Table 2. Variance analysis of the molding block relaxation ratio when using different mold
forms

Error P
SS df MS F F
source value
Inter 0.003 3 0.001 0.629 0.611 3.587
Intra 0.017 11 0.002
Total 0.020

4.1.3 Effect of Mold Form on the Shatter Resistance of Molding Block

Table 3 shows the variance analysis results of molding block shatter resistance when
using different mold forms. Since F-statistics is less than the critical value F
(=0.05), and P-value is greater than 0.05, It is, therefore, believed that mold form
does not affect the shatter resistance of molding block significantly.

Table 3. Variance analysis of the molding block shatter resistance when using different mold
forms

Error P
SS df MS F F
source value
Inter 0.0005 3 0.0002 1.601 0.245 3.587
Intra 0.0011 11 0.0001
Total 0.0016

4.2 Effect of Compressive Force on the Quality of Molding Block

In the case of constant mold inner diameter (30mm), pressure-holding time (60s), and
loading rate (30mm/min), the compression molding test was performed to investigate
the effects of compressive force on the quality of molding block. In order to reduce
the measurement error, the compression experiment was repeated three times at each
level of compressive force, corresponding to 1MPa, 2MPa, 3MPa, 4MPa, and 5MPa.

4.2.1 Effect of Compressive Force on the Thickness of Molding Block

Table 4 and Table 5 show the average and variance of molding block thickness when
using different compressive forces. At the significance level of 0.01, F-statistics is
greater than F (=0.01), P-value is less than 0.01. Apparently, the compressive force
has a great impact on the thickness of molding block. In addition to this, observe the
mean value of molding block thicknesses, it can be found that the greater the com-
pressive force is, the thicker the molding block is, and when the compressive force
702 H. Xu et al.

increases from 1MPa to 2MPa,the molding block thickness decreases significantly.

Furthermore, the relationship between compressive force and molding block thickness
can be represented mathematically as follows:
y=5.67+0.73/x (1)

where the variable y and x respectively denote the molding block thickness and com-
pressive force.

Table 4. Average and variance of the molding block thickness when using different compres-
sive forces

Group Point Sum Average Variance

1MPa 3 19.23 6.41 0.003
2MPa 3 17.98 5.99 0.002
3MPa 3 17.95 5.98 0.013
4MPa 3 17.55 5.85 0.003
5MPa 3 17.40 5.80 0.018

Table 5. Variance analysis of the molding block thickness when using different compressive
forces

Error P
SS df MS F F
source value
Inter 0.692 4 0.173 23.148 4.85E-5 3.48
Intra 0.075 10 0.007
Total 0.767

4.2.2 Effect of Compressive Force on the Relaxation Ratio of Molding Block

Table 6 shows the variance analysis results of molding block relaxation ratio when us-
ing different compressive forces. At the significance level of 0.05, F-statistics is less
than F (=0.05), P-value is greater than 0.05. Therefore, it can be concluded that the
compressive force has no significant effect on the relaxation ratio of molding block.

Table 6. Variance analysis of the molding block relaxation ratio when using different compres-
sive forces

Error P
SS df MS F F
source value
Inter 0.003 4 0.0007 0.737 0.587 3.48
Intra 0.009 10 0.0009
Total 0.012

4.2.3 Effect of Compressive Force on the Shatter Resistance of Molding Block

Table 7 shows the variance analysis results of molding block shatter resistance when
using different compressive forces. When the significance level is equal to 0.05,
 Effects of Compression Parameters on Molding Quality of Dried Fish Floss 703

Table 7. Variance analysis of the molding block shatter resistance when using different com-
pressive forces

Error P
SS df MS F F
source value
Inter 5.39E-5 4 1.35E-5 2.25 0.136 3.48
Intra 5.99E-5 10 5.99E-6
Total 0.0001

F-statistics is less than F (=0.05), P-value is greater than 0.05.It is clear that the
compressive force has no significant effect on the shatter resistance of molding block.

4.3 Effect of Pressure-Holding Time on the Quality of Molding Block

In the case of constant mold inner diameter (30mm), compressive force (3MPa), and
loading rate (30mm/min), the compression molding test was performed to investigate
the effects of pressure-holding time on the quality of molding block. In order to re-
duce the measurement error, the compression experiment was repeated three times at
each level of pressure-holding time, corresponding to 0s, 30s, 60s, 90s, and 120s.

4.3.1 Effect of Pressure-Holding Time on the Thickness of Molding Block

Table 8 and Table 9 show the average and variance of molding block thickness when
using different pressure-holding times. At the significance level of 0.01, F-statistics is
greater than F (=0.01), P-value is less than 0.01.The results show that the pressure-
holding time affects the thickness of molding block significantly. The longer the
pressure-holding time, the thinner the molding block. Specifically, when the pressure-
holding time varies in the range of 0s~30s, the increase of pressure-holding time usu-
ally results in the great decrease of molding block thickness. After that, the thickness
of molding block doesnt subject to the pressure-holding time and slightly decreases.
Furthermore, the thickness basically maintains constant when the pressure-holding
time exceeds 90 seconds.
The variation between pressure-holding time and molding block thickness can be
represented by the following equation:
y=-486.8+4572.1/x (2)
where the variable y and x respectively denote the molding block thickness and pres-
sure-holding time.

Table 8. Average and variance of the molding block thickness when using different pressure-
holding times

Group Point Sum Average Variance

0s 3 23.62 7.87 0.011
30s 3 18.84 6.28 0.005
60s 3 18.75 6.25 0.001
90s 3 17.77 5.92 0.012
120s 3 17.51 5.85 0.000
704 H. Xu et al.

Table 9. Variance analysis of the molding block thickness when using different pressure-
holding times

Error P
SS df MS F F
source value
Inter 8.179 4 2.045 355.09 0.000 3.48
Intra 0.058 10 0.006
Total 8.236

4.3.2 Effect of Pressure-Holding Time on the Relaxation Ratio of Molding Block

Table 10 displays the variance analysis results of molding block relaxation ratio when
using different pressure-holding times. At the significance level of 0.01, F-statistics is
greater than F (=0.01), P-value is less than 0.01. Its clear that the pressure-holding
time has great impact on the relaxation ratio of molding block. Beyond that, observe
the mean value of molding block relaxation ratio, it can be found that the molding
block relaxation ratio will be greatly improved after a period of pressure holding. The
results suggest that, at the beginning of pressure holding, the compressive force in-
creases to a maximum value, which usually results in great internal stress in the inte-
rior of molding block, and pressure holding can balance a large part of internal stress.

Table 10. Variance analysis of the molding block relaxation ratio when using different pres-
sure-holding times

Error P
SS df MS F F
source value
Inter 0.028 4 0.0070 355.09 0.000 3.48
Intra 0.002 10 0.0003
Total 0.030

4.3.3 Effect of Pressure-Holding Time on the Shatter Resistance of Molding

Block
Table 11 displays the variance analysis results of molding block shatter resistance
when using different pressure-holding times. At the significance level of 0.05, F-
statistics is greater than F (=0.05), P-value is greater than 0.01, but less than 0.05.
The results suggest that pressure-holding time affects the shatter resistance of molding
block significantly. Observe the mean value of molding block shatter resistance, it can

Table 11. Variance analysis of the molding block shatter resistance when using different pres-
sure-holding times

Error P
SS df MS F F
source value
Inter 2.141 4 0.535 4.297 0.028 3.48
Intra 1.246 10 0.125
Total 3.387
 Effects of Compression Parameters on Molding Quality of Dried Fish Floss 705

be found that the molding block, with the pressure-holding time of 0s, is poor at the
shatter resistance, and when the pressure-holding time is 30s, the molding block can
achieve better shatter resistance.

4.4 Effect of Loading Rate on the Quality of Molding Block

In the case of constant mold inner diameter (30mm), compressive force (3MPa), and
pressure-holding time (60s), the compression molding test was performed to investi-
gate the effects of loading rate on the quality of molding block. In order to reduce the
measurement error, the compression experiment was repeated three times at each
level of loading rate, corresponding to10mm/min, 20mm/min, and 30mm/min.

4.4.1 Effect of Loading Rate on the Thickness of Molding Block

Table 12 and Table 13 display the average and variance of molding block thickness
when using different loading rates. At the significance level of 0.05, F-statistics is
greater than F (=0.05), P-value is greater than 0.01, but less than 0.05. The results
suggest that loading rate has great impact on the thickness of molding block. Figure 2
represents the relationship between loading rate and molding block thickness. As
shown in the figure, when the loading rate increases from 10mm/min to 30mm/min,
the thickness of molding block decreases firstly and then increases.

Table 12. Average and variance of the molding block thickness when using different loading
rates

Group Point Sum Average Variance

10 mm/min 3 17.69 5.90 0.007
20 mm/min 3 17.43 5.81 0.008
30 mm/min 3 18.26 6.09 0.003

Table 13. Variance analysis of the molding block thickness when using different loading rates

Error P
SS df MS F F
source value
Inter 0.120 2 0.060 10.814 0.010 5.14
Intra 0.033 6 0.006
Total 0.153

4.4.2 Effect of Loading Rate on the Relaxation Ratio of Molding Block

Table 14 and Table 15 display the average and variance of molding block relaxation
ratio when using different loading rates. At the significance level of 0.05, F-statistics
is greater than F (=0.05), P-value is greater than 0.01, but less than 0.05. The results
suggest that loading rate affects the relaxation ratio of molding block significantly.
706 H. Xu et al.

Fig. 2. Relationship between loading rate and molding block thickness

Table 14. Average and variance of the molding block relaxation ratio when using different
loading rates

Group Point Sum Average Variance

10 mm/min 3 1.036 0.345 0.0002
20 mm/min 3 0.868 0.289 0.0004
30 mm/min 3 0.943 0.314 0.0002

Table 15. Variance analysis of the molding block relaxation ratio when using different loading
rates

Error P
SS df MS F F
source value
Inter 0.005 2 0.0024 10.694 0.011 5.14
Intra 0.001 6 0.0002
Total 0.006

Fig. 3. Relationship between loading rate and relaxation ratio

Figure 3 represents the relationship between loading rate and relaxation ratio. As
shown in the figure, when the loading rate increases from 10mm/min to 30mm/min,
the relaxation ratio of molding block gradually decreases firstly and then increases.
 Effects of Compression Parameters on Molding Quality of Dried Fish Floss 707

4.4.3 Effect of Loading Rate on the Shatter Resistance of Molding Block

Table 16 displays the variance analysis results of molding block shatter resistance
when using different loading rates. At the significance level of 0.05, F-statistics is less
than F (=0.05), P-value is greater than 0.05. It can be concluded that the loading
rate does not affect the shatter resistance of molding block significantly.

Table 16. Variance analysis of the molding block shatter resistance when using different load-
ing rates

Error P
SS df MS F F
source value
Inter 1.32E-5 2 6.60E-6 2.77 0.141 5.14
Intra 1.43E-5 6 2.38E-6
Total 2.75E-5

4.5 Effect of Interaction on the Quality of Molding Block

As discussed above, loading rate, compressive force and pressure-holding time are the
important technologic parameters in the process of compression molding. Taking the
three parameters as experimental factors, the orthogonal tests were designed to ex-
plore whether there were interactions between these factors, and determine their ma-
jor-minor sequence according to the effects on the molding block quality. For conven-
ience, the factors of loading rate, compressive force and pressure-holding time were
respectively marked as A, B, and C. In addition, the levels of factor A, B and C are 10
mm/min, 30 mm/min, 1 MPa, 3 MPa, 30 s and 90 s in turn.

4.5.1 Effect of Interaction on the Thickness of Molding Block

Table 17 displays the variance analysis results of molding block thickness when the
interactions between the three factors are taken into account. As shown in the table,
since MSA C is less than MSe, the interaction between A and C has minor effect on
the molding block thickness, so it can be subsumed in the term of error (e), and bring

Table 17. Variance analysis of the molding block thickness when considering the interactions
between the factors

Error
SS df MS F Significance
source
A 0.143 1 0.143 233.65 **
B 2.195 1 2.195 3582.88 **
A B 0.007 1 0.007 10.80
C 0.270 1 0.270 441.00 **
A C 0.001 1 0.001
B C 0.002 1 0.002 3.45
e 0.001 1 0.001
e 0.0012 2 0.0006
708 H. Xu et al.

about the new term of error (e).The results suggest that the three factors have signifi-
cant effect on the thickness of molding block, and the major-minor sequence is B, C,
and A. However, the interactions between the factors dont affect the thickness of
molding block significantly.

4.5.2 Effect of Interaction on the Relaxation Ratio of Molding Block

Table 18 displays the variance analysis results of molding block relaxation ratio when
the interactions between the factors are taken into account. As shown in the table, the
factors of A, B, C and their interactions have no significant effect on the relaxation
ratio of molding block.

Table 18. Variance analysis of the molding block relaxation ratio when considering the interac-
tions between the factors

Error
SS df MS F Significance
source
A 10727.2 1 10727.2 1.01
B 10678.5 1 10678.5 1.00
A B 10652.0 1 10652.0 1.00
C 10676.6 1 10676.6 1.00
A C 10668.7 1 10668.7 1.00
B C 10642.4 1 10642.4
e 10649.0 1 10649.0
e 21291.3 2 10645.7

4.5.3 Effect of Interaction on the Shatter Resistance of Molding Block

Table 19 displays the variance analysis results of molding block shatter resistance
when the interactions between the factors are taken into account. As shown in the
table, the factors and interactions dont affect the shatter resistance of molding block
significantly.

Table 19. Variance analysis of the molding block shatter resistance when considering the inter-
actions between the factors

Error
SS df MS F Significance
source
A 77217.8 1 77217.8
B 77221.5 1 77221.5 1.00
A B 77217.8 1 77217.8
C 77221.2 1 77221.2 1.00
A C 77217.7 1 77217.7
B C 77219.3 1 77219.3
e 77218.3 1 77218.3
e 308871.6 4 77217.90
 Effects of Compression Parameters on Molding Quality of Dried Fish Floss 709

5 Conclusions

Taking the molding block thickness, relaxation ratio and shatter resistance as evalua-
tion indicators, the effects of mold form, compressive force, pressure-holding time,
loading rate and interactions between them on the block quality were investigated.
The conclusions are summarized as follows:
1) Mold form affects the thickness of molding block significantly. For the four
given molds, the thickness of molding block, compressed by the mold with the
diameter of 30mm, is relatively small. Mold form has no significant effect on
the relaxation ratio and shatter resistance.
2) Compressive force has great impact on the thickness of molding block. The
thickness of molding block decreases with the increase of compressive force,
and the greater the compressive force is, the smaller the thickness is. Compres-
sive force does not affect the relaxation ratio and shatter resistance significantly.
3) Pressure-holding time has significant effect on the molding block thickness, re-
laxation ratio and shatter resistance. The longer the Pressure-holding time is, the
smaller the thickness is. Specifically, when the pressure-holding time increases
from 0s to 30s, its increase usually results in the great decrease of molding block
thickness. After that, the block thickness doesnt subject to the pressure-holding
time and slightly decreases. Furthermore, the thickness basically maintains con-
stant when the pressure-holding time exceeds 90s.The molding block relaxation
ratio will be improved after a period of pressure holding. However, when the
pressure-holding time increases from 30s to 120s, the relaxation ratio almost
remains the same. Likewise, after a period of pressure holding, the block shatter
resistance will be greatly improved.
4) When the loading rate increases from 10mm/min to 30mm/min, the molding
block thickness and relaxation ratio vary considerably. Specifically, the molding
block thickness and relaxation ratio gradually decreases firstly and then in-
creases. Loading rate has no great effect on the shatter resistance of molding
block.
5) Compressive force, pressure-holding time and loading rate affect the thickness
of molding block significantly, and the major-minor sequence is pressure-
holding time, loading rate, and compressive force. The three factors have no
significant effect on the relaxation ratio and shatter resistance. Additionally, the
interactions dont affect the block quality.

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by Scientific Research Foundation of Huazhong Agricul-

tural University for the Introduced Talents Research on the Evaluation Index System
of Rice Moisture for Safe Storage under grant Nos. 52204-08079.
710 H. Xu et al.

References
1. Wang, J.Y., Zhao, G.J., Yang, Q.L.: Compression and permanent fixatian with heat treat-
ment of China fir under water-saturated condition and air-dried condition. Journal of Beijing
Forestry University 22(1), 7275 (2000)
2. Sheng, K.C., Qian, X.Q., Wu, J.: Experimental studies on compressing chopped cotton
stalks to high densities. Journal of Zhejiang University (Agriculture and Life Sci-
ences) 29(2), 139142 (2003)
3. Huang, G.X., Chen, L.J., Cao, J.: Briquetting mechanism and waterproof performance of
bio-briquette. Journal of China Coal Society 33(7), 812815 (2008)
4. Wang, J.X., Cai, H.Z.: Review on physical properties and forming technology of biomass
fuel compressed. Journal of Agricultural Mechanization Research 1, 203215 (2008)
 Extraction of Remote Sensing Information of LONGAN
Under Support of 3S Technology in Guangxi Province

Xin Yang1,2,*, Chaohui Wu1,2, Weiping Lu1,2, Yuhong Li1,2, and Shiquan Zhong1,2
1
Remote Sensing Application and Test Base of National Satellite Meteorology Centre,
Nanning, China, 530022
2
GuangXi Institute of Meteorology, Nanning, China 530022
Tel.: +86-771-5875207; Fax: +86-771-5865594
yangxinzhuanyong@sina.com

Abstract. This paper presents an automatic approach to planting areas extrac-

tion for mixed vegetation and hilly region, more cloud using moderate spatial
resolution and high temporal resolution MODIS data around Guangxi province,
south of China. The Maximum likelihood was used to extract the information of
longan planting and their spatial distribution through the calculation of multi-
ple-phase MODIS-NDVI in Guangxi and ten stylebook training regions of lon-
gan of being selected by GPS. Compared with the large and little regions of
longan planting in monitoring image and the investigation of on the spot with
GPS, the resolute shows that the longan planting information in remote sensing
image are true. In this research, multiple-phase MODIS data were received dur-
ing longan main growing season and preprocessed; NDVI temporal profiles of
longan were generated; models for planting areas extraction were developed
based on the analysis of temporal NDVI curves; and spatial distribution map of
planting areas of longan in Guangxi in 2009 were created. The study suggests
that it is possible to extract planting areas automatically from MODIS data for
large areas.

Keywords: Longan, 3S, MODIS, Information extraction.

1 Introduction
The longan tree is handsome, erect, to 30 or 40 ft (9-12 m) in height and to 45 ft (14
m) in width, with rough-barked trunk to 2 1/2 ft (76.2 cm) thick and long, spreading,
slightly drooping, heavily foliaged branches. The evergreen, alternate, paripinnate
leaves have 4 to 10 opposite leaflets, elliptic, ovate-oblong or lanceolate, blunt-tipped;
4 to 8 in (10-20 cm) long and 1 3/8 to 2 in (3.5-5 cm) wide; leathery, wavy, glossy-
green on the upper surface, minutely hairy and grayish-green beneath. New growth is
wine-colored and showy. The pale-yellow, 5- to 6-petalled, hairy-stalked flowers,
larger than those of the lychee, are borne in upright terminal panicles, male and fe-
male mingled. The fruits, in drooping clusters, are globose, 1/2 to 1 in (1.25-2.5 cm)
in diameter, with thin, brittle, yellow-brown to light reddish-brown rind, more or less

*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 711716, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
712 X. Yang et al.

rough (pebbled), the protuberances much less prominent than those of the lychee. The
flesh (aril) is mucilaginous, whitish, translucent, somewhat musky, sweet, but not as
sweet as that of the lychee and with less "bouquet". The seed is round, jet-black, shin-
ing, with a circular white spot at the base, giving it the aspect of an eye.
Guangxi located in the area of low latitude (200-270) complicated geographic en-
vironment. Meteorological disaster such as frost injury, cold wave and drought could
seriously affect LONGAN production, especially in 2008. The most continuously
lower temperature, rainy and snowy, freeze injury weather took place from on Jan
12th to Feb 12thin the southern of China. The disaster occurs once in fifty years.
LONGAN and other sub-tropic crops were suffered injury severity. However, due to
the laggard monitoring method and monitoring means, disaster loss evaluation had
not been exactitude evaluated till on Apr 1st, 2008. The exactly and quickly evaluat-
ing disaster losing have become a focus issue for government .Planting spatial distri-
bution information is key factor in quickly disaster losing evaluation. In order to
improve classification accuracy, some classification methods were studied by many
experts in recently years. Vegetation index was proposed to classify plant types.
Yang, J.G. thought that PVI could easily identify broadleaf forest and conifer forest,
and the RVI difference was obvious in different coniferous forest species
(Yuan,1999). Wang, Q.F. thought the characteristics of land-covers seasonal vari-
ability derived from remote sensing images can make some typical land cover easy to
be distinguished (Wang,2006). Gong, P. thought that the TVI was used in the land
cover classification could resolve the problem of Grassland and cropland and needle-
leaf deciduous forest and broadleaf deciduous forest had similar phenological charac-
teristics which were easy to be confused. The results show that the TVI includes more
information and is more sensitive to land cover than NDVI, and MODIS data have
their own advantages in the regional land cover mapping (Gong, 2006). With the de-
velopment of satellite remote sensing technology, extraction of remote sensing infor-
mation of LONGAN planting spatial distribution by using 3S technology has be-
come reality. Taking LONGAN planting of Guangxi Province as example, the article
try to use MODIS data for extraction of remote sensing information of LONGAN
planting spatial distribution. The objective is to make better use of 3S technology
to serve the society.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Study Area

This study area is located in Guangxi province, south of China. It's latitude is 2054

2623N and longitude is 10429 11204E, total area is 236700.0 km2. It be-
longs to monsoon region of south subtropical zone and north tropical zone without
four clearly demarcated seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. The climate
here is hot and humid in summer and warm and dry in winter.Data input to the
method is assumed to be calibrated and navigated level 1B radiance data which of-
fered by National Satellite Meteorological Center and DVBS of GuangXi Institute of
Meteorology. The time segment of complete data is from 2002 to 2009. The MODIS
data used to this method must be clear without cloud or little cloud images.
 Extraction of Remote Sensing Information 713

2.2 Extraction of Remote Sensing Information Method

Due to the relationship between vegetation indices calculated by different algorithms,

reflectance of bands and field measurements of NDVI, NDVI was retrieve by using
EOS/MODIS data. A NDVI retrieval model for study area can be established with
this relationship. The specific flow chart of retrieval technique is shown as Fig. 1.
Based on the above flow chart of technique, detailed steps are described as follows:

Inversing reflectance for EOS/MODIS imagery

The pre-processing included atmospheric correction, geometric correction, and ortho-
graphic correction. The purpose of atmospheric correction was to obtain accurate re-
flective characteristics of ground surface, followed by geometric correction which
ground control points were chosen referencing to a topographic map of 1:250,000.
The objective of atmospheric correction for EOS/MODIS data is to attain related pa-
rameters which can indicate the vegetation inherent properties of the region. Since the
remotely sensed image was affected by reflective solar energy, solar elevation, zenith
angle, the thickness of aerosol and the bidirectional scattering due to the mutual influ-
ence of ground environment factors, we should take into account both atmospheric
and bidirectional scattering to obtain accurate ground reflectance. Because the pa-
rameters of atmospheric profile based on measurements data or standard atmospheric
profile were not established in China, in this paper we adopted international standard
parameters of atmospheric profile to correct EOS/MODIS image.

Obtaining characteristic parameters of vegetation

Due to the chlorophyll and inner architecture of foliage, a special reflective spectrum
of vegetation foliage was formed like intensive absorption in the red waveband and
intensive reflection in the near infrared waveband. Normalized difference vegetation
index (NDVI) is chosen to obtain the vegetation coverage information from the satel-
lite images. This index combines the algorithms of EVI, DVI and DDVI together with
high fidelity of indicating the vegetation on the ground. It is one significant indirect
index of the growth and number of vegetation and has a linear correlation with the
vegetation coverage density. The formula is shown as:
NDVI=(NIR-RED)/NIR+RED -1NDVI1. (1)
In which NIR and RED represents the reflectivity of the vegetation coverage on the
near-infrared band and red band respectively.
From the equation we can see that the water area and roadway area and city or
town area, theirs value of NDVI are below 0 or approach constant value in different
seasons. But the land surface with cover foliage, NDVI ranges from 0.1 to 0.6. NDVI
has been applied in many fields, such as land cover or change, vegetation and envi-
ronment change, net primary productivity and the assessment of crop yield.

Sample training regions of LONGAN of being selected by GPS

To the same foliage, its value of NDVI is various with its growth process. As result,
the values of NDVI between foliages are diversity in different seasons. In order to
mastery the spectrum characteristic of LONGAN and distinguish LONGAN from
many kinds of foliages, some sample training regions of LONGAN (the area must be
714 X. Yang et al.

Fig. 1. The flow chart of the identify and extraction of LONGAN planting space distribution
information based on EOS/MODIS data

bigger than 7 ha2) in different county of Guangxi were selected by GPS (the Global
Positioning System).

The identify and extraction of LONGAN planting information based on EOS/

MODIS data.In the first place, the values of NDVI of sample training regions of
LONGAN during the main growing seasons were calculated. As result, we could find
the variety trend of curves of LONGAN in regions being consistent (Fig.2).

Fig. 2. The curse of NDVI of LONGAN in training regions

 Extraction of Remote Sensing Information 715

Corn and rice and soybean, theirs growth (from sowing to harvest) are general last-
ing 3 or 4 months. The south subtropical zone and north tropical zone forest growth
lasting more than 12 months, but its value of NDVI anniversary approach constant.
Consequently, the curves of NDVI variety in different foliages during the main
growth seasons are difference. We can use the Maximum likelihood to extract the
information of LONGAN planting and its spatial distribution through the calculation
of multiple-phase MODIS-NDVI from different foliages in Guangxi province. The
result shows that the information of LONGAN planting and its spatial distribution in
2009 were clearly in remote sensing imagine (Fig.3). The survey of field also showed
that the information of LONGAN planting based on multiple-phase EOS/MODIS data
was highly reliable and truth.

Legend: LONGAN reservoir other plant

Fig. 3. the imagine of LONGAN planting and its spatial distribution based on EOS/MODIS in
Guangxi province

3 Discussion and Conclusion

Based on the above study and analysis, some conclusions can be drawn as follows:
(1) It is first used for extraction of LONGAN planting spatial distribution informa-
tion by using MODIS data.
(2) (2)Method for extraction of LONGAN planting spatial distribution information
by using MODIS data is given in this paper.
(3) Decomposition of Mixed pixel is a difficulty points in calculating area of
LONGAN, so this paper does not calculate area of LONGAN.

Acknowledgments
This research was supported by National 11th Five-Year Plan major scientific and
National Key Technologies R&D Program (2008BAD08B01) and Scientific Research
716 X. Yang et al.

and Technological Development projects of Guangxin Province (0816006-8)

,Sincerely thanks are also due to Guangxi Climate center and National Satellite
Meteorology Center for providing the data for this study.

References
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tem and climate in China using NOAA/AVHRR data. Acta Geographica Sinica 56(3),
287296 (2001) (in Chinese)
2. Zheng, Y.R., Zhou, G.S.: A forest vegetation NPP model based on NDVI. Acta Phy-
toecologica Sinica 24, 912 (2002) (in Chinese)
3. Murthy, C.S., Raju, P.V., Badrinath, K.V.S.: Classification of Wheat Crop with Multi-
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4. Kontoes, C., Wilkinson, G.G., Burril, A., et al.: An Experimental System for the Integration
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rithm Theoretical Basis Document (April 1999)
6. Mcffters, S.K.: The use of the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDVI) in the delinea-
tion of open water features. International Journal of Remote Sensing 17, 14251432 (1996)
7. Gao, B.C.: NDVI-a normalized difference water index for remote sensing of vegetation liq-
uid water from space. Remote Sensing of Environment 58, 257266 (1996)
8. Bruzzone, L.: Detection of changes in remotely-sense images by the selective use of multis-
pectral information. Int. J. Remote Sensing 18, 38833888 (1997)
9. Wang, Q., Li, J., Chen, B.: Land Cover Classification System Based on Spectrum in Poyang
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 Farmland Irrigation Remote Monitoring System
Based on Configuration Software and Multiple
Serial Port Communication

Xiangbo Han1 and Zhanli Liu2,*

1
College of Computer Science and Technology,
Shandong University of Technology, P.R. China
2
School of Agriculture and Food Engineering,
Shandong University of Technology, P.R. China
zhanliliu2009@yahoo.cn

Abstract. The design and implemental plan of the farmland irrigation remote
monitoring system with variable frequency and constant pressure based
Configuration Software and multiple serial port communication were
introduced. The implementation of the communication between inverter, PLC,
ADAM and KingView was studied. The data acquisition and monitoring
scheme were analyzed. The hardware and software design of system were
discussed in detail. It had been successfully applied to farmland irrigation, and
the effects of automation and energy conservation had been as good as
expected.

Keywords: Multi serial port communication, Configuration software, Farmland

irrigation.

1 Introduction
With the rapid development of society and economy, farmland irrigation demands
higher reliability and quality of water supply. Advancement of computer and
automation technology makes the research of higher performance water supply
system possible. Now most water supply systems have a lot of limitation, for
example, little information acquisition, low manage and transfer. Information
exchange among system and environment or equipments is difficult to achieve. It
restricts greatly information acquisition and automation of corporation. Therefore, it
plays an important realistic role in decreasing energy consumption and sharing
information that researching the high performance and network monitoring system of
constant-pressure water supply[1-2]. Based on configuration software, the monitoring
system of constant-pressure water supply is developed by means of multiports, which
satisfies requirement of corporation on water supply automation, and provides water
supply corporation with a new resolution in order to realize unmanned watch
keeping, energy conservation and safety.

*
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 717720, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
718 X. Han and Z. Liu

2 System Constitution
Water supply station has four wells, the first and third well is 120 meter deep, the
second and fourth is 80 meter deep, the fifth is spare. There are four dive pumps of
deep well, and one is spare among them. Three pumps can fit together freely, and
spare pump can operate manually. The pressure of exit is 0.33Mpa constantly
(0-1Mpa adjustably). Means of start-up is autoconnected serial portping voltage.

IPC
COM1 COM2 COM7

Pressure
transmitter ADAM-4017
PLC

transducer

Water Water Water Water Water

tower pump1 pump2 pump1 pump2

Well1 Well2 Well3 Well4

Conduit

Fig. 1. The composition of farmland irrigation monitoring system

In this paper a new water supply surveillance system is developed, including IPC
(industrial personal computer), PLC, transducer, intelligent module, and etc. Control
subsystem is composed of advantech IPC 610 IPC, CPM2A programmable controller,

SAMCIO VM05 special water supply transducer. Signal acquisition subsystem is

composed of ADAM 4017, water level transmitter, Flow transmitter, current
transmitter, voltage transmitter, and etc. Advantech intelligent module ADAM-4017
is used for analog signals, for example, voltage acquisition, current acquisition, and
etc. ADAM-4017 is intelligent sensor interface module of built-in Microprocessor. It
can be connected with serial port of IPC by RS232/RS485 interface module. It can be
 Farmland Irrigation Remote Monitoring System Based on Configuration Software 719

controlled by long-distance, communicating through 485 cable. Spot check data such
as water level, flux, voltage, current and etc. are converted to standard signal (from 4
to 20mA) by sensor and transmitter, then transferred to central control cabinet in
control house, then sent to digital panel meters through isolation module circuit.
Operator can observe manually. Each digital panel meter is divided into one signal,
which is sent to intelligent module ADAM-4017 in computer ground loop.
Consequently computer can collect data.
Water supply volume and pressure of water supply system is instantaneous with
water use need. Water pumps assume a lot if run according to rated flow and rated
pressure, pressure fluctuates with flow. By pressure sensor of equipment exit the
system transfers flow and pressure signal into standard electric signal, then send to
PLC and ADAM-4017.By comparison, amplification, differential, integral, optimal
control parameter is transferred into transducer, so that rotate speed of water pump
can run according to practical water use and given pressure. We can achieve the aim
to save energy efficiently, supply water with constant pressure and adjustable flow. In
system bias removal, PID regulation can assure bias is zero so that system attains
stability. Closed loop control system is composed of PLC, transducer, water pump
and pressure sensor, and can carry out constant-pressure water supply (Fig.1).

3 Communication Mode
In monitoring system, IPC and PLC, transducer, analog collector module
communicate through serial ports, as is shown in fig.1. Serial port extention adopts
Advantech PCL849A card, affording four RS-232 serial ports. They can assure many
equipments run at the same time, and afford interfaces for equipment replacement and
upgrade. PCL849A card needs to set the site of extended serial port, discontinuity of
use, communication speed, type of operating system and etc, be completed by jump
wires on board card. While setting site of extended serial port and discontinuity, the
paper avoids used sites and interrupt numbers in operating system. We can carry out
communication with spot control equipments expediently by KingView device driver.
KingView serial type logical device is its built-in serial port driver's logical name,
corresponding with the actual devices connected to the computer serial port and
supplying for KingView by the dynamic link library.

4 Configuration Design
In software, making use of configuration king KingView as engine configuration,
interface of monitoring software is friendly, easily operational. Graph visualization is
colorful, and circulation of spot equipments is shown dynamically in real time[3-5].
In automation monitoring, the software can show technique process graph, draw water
level curve of water tower and running curve of water-lift engine at any moment and
change cure of water pressure. It can reflect dynamically the curve change trend of
checking parameters, collect spot data and states in real time and gather data. Report
forms function of software can attain data print, management, sharing of long-
distance data.
720 X. Han and Z. Liu

In network, the monitoring software can run based on TCP/IP, so as to network

communication from hypogynous computer to epistatic computer and long-distance
server. As a customer server mode, server of the configuration system can set IO
server, historical data server, alarming server, registering server, WEB server and etc
according to system requirement. While a site of system is specified as a server, it can
be other kind of server, and customer computer of other site server. The flexible
network structure increases whole capacity of system and system function. WEB
server using HTML and other technology equipment run the screen, a variety of
dynamic curve and the report to generate dynamic web pages and realize remote
network monitoring[6].

References
[1] Wu, S., Chen, Y., Cao, Z.C.: Development of on-board data collect ion system based on
Fame View and PLC. Industrial Control Computer 19(2), 7071 (2006)
[2] An, H.W., An, J., Bao, H.L.: The application of ABB PLC in the process monitoring and
control for limekiln production. Techniques of Automation and Applications 27(1),
129132 (2008)
[3] Zhou, Y.L.: Design of a configurable software based on VC++ programming language in
the integration of intelligent building system. Electronic Test (1), 4650 (2008)
[4] Sun, Y.M., Shi, Y.Q.: Design of coal mine monitoring and controlling configuration
software based on ActiveX. Mining Research and Development 27(2), 4546 (2007)
[5] Liang, G., Bai, Y., Li, W.: Design and development of graph system in SFC configuration
software. Control and Instruments in Chemical Industry 32(1), 2933 (2005)
[6] Pang, X.Q., Chen, L.C., Chen, W.J.: Weather information issuance system based on web
service. Computer Applications and Software 24(9), 8890 (2007)
 Fast Discrimination of Mature Vinegar Varieties with
Visible_NIR Spectroscopy

Yanru Zhao, Shujuan Zhang, Huamin Zhao, Haihong Zhang, and Zhipeng Liu

College of Engineering, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taigu 030801, Shanxi, China

xiaoru19863804@sina.com

Abstract. In order to achieve non-destructive of mature vinegar varieties, a fast

discrimination method was put forward based on Visible_near infrared reflec-
tance (NIR) spectroscopy. The FieldSpec3 spectrometer was used for collecting
20 sample spectra data of the three kinds of mature vinegar separately. Then
principal component analysis (PCA) was used to process the spectral data af-
ter pretreatment using average smoothing method and multiplicative scatter cor-
rection (MSC) method, and principal components(PCs) were selected based on
accumulative reliabilities. A total of 60 mature vinegar samples were divided
into calibration sets and validation sets randomly, the calibration sets had 45
samples and the validation sets had 15 samples. The stepwise discriminant
analysis was trained with five PCs in calibration sets as the inputs,and mature
vinegar varieties as the outputs. The stepwise discriminant analysis model was
built for discrimination of mature vinegar variety ,and the model contains 15
samples in the validation sets. The result showed that a 100% recognition ra-
tion was achieved.The BP-ANN model for discrimination of mature vinegar
varieties were built based on PCA and the stepwise discriminant analysis, then
the model was tested with the 15 sample in the validation sets. The result
showed that a 100% recognition ration was achieved with the threshold predic-
tive error 0.027. It based on five principal components had a higher predic-
tion accuracy and efficiency more than the BP neural network model. It could
be concluded that PCA combined with stepwise discriminant analysis and BP-
ANN was an available method for varieties recognition of mature vinegar based
on NIR spectroscopy.

Keywords: Vis_NIR spectroscopy, Mature vinegar variety, Principal compo-

nent analysis, Stepwise discriminant analysis, BP neural network.

1 Introduction
Vinegar is a kind of lives condiment which is related to people's daily life closely, it
not only has an important food value, but also has the health care and the effective-
ness of sterilization. In order to ensure the quality of vinegar, to protect the regular
brands, and to avoid fish in shoddy, undoubtedly, it is important and essential to de-
velop a simple, rapid and non-destructive technology for species identification and
quality of vinegar detection technology and research.
Near-infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy can make full use of all-band spec-
tral data underway the qualitative and quantitative analysis. With many advantages of

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 721728, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
722 Y. Zhao et al.

the spectra , it has been widely used in identification of quality of agricultural prod-
ucts and species [1-11 ]. Currently, domestic scholars have been studied on the sauce
brand [1], bayberry juice varieties[2] and tea varieties[3] with near infrared spectros-
copy, but no identification was on the varieties of vinegar.
Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is a Data Mining technology in Multivari-
ate Statistical. It is based on without losing the main information, and the more
original variables were replaced by new variables. In the spectral data analysis, the
difficulty that was caused by overlapping bands has been solved. It has became one of
the widest applied spectrum mathematical methods.
Discriminant analysis is a widely used multivariate statistical method. It was de-
rived according to the characteristics of things that the variables values and the class
they belonged the classification of objects of unknown classification of an analysis
method. Stepwise discriminant analysis with the algorithm was developed based on
discriminant analysis, strong distinguish ability of the variables was pulled into
discriminant, while weak capacity of it was removed. Thus the aim was achieved for
vector dimension reduction and classification of unknown things.
BP is neural network based on back propagation algorithm, which has highly
non- liner mapping capability. The problem about the complex non-liner pattern can
be solved easily with it.
In this paper, principal component analysis, stepwise discriminant analysis and
the BP neural network method were combined to establish the different species of
vinegar - Near Infrared Spectroscopy models, to achieve the identification of different
varieties mature vinegar.

2 Materials and Methods

The equipment was composed by computer, spectrometer, halogen light, correction
whiteboard etc. FieldSpec3 spectrometer which made by America ASD (Analytical
Spectral Device) company was used. The interval of spectral sampling was 1nm, the
range of sampling was 350 ~ 2500nm, the times of scanning were 30, resolution was
3.5nm and the probe field of view angle was 25 , diffuse reflection was selected to
carry on the sample spectrum sampling.The halogen light of 14.5V is used to match
with the spectrometer. The spectrum data was exported into the form of ASCII
code for processing and the analysis software was ASD View Spec Pro V5.0, Un-
scramble V9.7 and DPS (Data Procession System For Practical Statistics).
DongHu Vinegar, DoubleToo vinegar and PurpleForest vinegarwere bought
from market.Each species of vinegar which were produced in the same batch by the
same manufacturer were collected 20 samples, and the total was 60. All samples were
randomly divided into the model sets including 45 samples and the prediction sets
including 15 samples.The vinegar was set into a petri dish which the attitude was
1.4cm ,the diameter was 6.5cm and the liquid height was 10mm, then spectrometer
probe was put above the vinegar surface, the distance between both was 50 mm, the
angle between both was 45 , light from the sample container containing center was
350mm and into a 45 , each sample was scanned and averaged.
The noise was eliminated by spectral pretreatment to removed the high-
frequency random noise, baseline drift etc. Move average smoothing method was
 Fast Discrimination of Mature Vinegar Varieties with Visible_NIR Spectroscopy 723

applied in this paper, smooth points was 9, then MSC (Multiplicative Scatter Correc-
tion) processing [3]was made.

3 Spectral Analysis of Vinegar Data

3.1 Analysis of Spectral Map

The typical near-infrared spectral curves of vinegar were showed in Figure 1, abscissa
was the wavelength and the range of it was 350 ~ 2500nm, vertical coordinates was
the spectral reflectance. It could be expressed in figure 1 that different varieties of
vinegar had different spectrums; they had certain characteristics and fingerprint.
Spectral reflectance data of samples were obtained, averaged and converted into AS-
CII code to export by ASD View Spec Pro software, then were advanced principal
component analysis through Unscramble V9.7 software.



UHIOHFWLYLW\

3XUSOU)RUHVW



'RXEOH7RR

'RQJ+X

      
ZDYHOHQJWKQP

Fig. 1. Visible_Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy of three different varieties of Vinegar

3.2 The Main Component Analysis of Vinegar

The purposes of PCA were data reduction and eliminate the section of each overlap-
ping that co-existed in lots of information. A large number of original variables spec-
trum were converted, small number of new combinations were composed as linear
combinations of original variables, structural characteristics of the original data vari-
ables could be characterized by new variables maximum, as little as possible losing
the information [1,2]. The 60 samples of three kinds of vinegar were analyzed by
principal component analysis through Unscramble V9.7 software, see Figure 2.
724 Y. Zhao et al.

3&


 3XUSOH)RUHVW

'RXEOH7RR 
3&

        

 'RQJ+X




Fig. 2. PCA scores plots (PC1 PC2) for Sea buckthorn juice sample across the entire Spectral
Region

Principal components 1, 2 score image of 60 model samples was showed in

Figure 2, where the horizontal axis represents each sample of the first principal
component scores, the vertical axis expresses each sample value of the second princi-
pal component scores. DongHu Vinegar,DoubleToo Vinegar and PurpleForest
vinegar were divided into three categories, it indicated the main components 1, 2 had
better clustering effect. Figure 2 showed the degree of polymerization of 20 samples
of Donghu vinegar was best, distributed in the fourth quadrants and aggregate near
the X axis, the degree of polymerization of 20 samples of Double Too vinegar was
better, distributed in the second quadrants and aggregate near the X axis. Degree of
polymerization of PurpleForest vinegar was better too, parted in the first quad-
rant.These images were distinguished easily. Analysis showed that the former two
principal components of the 3 vinegar had better clustering effect.

3.3 The Main Component Analysis of Vinegar

3.3.1 Important Components Extraction Based on Principal Component

Analysis
There are 2150 points in sample spectral bands which from 350 ~ 2500nm, when
the whole spectrum amount was calculated, the calculation was large, spectral infor-
mation of samples was very weak in some regions, lacked the relationship between
the composition of the samples and the nature of samples. So through PCA analy-
sis, sensitive species of the new variable vinegar were selected as the input of
stepwise discriminant analysis of model identification.
The total credibility of 7 principal component which was obtained by principal
component analysis could be seen in figure 1.As the first 5 principal components of
the total confidence level is 99.99%,the total credibility had little change when the
principal components were added, the five principal components was chosen to ex-
plain the original wavelength variable, the original more than 2000 wavelength vari-
ables was compressed as 5 new variables which orthogonal to each other, each
other independently of each other, 99.99% of the represent original variables that
were included in the information.
 Fast Discrimination of Mature Vinegar Varieties with Visible_NIR Spectroscopy 725

Table 1. Accumulative reliabilities of the first 5 Principal components

Principal components Total confidence /%

PC01 96.363
PC01 96.363
PC01 96.363
PC01 96.363
PC01 96.363

3.3.2 Establishment and Analysis of Vinegar Species Identification Model Based

on Stepwise Discriminant
The scores of 5 principal components were taken as the input of stepwise discriminant
analysis; this analysis was completed by the DPS software.
The 60 samples of three bands of vinegar were divided into 45 training samples
and 15 confirmation samples, DongHu vinegar, DoubleToo vinegar and the Purple-
Forest vinegar were represented by the digit 1, 2, 3 separately, score data of 5 prin-
cipal components of 45 samples were dealt with based on the Baye criterion discrimi-
nant analysis. Finally discriminant function was established, the brand distinction
models as follows
Y1 ( x) = 252.982 + 73.9001x1 63.96x 2 23,8146x 4 205.208x 5 DongHu vinegar

Y2 ( x) = 970.014 146.805x1 + 115.2x2 + 26.998x4 + 332.0506x5 DubleToo vinegar

Y3 ( x) = 240.946 + 72.3922x1 51.18x2 3.3682x4 125.207x5 PurpleForest vinegar

Outcomes could be seen from the above equations, the third principal compo-
nent x3 was worst to identificate the vinegar species, it was removed in the process of
develop the discriminant equation and reached the purpose of dimensionality
reduction .
The four main components of 45 known samples were set into the discriminant
function and re-classified by posterior probability, the discrimination results in
table 2. Results could be seen from the table, and the discriminant function which was
established on three brand vinegar discriminant accuracy was 100%, which indicated
the identification model has a high credibility.

Table 2. Resubstisution rate with stepwise discriminabt analysis

Typle of Results of returns sentences Total Accuracy of returns

vinegar DongHu DoubleToo PurpleForest sentences /%
DongHu 15 0 0 15 100
DoubleToo 0 15 0 15 100
PurpleForest 0 0 15 15 100
726 Y. Zhao et al.

To further verify the reliability of the model establish, 15 unknown samples were
replaced into the discriminant function to predict the validation. 4 principal
components of 15 samples were set into the discriminant function, and the correct
rate was 100%, it showed that the identification was reliable. The results were in
Table 3.

Table 3. Predicting rate with stepwise discriminabt analysis

Typle of Results of returns sentences Total Accuracy of returns

vinegar DongHu DoubleToo PurpleForest sentences /%
DongHu 5 0 0 5 100
DoubleToo 0 5 0 5 100
PurpleForest 0 0 5 5 100

3.3.3 Construction and Analysis of Vinegar Species Identification Model Based

on Principal Component Analysis, Stepwise Discriminant Analysis and
BP Neural Network
Dentification model of vinegar was built with 4 of 5 components that were extracted
by PCA and seemed as input variables of BP neural network, species value as the
output, and then by adjusting the number of nodes in the hidden layer to optimize
network, structure is 4(input nodes):7 (hidden nodes): 1 (output nodes).Fitting resid-
ual of 45 samples was 8.19 10-5, predicted results of 15 unknown samples were
showed in Table 4. The threshold is set to 0.027 in the case, identification correct
rate of the unknown sample reached 100%.
For comparison the number choice effect of principal components to BP neural
network forecast, distinction model was established with 5 main components were
taken as the input variables of BP neural network and the variety value as the output.
Network was optimized through adjustment the nodal point numbers of concealment
level, structure contioned 5 (input nodes): 9 (hidden layer): 1 (output nodes). The fit-
ting residual of 45 modeling samples was 8.83 10-5, in the situation of threshold
value hypothesis for 0.03, the recognition accuracy of unknown samples achieved
100%.
The above BP neural network analysis was completed by the DPS software.
The network settings training iteration number of times was 1000 times, the goal error
hypothesis was 0.0001. 45 samples were selected as the modeling sets, 15 samples as
forecast sets. The 15 unknown samples were carried on to predict, the forecast results
could be seen in table 4. Results indicated that insensitive variable were existed in
the principal components of vinegar,this variable was removed with the stepwise
discriminant analysis [11],BP neural network identification model was re-established
based it and to improve the prediction efficiency.
 Fast Discrimination of Mature Vinegar Varieties with Visible_NIR Spectroscopy 727

Table 4. Prediction results for unknown samples by BP model

Sample Real Predicted value Deviation

number value
4 principal 5 principal 4 principal 5 principal
components component components component
1 1 1.024 1.0165 0.0240 0.0165
2 1 1.0177 1.0139 0.0177 0.0139
3 1 1.0118 1.0085 0.0118 0.0085
4 1 1.0097 1.0070 0.0097 0.0070
5 1 1.0109 1.0078 0.0109 0.0078
6 2 1.9946 1.9885 -0.0054 -0.0115
7 2 1.9980 1.9914 -0.0020 -0.0086
8 2 1.9998 1.9943 -0.0002 -0.0057
9 2 1.9926 1.9861 -0.0074 -0.0139
10 2 1.9885 1.9810 -0.0115 -0.0190
11 3 2.9971 2.9949 -0.0029 -0.0051
12 3 2.9819 2.9787 -0.0181 -0.0213
13 3 2.9736 2.9701 -0.0264 -0.0299
14 3 2.9994 2.9989 -0.0006 -0.0011
15 3 2.9993 2.9987 -0.0007 -0.0013

Note:Variety value
1-DongHu vinegar;
2-DoubleToo vinegar;
3-PurpleForest vinegar

4 Concluding Remarks

(1) The method which was used visible near-infrared spectroscopy of Identify vine-
gar varieties is rapid, non-destructive and low cost.
(2) The principal components which were obtained from the PCA analysis was took
the input of analysis. The computation was reduced greatly, in addition the use-
less variable was rejected in the stepwise discriminant analysis process and
raised the analysis accuracy and the stability.
(3) Vinegar variety distinction model was established with this method. From the
forecast effect, the unknown sample recognition rate had achieved 100%, indi-
cated constructed of vinegar variety distinction model was reliable, stable.
Therefore, the variety distinction model of PCA analysis union stepwise dis-
criminant analysis based on the near-infrared spectrum is feasible.
(4) It could be seen of this paper that insensitive variables were existed in principal
components,it could be removed by stepwise discriminant analysis, the forecast
efficiency could be raised with BP neural network distinction model based the
method.
728 Y. Zhao et al.

References
1. Tong, X., Bao, Y., He, Y.: Study on fast discrimination of soy sauce using near infrared
spectra. Spectroscopy and Spectral 28(3), 597601 (2008) (in Chinese with English ab-
stract)
2. Cen, H., Bao, Y., He, Y.: Fast discrimination of varieties of bayberry juice based on spec-
troscopy technology. Spectroscopy and Spectral 27(3), 503506 (2007) (in Chinese with
English abstract)
3. Li, X., He, Y., Qiu, Z.: A new method to fast discrimination of tea varieties using visible/
near infrared spectroscopy. Spectroscopy and Spectral 27(2), 279282 (2007) (in Chinese
with English abstract)
4. Li, X., Hu, X., He, Y.: New approach of discrimination of varieties of juicy peach by near
infrared spectra based on PCA and MDA model. J. Infrared Millim. Waves 25(6), 417420
(2006)
5. Liu, Y., Luo, J., Chen, X.: Analysis of soluble solid content in nanfeng tangerine with visi-
ble near infrared spectroscopy. J. Infrared Millim. Waves 27(2), 119122 (2008)
6. Zhao, J., Zhang, H., Liu, M.: Non-destructive determination of sugar contents of app les
using near infrared diffuse reflectance. Transactions of the CSAE 21(3), 162165 (2005)
(in Chinese with English abstract)
7. Liu, Y., Ying, Y.: Sugar content prediction of apples with near infrared diffuse reflectance
technique. Transactions of the CSAE 20(1), 189192 (2008) (in Chinese with English ab-
stract)
8. Li, G., Zhao, G., Wang, X., et al.: Nondestructive measurement and fingerprint analysisof
apple texture quality based on NIR Spectra. Transactions of the CSAE 24(6), 169173
(2008) (in Chinese with English abstract)
9. Wang, G., Zhu, S., Kan, J.-Q., et al.: Nondestructive detection of volatile oil content in
zanthoxylum bungeagum maxim by near infrared spectroscopy. Transactions of the Chi-
nese Society for Agricultural Machinery 39(3), 7985 (2008) (in Chinese with English ab-
stract)
10. Zou, X., Zhao, J., Xia, R.: Near infrared determination of sugar content in apples based on
multiresolution decomposition and interval Partial Least Square (iPLS) method. Transac-
tions of the Chinese Society for Agricultural Machinery 37(6), 7982 (2006) (in Chinese
with English abstract)
 Discrimination between Mature Vinegars of Different
*
Geographical Origins by NIRS

Huishan Lu1,**, Zhengguang An1, Huanyu Jiang2, and Yibin Ying2

1
College of Mechanical Engineering & Automatization, North University of China,
3 Xueyuan St., Taiyuan 030051, P.R. China
2
College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science, Zhejiang University,
268 Kaixuan St., Hangzhou 310029, P.R. China
13934597379@139.com, hyjiang@zju.edu.cn, ybying@zju.edu.cn

Abstract. The feasibility of near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) for discrimina-

tion between mature vinegar of different geographical origins (Taiyuan and
Qingxu, China) is presented in this research. NIR spectra were collected in
transmission mode in the wavelength range of 8002500 nm. Qualitative analy-
sis models were developed based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and
Discriminant Analysis (DA). The prediction performance of calibration models
in different wavelength range was also investigated. The best models gave a
96.3% classification of mature vinegars of the two geographical origins in the
range of 8002500 nm. The results demonstrated that NIRS technique could be
used as a rapid method for classification of geographical origin of mature
vinegars.

1 Introduction

With increasing concerns about food products adulteration, falsification of added-value

claims and traditional foods protection, food authentication is an essential challenge
that must be faced in many different quality control tasks, such as guaranteeing the
actual origin of a product and detecting deliberate or accidental adulteration of valuable
food components by inferior ingredients. The food industry, regulatory authorities and
consumers are all interested in authenticating raw materials and verifying the origin or
the specific character of a product in order to promote quality and to assure food safety.
In particular, assurance of the quality and origin of vinegars has become an issue of
supreme commercial importance as a means for searching for safety in the vinegar
industry and for fighting to curb unfair competition, also taking into account the huge
diversity of vinegars available nowadays on the market and the differences in the final
sale price depending on a wide range of quality factors. Vinegar is a product resulting
from the alcoholic and subsequent acetic fermentation of any fermentable starting
material rich in carbohydrates. The final quality and organoleptic properties of vinegar

*
The paper supported by by Shanxi Youth Science and Technology Research Fund (No.
2009021019-3).
**
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 729736, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
730 H. Lu et al.

are determined by a profound chemical complexity conditioned by both the raw mate-
rial employed and the particular elaboration process used. Traditional and selected
vinegars are produced by slow acetification methods, which usually require long pe-
riods of maturation in wood to reach the desired acetic degree. These traditional
elaboration processes, involving simultaneous acetification and ageing, produce ex-
cellent quality vinegar, but at the expense of increasing production time and cost, which
is used to justify their premium price. Therefore, reliable methods are required for
quality and economical reasons in order to objectively differentiate vinegars according
to their origin and commercial type, and thus provide real protection to superior quality
products and to ensure vinegar authenticity. Flavour and aroma are some of the most
important factors in the determination of vinegar character and quality. A large variety
of compounds covering a wide range of volatilities and concentrations are responsible
for the sensorial complexity of vinegars. The volatile fraction of any specific vinegar,
and thus its aromatic composition, is significantly influenced by many factors, the main
sources of variation being the particular raw material used, the acetification system
employed for its production, and eventually wood ageing. Therefore, since the volatile
profile of vinegar represents a fingerprint of the sample, it is reasonable to assume that
a classification approach based on the analysis of volatile components would be an
efficient tool for evaluating vinegar authenticity. In fact, a number of previous studies
have described the effective application of the analysis of volatile compounds for the
characterization and differentiation of different vinegars. Although it should be noted
that this is only a feasibility study, the promising results obtained justify a similar
approach to be considered in future in order to better evaluate its actual performance
and to broaden the field of application to a wider range of vinegar types.

2 Materials and Method

2.1 Samples

In this research, a total of two geographical origins of mature vinegars were obtained in
different region. Thirty six bottles of mature vinegar samples of Donghu brand were
from Qingxu, and thirty six bottles of Ninghuafu brand from Taiyuan. In all, 12
samples were of 1 year age, 12 samples were of 3 year age, 12 samples were of 5 year
age in Donghu Group and Ninghuafu Group, respectively. Before the experiment,
the mature vinegar samples were stored in the laboratory at a constant temperature of
251 0C for more than 48h to have an equalization room temperature. The samples
were all original vinegar liquid without dilution. Sixty mature vinegar samples were
used in the calibration set, whereas, 12 samples (2 for each age of each group) were
selected as the validation set.

2.2 Spectral Measurements

Samples taken from freshly opened bottles of mature vinegar were scanned in trans-
mission mode using a commercial spectrometer Nexus FT-NIR (Thermo Nicolet
Corporation, Madison, WI,USA) which was equipped with an interferometer, an In-
GaAs detector, and a broad band light source (Quartz Tungsten Halogen, 50 W).
Discrimination between Mature Vinegars of Different Geographical Origins by NIRS 731

Samples were scanned in a 1 mm optical path-length rectangular quartz cuvette with air
as reference at room temperature. NIR spectra were collected using OMNIC software
(Thermo Nicolet Corporation, Madison, WI, USA) and stored in absorbance format.
The spectral range was from 800 to 2500 nm, the mirror velocity was 0.9494 cm s1,
and the resolution was 16 cm1 in this work. The spectrum of each sample was the
average of 32 successive scans.

2.3 Chemometrics and Data Analysis

Chemometrics analyses including PCA and DA were performed using a commercial

software package (TQ Analyst software, Thermo Electron Corp., Madison, Wisc.).
Spectra were exported from OMNIC software in absorbance format to TQ Analyst
software before being analyzed.

Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

In this work, PCA was used to reduce the dimensionality of the NIR transmission
spectra recorded on mature vinegar samples and extract the most useful and relevant
information. PCA transforms the original independent variables (wavelengths) into
new axes and calculates the principal components (known as PCs) as new variables by
relevant algorithm to replace the original data (Mouazen et al., 2006). The PCs are
orthogonal, so the data presented on the new axes are uncorrelated with each other (Xu
and Shao, 2004). The PCs account as much as possible for the variability in the original
variables (Cozzolino et al., 2003). Each spectrum will have its own unique set of
scores; therefore, a spectrum can be represented by its PCA scores in the factor space
instead of by intensity in the wavelength space (Park et al., 2003). The scores of such
PCs replace the original spectra data to be used for further modeling.

Discriminant Analysis (DA)

DA was used in this work to build a classification model to discriminate Ninghuafu,
and Donghu mature vinegar samples based on predefined classes and determine the
percentage of correct classifications. Because the first ten PCs cover most of the
variation (>99.9% of the total variance) of the raw spectral data, the first ten PCs at-
tained through PCA calculation of the spectral data were employed for DA. In TQ
Analyst, discrimination of the groups consists of calculating the Mahalanobis distance
of a sample from the centers of gravity of the considered groups; one can then clarify
the properties that distinguish the different groups. A sample is assigned to the group
that has the shortest Mahalanobis distance to it, with which it is considered to be the
most similar.

3 Results and Discussion

3.1 Spectral Analysis

Figure 1 shows the average NIR absorbance spectra of Ninghuafu and Donghu
samples without any preprocessing. No obvious spectral differences could be observed
732 H. Lu et al.

5.0

4.5

4.0

3.5

3.0
Absorbance

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

0.5

800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 2200 2400 2600
Wavelength (nm)

Fig. 1. Average NIR spectra of 36 Ninghuafu and 36 Donghu samples without any pre-
processing

0.30

0.25

0.20

0.15

0.10
Arbitrary units

0.05

0.00

-0.05

-0.10

-0.15

-0.20

12000 11000 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000

Wavenumbers (cm-1)

Fig. 2. Average second-derivative spectra of 36 Ninghuafu and 36 Donghu samples

Discrimination between Mature Vinegars of Different Geographical Origins by NIRS 733

between the two spectra, and the spectra are highly overlapped except in the regions
940-1025 nm, 1125-1360 nm, 1670-1840 nm, and 2000-2100 nm, where Ninghuafu
is a little higher than Donghu, while at 1390-1435 nm as well as 2380-2480 nm,
Donghu is a little higher than Ninghuafu. All spectra have intense absorption bands
at 1450 nm, related to the first O-H overtone, and at 1900-1950 nm, related to the
combination of stretch and deformation of the O-H group in water. The small absorp-
tion band at 1690 nm might be related to the -CH3 stretch first overtone or C-H groups
in aromatic compounds, at 1782 nm related to the C-H stretch first overtone, at 2266
nm likely with C-H combination bands of methanol, and at 2302 nm with combination
band of C-H stretch and deformation of C-H from the -CH2 group (Yu et al., 2007;
Cozzolino et al., 2003; Yan et al., 2005; Lu, 2007; Dambergs et al., 2002). Figure 2
shows the averaged second-derivative spectra of mature vinegar from the two geo-
graphical origins, from which we can observe that the averaged second-derivative
spectrum of Ninghuafu is higher than that of Donghu except for an overlap at
1900-1950 nm due to intense absorbance of water. There are obvious differences be-
tween the three spectra that are highly overlapped in figure 1, which demonstrate that
features of the two spectra are enhanced after preprocessing with second derivatives.

3.2 Principal Component

All the spectra of 36 Ninghuafu samples, 36 Donghu samples were preprocessed

with multiplicative signal correction (MSC) and second derivatives to reduce spectral
variations and enhance features of the spectra before PCA. The first ten PCs account for
99.475% of the variation in the spectra, and are used to make differentiation clearer.

Fig. 3. Two-dimensional score plot for Ninghuafu samples and Donghu sample

From figure 3, we can see that the samples were divided into two groups. The
separation of Ninghuafu from the other was clear, but with some overlapped samples.
However, the classification trends are obvious in this figure, and samples of the three
734 H. Lu et al.

brands can be separated. Figure 3 shows classification of Ninghuafu and Donghu

using discriminant analysis method with obvious boundaries that include an overlap-
ping of the two brands. It can be observed in this figure that the Ninghuafu and
Donghu samples had both positive and negative scores.
From the plot, we can see that Ninghuafu and Donghu were separated perfectly
with 5 overlapped samples. This result suggested that discrimination among the two
brands was possible, but as the result was not ideal and PCA only represented a po-
tential ability to discriminate the samples, discriminant analysis was employed in order
to obtain a better classification.

3.3 Discriminant Analysis

As a rule, the DA procedure supplies two kinds of functions: discriminant functions,

which provide the separation among groups, typically in one- or two- dimensional
space, and classification functions, which are used to assign a new case into one of the
known groups (Nicolas et al., 2000; Yu and Ren, 1999). In this work, the former
function was used to discriminate the two brands. Sixty samples (30 Ninhuafu and 30

Fig. 4. Classification of Ninghuafu and Donghu using discriminant analysis method

Table 1. The result of discriminant analysis method

Number of samples
Age (Number of Correctly
Group Calibration Validation
samples) Classified
set set
1-year (10)
Donghu 3-year (10) 30 6 96.3%
5-year (10)
1-year (10)
Ninghuafu 3-year (10) 30 6 95.6%
5-year (10)
Discrimination between Mature Vinegars of Different Geographical Origins by NIRS 735

Donghu) were selected as the calibration set, and the 12 samples (6 Ninhuafu and 6
Donghu) were used as the validation set. And the details were listed in Table 1. Plots
of the Mahalanobis distances of all samples to Ninhuafu and to Donghu are shown
in figure 4. It can be seen in these plots that the two brands were divided into two
clusters. On the whole, a good result was obtained, with a classification accuracy of
95.9%. The result indicates that DA was effective for the discrimination of the two
brands and produced a good classification model.

4 Conclusions

The result obtained in this work suggests that NIR spectroscopy, together with
chemometrics methods such as DA classification models based on PCA, is a powerful
technique to classify objects, and it was effective for discriminating mature vinegar
samples from different different geographical origins (Ninghuafu from Taiyuan, and
Donghu from Qingxu). In this case, the best classification, with accuracy up to
96.3%, was attained by DA based on sample spectra pretreated with second derivatives.
This technique can acquire enough information to offer an ideal result, avoiding
time-consuming, costly, and laborious chemical and sensory analysis. This result
demonstrates that NIR spectroscopy has a good potential for use as an alternative
technique for developing an accurate, rapid detector to discriminate mature vinegar
from geographical origins. It is unknown which components account for the variation
and act in the discrimination, so further study of the chemical constituents in mature
vinegar should follow. At the same time, the work reported here is a feasibility study
and requires further development with considerably more samples of other brands and
varieties.

Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by Shanxi Youth
Science and Technology Research Fund (No. 2009021019-3).

References
1. Mouazen, A.M., Karoui, R., De Baerdemaeker, J., Ramon, H.: Classification of soils into
different moisture content levels based on NIS-NIR spectra. ASABE Paper No. 061067
(2006)
2. Xu, L., Shao, X.G.: Methods of Chemometrics. Science Press, Beijing (2004)
3. Cozzolino, D., Smyth, H.E., Gishen, M.: Feasibility study on the use of visible and
near-infrared spectroscopy together with chemometrics to discriminate between commercial
white wines of different varietal origins. J. Agric. Food Chem. 51(26), 77037708 (2003)
4. Park, B., Abbott, J.A., Lee, K.J., Choi, C.H., Choi, K.H.: Near-infrared diffuse reflectance for
quantitative and qualitative measurement of soluble solids and firmness of delicious and gala
apples. Trans. ASAE 46(6), 17211731 (2003)
736 H. Lu et al.

5. Yu, H.Y., Zhou, Y., Fu, X.P., Xie, L.J., Ying, Y.B.: Discrimination between Chinese rice
wines of different geographical origins by NIRS and AAS. European Food Res.
Tech. 225(3-4), 313320 (2007)
6. Yan, Y.L., Zhao, L.L., Han, D.H., Yan, S.M.: Basic and Application of Near-Infrared Spectral
Analysis. China Light Industry Press, Beijing (2005)
7. Lu, W.Z.: Modern Near Infrared Spectroscopy Analytical Technology, 2nd edn. Petro-
chemical Press, Beijing (2007)
8. Dambergs, R.G., Kambouris, A., Francis, I.L., Gishen, M.: Rapid analysis of methanol in
grape-derived distillation products using near-infrared transmission spectroscopy. J. Agric.
Food Chem. 50(11), 30793084 (2002)
9. Niu, X.Y., Yu, H.Y., Ying, Y.B.: The Application Of Near-Infrared Spectroscopy And
Chemometrics To Classify Shaoxing Wines From Different Breweries. Transactions of the
ASABE 51(4), 13711376 (2008)
 Prediction of Marked Age of Mature Vinegar Based on
Fourier Transform Near Infrared Spectroscopy*

Zhengguang An1, Huishan Lu1,**, Huanyu Jiang2, and Yibin Ying2

1
College of Mechanical Engineering & Automatization, North University of China,
3 Xueyuan St., Taiyuan 030051, P.R. China
2
College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science, Zhejiang University,
268 Kaixuan St., Hangzhou 310029, P.R. China
464024678@qq.com, 13934597379@139.com, hyjiang@zju.edu.cn,
ybying@zju.edu.cn

Abstract. To evaluate the applicability of near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy for

discrimination between mature vinegar with different marked age (1 year, 3
years, and 5 years), transmission spectra were collected in the spectral range from
800 nm to 2500 nm in 1, 2, and 5 mm optical path-length rectangular quartz
cuvettes with air as reference at room temperature. Discriminant models were
developed based on discriminant analysis (DA) together with raw, first and
second derivative spectra. The calibration result for raw spectra was better than
that for first and second derivative spectra. The percentage of samples correctly
classified for raw were 100% for 1 year old, 100% for 3 years old and 97.5% for
5 years old, respectively. In validation analysis, for 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years
old sample groups, the percentage of samples correctly classified was 100%,
100%, and 100%, respectively. The results demonstrated that NIR spectroscopy
could be used as a rapid and reliable method for classification of mature vinegar
with different marked age.

1 Introduction

Fermented mature vinegar, which has a long history in China, is treated as the favorite
condiments, health-care products and even medicines by Chinese people. The com-
mercial mature vinegar consists of water, acetic acid, sugars, and other secondary con-
stituents that contribute to the smell, taste and preserving qualities. The composition of
mature vinegar is 80% (v/v) of water and a great variety of other compounds like organic
acids, alcohols, minerals, polyphenols, amino acids, etc. accounting for the other 20%.
In recent years, near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy has gained wide acceptance in
different fields by virtue of its advantages over other analytical techniques, the most
salient of which is its ability to record spectra for solid and liquid samples without any
pre-treatment. This characteristic makes it especially attractive for straightforward,

*
The paper supported by by Shanxi Youth Science and Technology Research Fund (No.
2009021019-3).
**
Corresponding author.

D. Li, Y. Liu, and Y. Chen (Eds.): CCTA 2010, Part I, IFIP AICT 344, pp. 737743, 2011.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011
738 Z. An et al.

speedy characterization of natural and synthetic products. NIR spectroscopy has in-
creasingly been adopted as an analytical tool in various fields, such as the petro-
chemical, pharmaceutical, environmental, clinical and biomedical sectors. One of the
most common applications of near-infrared spectroscopy combined with pattern rec-
ognition methods has been to discriminate between samples belonging to one of several
distinct groups based on spectral properties. Some researches had reported the appli-
cation of NIR spectroscopy for the aging of wine vinegar or Chinese rice wines [1], for
discriminate between samples from different origins [2], for the prediction of the
quality parameters of wine vinegar or wines [3-6]. However, although it has been
proven that original NIR spectra of vinegar samples might be used to develop classi-
fication models with good abilities to discriminate between different origins, NIR data,
especially from liquid samples, are affected by different types of perturbations such as
optical interferences (light scatter), temperature differences and turbidity, making the
use of pre-processing methods and inverse calibration essential. As a result of all the
foregoing, NIR spectra contain not only chemical but also physical information which
may be irrelevant and can mask the chemical information in the spectra (including
information closely related to sample origin), and might deteriorate classification
models developed from raw NIR spectra. Therefore, the application of suitable
chemometrical methods to NIR spectra in order to minimize the contribution of
physical effects and thus enhance the chemical information contained therein, could be
seen as an important stage in model development and improvement. The main aim of
this paper is to study the aging of mature vinegar during storage period.

2 Materials and Method

2.1 Samples

In this work, a total of two brands of mature vinegars were obtained in local market
named Ninghuafu and Donghu, with different marked age (1 year, 3 years, and 5 years)
of each variety. All of these mature vinegars were commonly used in Chinese peoples
daily life. Before the experiment, the mature vinegar samples were stored in the labo-
ratory at a constant temperature of 251 0C for more than 48h to have an equalization
room temperature. The samples were all original vinegar liquid without dilution. A
total of 150 samples (25 samples for each age of each variety) were prepared for further

Table 1. Distribution of mature vinegar samples in the calibration and validation set

Number of samples
Variety Age (year)
Calibration set Validation set
1 20 5
Donghu 3 20 5
5 20 5
1 20 5
Ninghuafu 3 20 5
5 20 5
 Prediction of Marked Age of Mature Vinegar Based on Fourier Transform 739

treatments. Twenty samples were selected randomly from each age of each variety and
a total of 120 mature vinegar samples were used in the calibration set, whereas, 30
samples (5 for each age of each variety) were selected randomly as the validation set
from the remaining samples. And the details were listed in Table 1.

2.2 Spectral Measurements

Samples taken from freshly opened bottles of mature vinegar were scanned in trans-
mission mode (800-2500 nm) using a scanning spectrometer, Nexus FT-NIR (Thermo
Nicolet Corp., Madison, WI), with an interferometer, an InGaAs detector, and a
broad-band light source (quartz tungsten halogen, 50 W). NIR spectral data were col-
lected using OMNIC software (Thermo Nicolet Corp.) and stored in absorbance for-
mat. Samples were scanned in demountable liquid cells of different optical path lengths
(1, 2, and 5 mm; Pike Technologies, Madison, WI) with air as the reference at room
temperature. All samples were shaken before scanning. The mirror velocity was 0.9494
cm s-1, and the resolution was 2 cm-1. The spectrum of each sample was the average of
32 successive scans. The spectral regions with an absorbance value equal to or higher
than 1.5 were not used in spectral analysis due to the zero transmissivity and the fact
that they are considered saturated.

2.3 Chemometrics and Data Analysis

Chemometrics analysis was performed using the commercial software package, TQ
Analyst v6.2.1 (Thermo Nicolet Corporation, Madison, WI, USA). Discriminant
analysis (DA) was used to classify mature vinegar samples with different vinegar age.
It was used to determine the classes of known samples which were most similar to an
unknown sample by computing the unknowns distance from each class center in
Mahalanobis distance.
Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed before DA models were de-
veloped. PCA was performed in order to reduce the number of variables showing
co-linearity. Thus, the samples were in a new reduction k-dimensional space (k<n).
From the k factor score, Mahalanobis distance which indicated how different a sample
spectrum was from the average spectrum of the sample set was calculated. It was de-
fined by the following equation:
( ) ( )
MDi = t i t S k 1 t i t T
Where MDi is the Mahalanobis distance, ti is the score vector of ith sample, t is the
mean score vector of the sample set, Sk is the scores covariance matrix.
The DA models were then validated by using it to predict the age of samples in the
validation set.

3 Results and Discussion

3.1 Spectral Analysis

Figure 1 shows the average spectra of 1, 3 and 5 years old sample groups in the whole
sample set without any preprocessing. No obvious spectral differences could be
740 Z. An et al.

observed between the three spectra, and the spectra are highly overlapped except in the
regions 950-980 nm, 1140-1160 nm, 1650-1700 nm, 1780-1800 nm, 1880-1920 nm,
and 2200-2250. All spectra have intense absorption bands at 1450 nm, related to the
first O-H overtone, and at 1900-1950 nm, related to the combination of stretch and
deformation of the O-H group in water. The small absorption band at 1690 nm might be
related to the -CH3 stretch first overtone or C-H groups in aromatic compounds, at
1782 nm related to the C-H stretch first overtone, at 2266 nm likely with C-H combi-
nation bands of methanol, and at 2302 nm with combination band of C-H stretch and
deformation of C-H from the -CH2 group (Yu et al., 2007; Cozzolino et al., 2003)[1,6].

5.0

4.5

4.0

3.5

3.0
Absorbance

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

0.5

1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 2200 2400

Wavelength (nm)

Fig. 1. Average spectra of 1, 3 and 5 years sample groups in the whole mature vinegar sample

3.2 Chemometrics Analysis

3.2.1 Calibration Analysis

The calibration results of DA model developed on raw spectra are much better than that
on first and second derivative spectra. There are only 1 sample is misclassified in the DA
model developed on raw spectra. While there are 74 and 80 samples incorrectly classified
in the DA model developed on first and second derivative spectra. The reason for the
performance of raw spectra better than that of second derivative spectra is that DA with
raw spectra describes 100% of the variability, while DA with first and second derivative
explains 54.4 and 37.1%, respectively (The data, 100%, 54.4 and 37.1%, are obtained
from the calibration results of the three models.). Thus, raw spectra were used for cali-
bration and validation analysis. Table 2 shows the calibration results of DA models de-
veloped on raw, first and second derivative spectra. The results were in agreement with
the literature for Chinese rice wine variety analysis (Hanyan Yu et al. 2003) [6].
 Prediction of Marked Age of Mature Vinegar Based on Fourier Transform 741

Table 2. Calibration results of DA models developed on raw, 1st and 2nd derivative spectra

Data type Age Number of samples Number of samples % of samples

(year) misclassified correctly classified

Raw spectra
1 40 0 100
3 40 0 100
5 40 1 97.5
1st
1 40 24 40
derivative
3 40 23 42.5
spectra
5 40 27 32.5
2nd
40 23 42.5
derivative
40 31 22.5
spectra
40 26 35

3.2.2 Validation Analysis

Thirty samples (5 for each age of each variety) were selected randomly as the validation
set. There were no samples misclassified. Therefore, NIR spectroscopy can be used to
classify mature vinegar samples with different vinegar age. The ability of the NIR
spectroscopy to discriminate or identify mature vinegar is based on the vibrational
responses of chemical bonds to NIR radiation. It is that the major components of

Fig. 2. Pairwise distance plot for 1-, 3- and 5-year-old sample groups in the whole sample set
742 Z. An et al.

mature vinegar with different vinegar age are significantly different. Most of the
changes were related to the primary structural components of organic molecules (CH,
NH and OH bonds), which provided the necessary information for classification of
mature vinegar with different vinegar age by NIR spectroscopy. Meanwhile, the spec-
tral difference between the sample groups with different mature vinegar age can be
detected from Figure 1, correspondingly.
The pairwise distance plots for the 1-, 3- and 5-year-old sample groups were showed
in Figure 2, respectively. They show graphically the Mahalanobis distance between
each standard and the two classes that are selected for the X- and Y-axis of the plot. The
calibration standards for the class that is selected for the X- axis of the pairwise distance
plot are similar to each other; the data points for those standards will be clustered in the
upper left corner of the plot. Similarly, the data points for the standards selected for
Y-axis will be clustered in the lower right corner of the plot. The greater the distance
between the two clusters in the plot, the greater is the difference between the corre-
sponding class and the other class. From Figure 2, it can be seen that the 3 sample
groups can be clearly classified.

4 Conclusions

The applicability of FT-NIR spectroscopic technique for predicting age of mature

vinegar is presented in this work. The percentages of samples correctly classified in
calibration and validation analysis were 99% and 100%, respectively. The results
indicated that NIR spectroscopy together with DA is a powerful tool for discrimination
between mature vinegar samples with different vinegar age. Further studies are needed
to extend to other varieties of mature vinegar.

Acknowledgement
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by Shanxi Youth
Science and Technology Research Fund (No. 2009021019-3).

References
1. Cozzolino, D., Smyth, H.E., Gishen, M.: Feasibility study on the use of visible and
near-infrared spectroscopy together with chemometrics to discriminate between commercial
white wines of different varietal origins. J. Agric. Food Chem. 51(26), 77037708 (2003)
2. Liu, L., Cozzolino, D., Cynkar, W.U., Dambergs, R.G., Janik, L., ONeill, B.K., Colby,
C.B., Gishen, M.: Preliminary study on the application of visible-near infrared spectroscopy
and chemometrics to classify Riesling wines from different countries. Food Chem. 106(2),
781786 (2007)
3. Pontes, M.J.C., Santos, S.R.B., Araujo, M.C.U., Almeida, L.F., Lima, R.A.C., Gaiao, E.N.,
Souto, U.T.C.P.: Classification of distilled alcoholic beverages and verification of adul-
teration by near infrared spectrometry. Food Res. Intl. 39(2), 182189 (2006)
 Prediction of Marked Age of Mature Vinegar Based on Fourier Transform 743

4. Reid, L.M., Woodcock, A., ODonnell, C.P., Kelly, J.D., Downey, G.: Differentiation of
apple juice samples on the basis of heat-treatment and variety using chemometric analysis of
MIR and NIR data. Food Res. Intl. 38(10), 11091115 (2005)
5. Saiz-Abajo, M.J., Gonzalez-Saiz, J.M., Pizarro, C.J.: Classification of wine and alcohol
vinegar samples based on near-infrared spectroscopy: Feasibility study on the detection of
adulterated vinegar samples. J. Agric. Food Chem. 52(25), 77117719 (2004)
6. Yu, H.Y., Zhou, Y., Fu, X.P., Xie, L.J., Ying, Y.B.: Discrimination between Chinese rice
wines of different geographical origins by NIRS and AAS. European Food Res.
Tech. 225(3-4), 313320 (2007)
 Author Index
Ai, Jumei III-721
An, Xiaoyu II-716
An, Zhengguang I-729, I-737
Bai, Jun-Hua II-90, IV-16
Bai, Wei III-92
Bai, Yichuan III-572
Bai, Zhongke III-173
Bao, Jie III-725, IV-610
Bao, Nisha III-173
Bao, Wenxing I-48, II-124, III-132,
III-464, III-491
Bi, Chunguang I-312
Bi, Lan IV-450
Bonifazi, Giuseppe IV-751
Cai, Guoyin II-243
Cai, Hongzhen III-341
Cai, Kewen IV-390
Cai, Lecai I-539
Cai, Tijiu II-682
Cao, Hongxin II-441
Cao, Qinghua IV-237
Cao, Qing-Song IV-410, IV-450
Cao, Ran II-322
Cao, Shehua IV-192
Cao, Weixin III-186
Cao, Weixing I-446, II-479
Cao, Wenqin III-14
Cao, YongSheng II-110
Chang, Ruokui III-106
Chang, Zhongle I-590
Chao, Liu II-425
Che, Zhenhua I-569, II-198
Chen, Aixi IV-89
Chen, Baisong II-525
Chen, Baorui I-250, II-658, IV-134
Chen, Bin III-123
Chen, Bing IV-602
Chen, Di-yi II-205
Chen, Guifen I-312, II-408
Chen, Hong II-61
Chen, Hongjiang IV-215
Chen, Hui IV-268
Chen, Jianhua I-569, II-198
Chen, Jin II-607
Chen, Kelou II-139
Chen, Lairong III-532
Chen, Lidong I-359
Chen, Liming II-505
Chen, Ling I-178
Chen, Liping I-103
Chen, Tianen I-103
Chen, Yaxiong I-390, III-357
Chen, Yongxing III-92
Chen, Zhaoxia IV-63
Cheng, Jianqun IV-361
Cheng, Jihong III-222
Cheng, Jilin II-283, III-554
Cheng, Youping I-149, I-353
Chu, Changbao IV-237
Ci, Xin IV-345
Cohen, Oded I-630
Cui, Hongguang I-267, I-428
Cui, Weiwei II-674
Cui, Yunpeng I-56, II-573, III-648
Dai, Lili I-267, I-428
Dai, Rong II-148
Dan, Nie III-732
Dang, Yv-mei II-726
Deng, Guang I-304
Deng, Hubin IV-96, IV-376
Deng, Jinfeng II-211
Deng, Lei IV-255
Deng, Li II-339, III-390
Deng, Shangmin I-674
Diao, Haiting III-57
Ding, Chao II-11
Ding, Jianjun III-36
Ding, Li I-437
Ding, Qingfeng IV-279
Ding, Qisheng IV-629, IV-642, IV-650,
IV-659
Ding, Wenqin I-456
Ding, XiaoLing IV-345
Dong, Jing I-35, II-561
Dong, Jingui I-576
Dong, Lihong IV-231
746 Author Index

Dong, Qizheng IV-167 Geng, Zhi III-710

Dong, Shiyun IV-231 Gitelson, Anatoly IV-47
Dong, Sufen II-365 Gong, Bikai IV-602
Dong, Yiwei III-92 Gong, Shuipeng IV-616
Dou, Yantao IV-78 Gong, Yi III-554
Du, Bin IV-355 Gu, Jingqiu III-661
Du, Huibin I-487 Gu, Wenjuan IV-543
Du, Jing IV-720 Gu, Xiaohe I-296
Du, Jun I-155 Gui, Dongwei I-321
Du, Mingyi I-681, II-243 Guo, Huiling II-18, II-491
Du, Shuyuan I-16 Guo, Mingming I-409, III-327
Duan, Qingling IV-691 Guo, Qian I-374, III-222
Duan, Qingwei IV-134 Guo, Rui II-551, III-357
Guo, Wei II-322
E, Yue II-110 Guo, Yuming I-691

Han, Jinyu III-539

Fan, Honggang I-35 Han, Ping I-282, I-290
Fan, Shijuan IV-116 Han, Qiang I-48
Fan, Xinzhong I-576, I-590 Han, Xiangbo I-16, I-472, I-717
Fang, Hui IV-124 Hannaway, David B. II-441
Fang, Junlong IV-616 He, Bailin IV-63
Feng, Shaoyuan II-473 He, Bei I-138
Feng, Yaoze IV-184 He, Bin II-18
Fu, Bing III-186 He, Dongxian III-725, IV-504, IV-610
Fu, Qiang III-419 He, Fen II-102
Fu, Xueliang I-487, I-526 He, Feng IV-8
Fu, Yu II-131 He, Jianbin I-35, II-561
Fu, Zetian IV-672, IV-680 He, Junliang I-519
Fu, Zhuo II-525 He, Lian II-283
He, Pengju II-573, III-648
Gan, Weihua II-400, II-579 He, Qingbo IV-206
Gao, Bingbo II-415 He, Renwang II-517
Gao, Gaili III-604 He, Tian III-316, III-375
Gao, Haisheng IV-355 He, Wenying II-551, III-357
Gao, Hongyan II-53 He, Yong IV-124
Gao, Lingwang I-594 Hu, Chunxia I-238, II-41
Gao, Miao I-282 Hu, Haiyan I-41, III-158
Gao, Rui I-138 Hu, Jianping I-401, I-456, I-555, II-496,
Gao, Shi-Ju IV-16 III-249
Gao, Xiaoliang III-732 Hu, JinYou I-623, III-656
Gao, Yang III-539 Hu, Juanxiu IV-504
Gao, Ying IV-260 Hu, Kaiqun III-304, III-483
Gao, Yun I-600, II-61 Hu, Lin III-138
Gao, Zhi-Fan IV-410 Hu, Ping II-30
Ge, Daokuo II-441 Hu, Runwen II-667
Ge, Ningning I-594 Hu, Siquan I-131, IV-71
Geng, Duanyang II-158 Hua, Yu II-650
Geng, Duayang II-531 Huang, Caojun II-309
Geng, Xia III-1 Huang, Chong I-582
 Author Index 747

Huang, Guanhua I-643, II-185 Li, Baojun II-30

Huang, Han III-572 Li, Biao I-590
Huang, Kelin IV-89 Li, Changyou I-487, I-526
Huang, Lan III-289 Li, Chen III-549
Huang, Qing I-250, II-658 Li, Chengyun I-227, I-335
Huang, Sheng II-351 Li, Chunzhi IV-147
Huang, Wen III-598 Li, Cunjun I-296, III-280
Huang, Wenjiang I-296, III-280 Li, Daoliang III-725, IV-610, IV-629,
Huang, Xiaomao I-25 IV-642, IV-650, IV-659, IV-672, IV-680,
Huang, Yan II-682 IV-701, IV-710, IV-720, IV-727,
Huang, Yanguo IV-321 IV-735, IV-742
Huang, Ying I-210 Li, Daoxi II-716
Huang, Yingsa I-401, I-456, II-496 Li, Dapeng II-706
Huang, Yinsa III-249 Li, Deying IV-474, IV-514
Huang, Yuxiang II-351 Li, Fanghua II-682
Huang, Zhigang IV-306 Li, Fengmin II-551
Li, Gailian I-238, II-41
Ji, Baoping III-84 Li, Gang I-250, II-658, IV-134
Ji, Ronghua III-304, III-483, III-532 Li, Guo IV-691
Ji, Ying I-138 Li, Guoqing III-241
Jia, Chaojie I-390, III-357 Li, Haifeng I-321
Jia, Guifeng IV-198 Li, Hengbin III-379
Jia, Shaorong III-198 Li, Honghui I-526
Jia, Song II-700, III-41 Li, Hongjian IV-89
Jiang, Haiyan II-479, III-186 Li, Hongwen IV-720
Jiang, Huanyu I-729, I-737 Li, Hongyi III-212
Jiang, Lihua I-149, I-353 Li, Hui I-594, II-317, III-304, III-483
Jiang, Na II-473 Li, Jia wei IV-39
Jiang, Qiuxiang III-419 Li, Jianyun IV-474
Jiang, Wencong II-381 Li, Jin III-580
Jiang, Xi II-706 Li, Jing II-90, IV-467, IV-528
Jiang, Xiangang IV-30 Li, Jun IV-382, IV-521
Jie, Dengfei II-118 Li, Lin I-35, II-309, II-561
Jin, Dan III-347, III-445 Li, Ling I-698
Jin, Tingxiang I-238, II-41 Li, Linyi II-587
Jinbin, Li I-335 Li, Lixin I-508
Jinfu, Lu IV-563 Li, Manman III-629
Jinlong, Lin I-608 Li, Maogang III-20, III-29
Juanxiu, Hu III-725 Li, Meian I-487
Li, Minghui IV-514
Kai, Wang II-425 Li, Mingyong I-576
Kan, Daohong IV-701 Li, Na IV-480, IV-537
Kong, Fanrang IV-206 Li, Peiwu I-600, IV-246
Kong, Wenwen IV-124 Li, Qiaozhen III-92
Kuang, Tangqing IV-543 Li, Qingji III-413, III-440
Li, Qingqing I-16
Lai, Zhigang I-508, IV-361 Li, Shao-Kun IV-16
Lei, Jiaqiang I-321 Li, Shaokun II-90, II-691
Lei, Wen I-539 Li, Shijuan I-219, I-261, I-476
Lei, Xiaojun II-479 Li, Shuqin II-351
748 Author Index

Li, Wei II-102 Liu, Jianshu IV-494

Li, Wenxin III-572 Liu, Jianting II-706
Li, Wenyue III-598 Liu, Jie I-600, IV-246
Li, Xianyue I-155 Liu, Jingbo II-415
Li, Xiaoqin IV-294 Liu, Jingyu I-68
Li, Xiaoyu I-600, II-61, IV-184, IV-246 Liu, Jingyuan II-465
Li, Xinlei I-409, III-327 Liu, Jiping II-674
Li, Xuemei II-18 Liu, Juanjuan IV-108
Li, Yan II-185 Liu, Jun III-604
Li, Yanling II-381, II-392 Liu, Junming III-629
Li, Yaoming II-607 Liu, Leping IV-167, IV-333
Li, Yi I-594 Liu, Li-Bo I-62
Li, Ying III-57 Liu, Lin I-227, I-335
Li, Yong IV-221 Liu, Liyong IV-727, IV-735, IV-742
Li, Yuan III-500, III-539 Liu, Lu I-623
Li, Yuanzhang I-68 Liu, Min IV-345
Li, Yuhong I-275, I-711, IV-575 Liu, Mingzeng II-30
Li, Yunkai I-155 Liu, Muhua II-434, IV-467, IV-528
Li, Yuzhong III-92 Liu, Ping an I-508, IV-361
Li, Zengyuan I-304 Liu, Pingan IV-306
Li, Zhigang III-500, III-539
Liu, Shengping I-476
Li, Zhihong II-465, III-563, III-572
Liu, Shihong I-56, II-573, III-158,
Li, Zhimei III-563, III-572
III-179, III-648
Li, Zhizhong III-704
Liu, Shuangxi III-379, III-620, IV-710
Li, Zhongqi IV-177
Liu, Tao IV-427
Liang, Jing II-633
Liu, Wei I-178, II-18
Liang, Qing IV-30
Liu, Xiaodong IV-376
Liang, Yong I-547, II-381, II-392,
Liu, Xiaojun I-446
II-700, III-1, III-41, III-390,
Liu, Xiuping II-30
III-403, III-452
Liang, Yusheng III-57 Liu, Xu III-289
Liao, Weichuan II-259 Liu, Xue IV-672
Liao, Xinglong I-1, I-532 Liu, Xuming III-704
Liming, Lu IV-563 Liu, Yajuan IV-103
Lin, Fengtao IV-568 Liu, Yan II-441
Linker, Raphael I-630 Liu, Yande II-1, III-613, IV-427
Liu, Baifen IV-260 Liu, Yang I-681, II-243
Liu, Changju IV-184 Liu, Yanqi II-30
Liu, Chengliang II-23 Liu, Yin III-327
Liu, Cuie III-8 Liu, Ying II-706
Liu, Cuiling II-317 Liu, Yongbin IV-206
Liu, Ergen IV-1, IV-390 Liu, Yongxia II-441
Liu, Fa I-401, I-456, II-496 Liu, Yu-xiao II-205
Liu, Fei IV-124 Liu, Zhanli I-472, I-717
Liu, Gang I-138, I-409, III-327, Liu, Zheng II-177
III-580 Liu, Zhengfang IV-89
Liu, Guiyuan IV-96 Liu, Zhengping IV-108
Liu, Haijun II-185 Liu, Zhifang I-87
Liu, Hailong II-290 Liu, Zhimin IV-89
Liu, Hua III-106 Liu, Zhipeng I-721
 Author Index 749

Liu, Zhongqiang I-76, III-46, III-682, Men, Weili I-674

III-696 Meng, Haili III-598
Long, Changjiang I-25, I-195 Meng, Hong III-158
Long, Yan II-205 Meng, Qingyi II-473
Lu, Anxiang I-282, I-563, II-83 Meng, Xianxue III-179
Lu, Daoli III-123 Miao, Pengbo IV-528
Lu, Gang II-11, III-8 Min, Shungeng III-592
Lu, Huishan I-729, I-737 Ming, Bo II-691
Lu, Jiahua I-569, II-198 Mingyin, Yao I-608
Lu, Peng II-11, II-329, III-8 Muhua, Liu I-608
Lu, Quanguo IV-237
Lu, Shaokun III-725, IV-610 Naor, Amos I-630
Lu, Weiping I-275, I-711, IV-575 Ning, Dongzhou IV-376
Lu, Yan-Li IV-16
Lu, Zhixiong IV-294 Ouyang, Aiguo IV-368
Lu, Zhongmin II-357
Luan, RuPeng II-615 Pan, Fangting III-231
Luan, Xin I-590 Pan, Guiying II-71
Luan, Yunxia II-83, II-457 Pan, Jiayi III-710
Luo, Chagen IV-368 Pan, Juan I-367
Luo, Changshou III-638, III-672 Pan, Ligang I-282, I-290, I-563, II-83,
Luo, Chunsheng IV-467, IV-528 II-234, II-457
Luo, Laipeng IV-1 Pan, Qilong IV-735
Luo, Qingyao III-710 Pan, Yuchun II-525
Luo, Shimin IV-286 Pang, Siqin IV-78
Luo, Xiaoling IV-255 Pei, Chunmei II-18, II-491
Lv, Jiake III-512 Peng, Bo I-119
Lv, Xin II-290, II-726 Peng, Cheng II-641, III-661
Lv, Yongliang II-706 Peng, Lin I-417
Ping, Hua I-290, II-234, II-457
Ma, Daokun IV-629, IV-650, IV-659 Ping, Jia III-428
Ma, Hailei I-526 Ping, Xuecheng IV-306
Ma, Juncheng IV-680
Ma, Li II-408 Qi, Kun II-61
Ma, Liang II-538 Qi, Lijun III-304, III-483
Ma, Lili IV-616 Qi, Limeng II-339
Ma, Liuyi II-597 Qi, Long I-1
Ma, Lizhen III-106 Qiao, Hongbo II-650
Ma, Xiaoguang II-465 Qiao, Xiaojun III-66, III-75
Ma, Xiao-yi II-205 Qiao, Xibo I-576, I-590
Ma, Xinming I-437, I-614, II-357, Qiao, Zhong III-473
III-269 Qin, JiangLin IV-47
Ma, Xu I-1, I-532 Qin, Xiangyang I-563, III-580
Ma, Yuan IV-333 Qing, Chang I-335
Ma, Zhihong I-282, II-83, Qing, Zhaoshen III-84
II-234, III-592 Qiu, Wanying II-521
Mao, Enrong III-257 Qiu, Xiaobing III-473
Mao, Hanping II-53 Qiu, Ying IV-420
Mao, Shuhua III-721 Qiu, Yun II-300, III-113, III-138
Mei, Weng II-650 Qiulian, Li I-608
750 Author Index

Rao, Guisheng II-339 Sun, Ruizhi III-367

Rao, Honghui III-613 Sun, Sufen I-56, III-638, III-672
Ren, Jiwen IV-494 Sun, Suping I-576
Ren, Rong III-132 Sun, Wenbin III-57
Ren, Shumei I-155 Sun, Wensheng III-165
Ren, Souhua II-309 Sun, Xia I-16
Ren, Wentao I-267, I-428 Sun, Xiang III-661, IV-583
Ren, Yanna II-357, III-269 Sun, Xiaoqing II-691
Rundquist, Donald IV-47 Sun, Xudong II-1
Sun, Yonghua I-96, I-464
Serranti, Silvia IV-751 Sun, Yongxiang I-547, III-1
Shang, Huaping II-227 Sun, Zhiguo I-9
Shao, Xiuping I-401, I-456, II-496 Sun, Zhongwei II-329, II-374
Shao-Wen, Li II-425
She, Chundong I-131, IV-71 Tai, Haijiang IV-642, IV-650
Shen, Changjun IV-435 Tan, Feng II-479
Shen, Lifeng IV-720 Tan, Jinghe I-590
Shen, Tao IV-30, IV-592 Tan, Jingying III-347, III-445
Shen, Zuorui I-594 Tan, Yu-an I-68
Shi, Guoqing III-231 Tan, Zongkun IV-47
Shi, Liang II-124 Tang, Bin IV-89
Shi, Xiaoxia II-264, II-641 Tang, Chengwen IV-198
Shi, Yan III-20, III-29 Tang, Liang II-479
Shi, Yinxue III-367 Teng, Guanghui III-704
Shi, Yuanyuan I-614 Teng, Guifa II-365
Shi, Yuling III-289 Teng, Yun II-682
Shi, Zhou II-71
Shu, Xiaoping IV-521 Wan, ChangZhao III-222
Si, Yongsheng I-138 Wan, Peng I-25, I-195
Song, Mingyu III-106 Wan, Shubo III-146
Song, Qin I-125 Wan, ShuJing III-403
Song, Xiaoqiang III-322 Wang, Bai II-682
Song, Xiaoyu I-296 Wang, Baoqing II-441
Song, Yunliang III-123 Wang, Buyu I-487, I-526
Song, Zhenghe III-257 Wang, Changsheng II-30
Steele, Mark IV-47 Wang, Cheng III-66, III-84
Su, Xiaolu I-41 Wang, Chun II-345, II-567
Su, Yuan I-227, I-335 Wang, Dong III-592
Sui, Xueyan II-691 Wang, Dongqing I-487
Sun, Chao III-36 Wang, Fang IV-691
Sun, Chengli IV-8 Wang, Fang-Yong IV-16
Sun, Fa-Xiong IV-450 Wang, Fangzhou III-165
Sun, Guojun I-390, II-551, III-357 Wang, Fei III-198
Sun, Jiang I-563 Wang, Fengxin II-185
Sun, Jinping III-403, III-452 Wang, Fuxiang III-563
Sun, Jinying II-441 Wang, Haiguang I-582
Sun, Kaimeng II-218 Wang, Haiou I-131, III-231, IV-71
Sun, Li III-198 Wang, Hongbin I-35, II-561
Sun, Ming IV-39 Wang, Jian I-62, II-415, III-113
Sun, Nan II-465 Wang, Jianqin I-119
 Author Index 751

Wang, Jihua I-282, I-290, I-563, II-83, Wang, Zhaopeng I-576

II-525 Wang, Zhenzhi III-46, III-682
Wang, Jing III-249 Wang, Zhiwei IV-116
Wang, Jinhua IV-376 Wang, Zhongyi III-289
Wang, Jinxing III-379, III-620, IV-710 Wang, Zilong III-419
Wang, Junfeng I-131, IV-71 Wei, Chaofu III-512
Wang, Junqiang II-706, IV-592 Wei, Enzhu III-249
Wang, Kaili I-643 Wei, Lin III-563
Wang, Kaiyi I-76, III-46, III-682, Wei, Qingfeng III-638, III-672
III-696 Wei, Xinhua II-607
Wang, Ke-Ru IV-16 Wei, Xiufang II-441
Wang, Lianzhi IV-629 Wei, Yaoguang IV-642, IV-650
Wang, Li-jun III-99 Wei, Yong III-106
Wang, Ling II-290 Wen, Nannan IV-659
Wang, Lingyan I-155 Wu, Chaohui I-275, I-711, IV-575
Wang, Pu III-491 Wu, Dake II-166
Wang, Qiang III-269 Wu, Dan IV-390
Wang, Qing III-347, III-445 Wu, Ding-Feng I-62, III-113
Wang, Qingchun III-532 Wu, Dongsheng IV-382, IV-521
Wang, Qiong IV-16 Wu, Hongchao I-576, I-590
Wang, Ruijuan I-374 Wu, Honggan I-304
Wang, Sangen II-166 Wu, Huarui III-661, IV-583
Wang, Shengfeng III-428 Wu, Jiajiao III-563
Wang, Shicong III-473 Wu, Jingzhu II-317
Wang, Shufeng I-76, III-696 Wu, Qingping IV-89
Wang, Shushan III-123 Wu, Qiulan I-547, III-1
Wang, Shuwen IV-616 Wu, Quan III-198
Wang, Shuyan I-110 Wu, Wenbiao III-75
Wang, Susheng I-359 Wu, Xiaoying II-465
Wang, Wei I-96, I-464, I-600, IV-78, Wu, Yali I-691
IV-184, IV-246 Wu, Yongchang II-264
Wang, Wensheng I-9, I-149, I-203, I-353 Wu, Zhigang III-572
Wang, Xi II-567
Wang, Xiangyou I-16, I-472, II-158, Xi, Junmei IV-237
II-531 Xi, Lei I-437, III-269
Wang, Xiao IV-467, IV-528 Xia, Hui I-9
Wang, Xiaojun II-392 Xia, Junfang II-667
Wang, Xiaoli II-623 Xia, Lianming II-158, II-531
Wang, Xihua III-36 Xia, Xiaobin IV-8
Wang, Xin I-381 Xiang, Ling I-290, II-234
Wang, Xingxing III-20 Xiang, Quanli I-267, I-428
Wang, Xinzhong II-567 Xiang, Xinjian I-495
Wang, Xu IV-134 Xiao, Chun-Hua IV-16
Wang, Xuan III-512 Xie, Dandan II-517
Wang, Yanan III-92 Xie, Deti III-512
Wang, Yang II-329, II-374 Xie, Fengyun IV-443
Wang, Yangqiu II-491 Xie, Nengfu I-149, I-203, I-353
Wang, Yanlin IV-514 Xie, Rui-Zhi IV-16
Wang, Yuanhong III-106 Xie, Sanmao IV-314
Wang, Yunsheng I-374, II-434, III-222 Xie, Zuqing I-555
752 Author Index

Xin, Xiaoping I-250, II-658, IV-134 Yang, Fengping IV-177, IV-279

Xing, Qirong IV-177 Yang, Guixia I-250, II-658, IV-134
Xing, Yajuan I-487 Yang, Hao III-280
Xing, Zhen IV-435 Yang, Huiying II-185
Xiong, Bangshu IV-8 Yang, Jianhua II-131
Xiong, Benhai III-710 Yang, Jing I-227, I-335
Xiong, Guangyao IV-514 Yang, Juan I-374, III-222, III-269
Xiong, Guo-Liang IV-410 Yang, Le I-569, II-198
Xiong, Jinhui I-110 Yang, Liang III-710
Xiong, Shuping I-614, III-269 Yang, Linnan I-417
Xu, Beili IV-521 Yang, Min III-123
Xu, Binshi IV-231 Yang, Minghao III-367
Xu, Chunying III-92 Yang, Peiling I-155
Xu, Fuhou II-597 Yang, Ping III-413
Xu, Hongmei I-656, I-698 Yang, Po IV-504
Xu, Jian I-367 Yang, Sen II-551, III-357
Xu, Jianxin III-428 Yang, Shuqin III-428
Xu, Li III-473 Yang, Tao III-298, III-322, III-413,
Xu, Liming II-505 III-440
Xu, Ling I-227 Yang, Wenzhu IV-701, IV-710
Xu, Lunhui IV-321 Yang, Xiaodong III-280
Xu, Shenghang IV-108 Yang, Xiaohui II-351
Xu, Shipu II-434, III-222 Yang, Xiaorong I-149, I-203, I-353
Xu, Xianfeng IV-63 Yang, Xiaoxia II-700, III-1, III-41
Xu, XiangBin IV-460, IV-486 Yang, Xin I-275, I-711, IV-575
Xu, Xiaoli IV-78 Yang, Xiuqing II-18, II-491
Xu, Xin I-437, II-357 Yang, Yafei II-650
Xu, Xingang I-296, III-280 Yang, Yang III-316, III-375, IV-398
Xu, Yizong I-210 Yang, Yi I-267, I-428
Xue, Fengchang IV-623 Yang, Yibo II-517
Xue, Heru I-502, II-252 Yang, Ying I-119
Xue, Long IV-403, IV-467, IV-528 Yang, Yong I-35, I-110, II-561,
Xue, Yan I-219 III-598
Xue, Yandong I-155 Yang, Yongsheng III-464
Yang, Yujian III-146
Yan, Congcong I-472 Yang, Yushu II-322
Yan, Hua III-75 Yao, Jie II-365
Yan, Jianwu IV-237 Yao, Shan I-367
Yan, Junyong IV-147 Yao, Zhenxuan II-706
Yan, Lin II-633 Ye, Baoying III-173
Yan, Manfu I-87, I-343 Ye, Fan IV-321
Yan, Qin III-452 Ye, Hairong II-491
Yan, Xiaomei III-620 Ye, Shengfeng III-592
Yan, YinFa IV-345 Yin, Jinju IV-494
Yan, Yuchun IV-134 Yin, Zhongdong II-538
Yane, Duan II-274 Ying, Yibin I-729, I-737
Yang, Chao IV-116 Yong, Wang II-650
Yang, Deyong I-555, II-496 You-Hua, Zhang II-425
Yang, Fei III-327 Yu, Feng II-615
Yang, Feng I-76, III-46, III-682, III-696 Yu, Ligen III-704

Yuan, Haibo III-20, III-29
Yuan, Jun IV-294
Yuan, Junjing III-341
Yuan, Shengfa I-656, IV-198
Yuan, Tao II-434, II-587
Yuan, Xiaoqing IV-727, IV-742
Yuan, Xue III-304, III-483
Yuchuan, Yang IV-563
Yue, E. I-476
Zang, Yu III-257
Zang, Zhiyuan I-594
Zejian, Lei I-608
Zeng, Fanjiang I-321
Zeng, Qingtian I-203
Zeng, Yanwei II-381, II-392
Zeng, Yi III-241
Zeng, Zhixuan II-525
Zha, Xiaojing IV-382, IV-521
Zhang, Baihua III-525
Zhang, Baohui IV-134
Zhang, Baojun II-441
Zhang, Benhua I-428
Zhang, Changli IV-616
Zhang, Chengming III-390, III-403,
III-452
Zhang, Chi I-103
Zhang, Chunlei II-441
Zhang, Chunmei III-29
Zhang, Chunqing III-620
Zhang, Dalei III-403
Zhang, Dongxing III-604
Zhang, Fan II-365
Zhang, Feng III-413
Zhang, Guoliang I-594
Zhang, Haihong I-721, II-118
Zhang, Hailiang II-1
Zhang, Hao I-437, II-357
Zhang, Haokun I-502
Zhang, Hong I-96, I-464, I-539
Zhang, Hongbin I-250, II-658, IV-134
Zhang, Jian I-623, III-341, III-656,
IV-474, IV-537
Zhang, Jianhang I-343
Zhang, Jianhua III-304, III-483
Zhang, Jing I-381, I-698
Zhang, Jingjing I-623, III-656
Zhang, Jinheng II-706, IV-592
Zhang, Jishuai II-650
Zhang, Juan II-357
Author Index 753
Zhang, Jun IV-246
Zhang, Junfeng I-56, II-615, III-638,
III-672
Zhang, Junxiong II-102
Zhang, Kai II-23
Zhang, Lei IV-96
Zhang, Li II-357
Zhang, Liang II-716
Zhang, Lihua III-554
Zhang, Limin I-417
Zhang, Lingxian IV-672, IV-680
Zhang, Lingzi IV-691
Zhang, Longlong III-269
Zhang, Mei III-186
Zhang, Min I-569, II-198
Zhang, Mingfei IV-629
Zhang, Na I-367
Zhang, Ping IV-206
Zhang, Qing I-343
Zhang, Qingfeng II-158, II-531
Zhang, Rentian III-554
Zhang, Runqing II-339
Zhang, Shujuan I-721, II-118
Zhang, Shuyuan I-519
Zhang, Tingting II-400, II-579
Zhang, Tongda II-597
Zhang, Wei II-615
Zhang, Xiandi I-76, III-46, III-682,
III-696
Zhang, Xiaodong II-53, II-691
Zhang, Xiaojing II-491
Zhang, Xiaolan IV-480, IV-537
Zhang, Xiaoyan III-146
Zhang, Xin III-66, III-75, IV-435,
IV-701, IV-710
Zhang, Xu I-304
Zhang, Xuelan I-68
Zhang, Yang III-316, III-375
Zhang, Yanrong II-139
Zhang, Yaoli II-641
Zhang, Yu IV-221
Zhang, Yue I-227
Zhang, Yunhe III-66
Zhang, Yuou I-446
Zhang, Yuxiang II-597
Zhang, Zhen I-359
Zhao, Chunjiang I-76, III-580
Zhao, Dongjie III-289
Zhao, Dongmei III-473
Zhao, Fukuan I-125
754 Author Index

Zhao, Hu II-166 Zhou, Guo-Min I-62, II-300, II-623,

Zhao, Huamin I-721 III-113, III-138
Zhao, Huizhong I-569, II-198 Zhou, Huamao III-613
Zhao, Jianshe III-598 Zhou, Huilan IV-555
Zhao, JiChun II-615 Zhou, Ji-Hui IV-443, IV-450
Zhao, Jingyin I-374, II-434, II-587 Zhou, Lianqing II-71
Zhao, Jingying III-222 Zhou, Liying III-672
Zhao, Lanying IV-294 Zhou, Mingyao I-359
Zhao, Liu I-290, II-83, II-234 Zhou, Nan III-473
Zhao, Longzhi IV-474, IV-480, Zhou, Wei IV-246
IV-514, IV-537 Zhou, Weihong III-357
Zhao, Mingjuan IV-480, IV-537 Zhou, XinJian IV-486
Zhao, Peng I-614 Zhou, Zexiang I-68
Zhao, Suolao II-441 Zhou, Zhisheng II-309
Zhao, Ting II-252 Zhou, Zhu I-600, IV-246
Zhao, Wei I-155 Zhu, Chuanbao II-441
Zhao, Wen IV-333 Zhu, Dawei II-441
Zhao, Wenlong I-390 Zhu, Dazhou I-563, III-84, III-92
Zhao, Wenping I-16 Zhu, Dongnan I-526
Zhao, Xiaoming I-669 Zhu, Fengmei IV-355
Zhao, Yanqing IV-398 Zhu, Haiyan III-14
Zhao, Yanru I-721
Zhu, Huaji III-661, IV-583
Zhao, Yujun II-561
Zhu, Jianhua III-146
Zhao, Yuling II-517
Zhu, Jie IV-410
Zhao, Zhiyong II-177
Zhu, Juanuan II-441
Zheng, Guang I-437
Zhu, Qixin IV-279
Zheng, Huaiguo I-56
Zhu, Shiping II-633
Zheng, Huoguo III-158, III-179, III-648
Zhu, Wei IV-486
Zheng, Lihua III-473
Zhu, Wenquan I-681
Zheng, Meizhu IV-514
Zheng, Wengang III-66, III-75, IV-435 Zhu, Yan I-446, II-479, III-186
Zheng, Wenxiu III-379 Zhu, YePing II-110
Zheng, Yanxia I-519, II-177, II-473 Zhu, Yeping I-219, I-261, I-476
Zheng, Youfei I-381 Zhu, Youyong I-227, I-335
Zheng, Yuelan II-607 Zhu, Yuwei II-400, II-579
Zheng, Yujun I-125 Zhu, Zhenlin II-691
Zheng, Zhihong II-23 Zhu, Zhongkui IV-206
Zhong, Guangrong III-231 Zhu, Zhongxiang III-257
Zhong, Mingdong IV-167 Zhuang, Weidong II-345, II-567
Zhong, Shiquan I-275, I-711, Zong, Li I-656, I-698
IV-575 Zong, Wangyuan I-96, I-464
Zhong, Zhiyou I-569, II-198 Zou, Qiang IV-124
Zhou, Chao III-613, IV-368 Zude, Manuela III-84
Zhou, Dongsheng III-298 Zuo, Changqing II-538
Zhou, Ermin II-139 Zuo, Tingting II-131
Zhou, Fengqi IV-89 Zuo, Yanjun I-1, I-532