All issues
Volume 43 (2008)
- Issue 4 Pages 165-
- Issue 3 Pages 117-
- Issue 2 Pages 53-
- Issue 1 Pages 1-
Volume 43, Issue 3
Displaying 1-5 of 5 articles from this issue
- |<
- <
- 1
- >
- >|
Original Papers
-
Akira AKASE, Hiroshi SUZUKI, Hideharu HONMA, Kazuhiro BIZEN2008 Volume 43 Issue 3 Pages 117-125
Published: September 25, 2008
Released on J-STAGE: March 31, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSMechanical apple harvesting experiments were conducted using a backpack shaker and a tractor-mounted shaker. The shaken fruits were collected by a 2.7m by 2.7m catching frame laid on the ground. The resistance force required to remove a fruit from its bearing shoot and the storability of harvested fruits were investigated. The main results were as follows :
(1) When a fruit was pulled perpendicular to the peduncle, the removal force was 1/5 of that when pulled parallel to it. All fruits pulled perpendicularly retained their peduncles.
(2) In the vibration test, frequencies of at least 6.7, 5.0, 3.3, and 3.3Hz were needed in amplitudes of 1, 2, 3, and 4cm respectively in order to shake off apples from the bearing shoots within 3 seconds.
(3) The percentage of fruits removed from a limb from the point of attachment of the shaker clamp to the tip was 90%. The catching frame collected nearly 100% of the shaken fruits.
(4) The amplitude of limb movement produced by the backpack shaker was 1.4 to 3.3cm and that by the tractor-mounted shaker was 3.8 to 3.9cm.
(5) The shaker-harvested fruits had bruises, cuts and punctures. Sixty% of the fruits showed no skin damage after storage for 2.5 months.
(6) Fruits dropped from a height of 2m onto urethane foam 10cm thick were not damaged.View full abstractDownload PDF (773K) -
Naoki SAKAI, Kumi NEZU, Hisayoshi HAYASHI2008 Volume 43 Issue 3 Pages 127-134
Published: September 25, 2008
Released on J-STAGE: March 31, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSTo investigate the additional profits by an introduced complexity of cropping into rice monoculturing at an usual paddy field, the serial experiments were carried out in 2004.
1) In the experiment to confirm the possibility of using water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes, WH) as green manure, we selected the two experimental factors which were nitrogen applied by basal chemical fertilizer and nitrogen applied by WH grown at the previous cropping. Rice yield reduced with an increment of applied quantity of WH at 0gN/m2, but rice yield at 2.5gN/m2 (1/2 plot) were almost as same as 5.0gN/m2 at the conventional plot, so we could estimate the effect of applied fertilizer level on rice yield. It was also estimated to be nitrogen starvation in the soil.
2) In the experiment to confirm the possibility of distribution to rice growth preferentially by the side dressing and controlled release fertilizer in place of uniform application of fertilizer to top soil with the shift of transplanting time between rice and WH, it was not observed the effects of chemical fertilizer type and co-existence of WH on preferential growth of rice.
3) In the experiment to confirm the reduction of methane production from a paddy field by an introduction of co-existence crop, differences between plots were observed in methane fluxes and Eh values, but the difference of total methane production during growing season was not significant among plots and the difference between treatment plots and conventional plots.
4) It was estimated that competition between rice and WH was happened at some severe conditions only. In the future studies, it is important to collect more fundamental data on precise decomposition rate of WH in soil and maintenance at an optimum nutritional condition to solve a nitrogen starvation at the various practical cases.View full abstractDownload PDF (892K)
Research Papers
-
Kiyoshi TAJIMA, Junya TATSUNO, Masayoshi KATO, Yutaka SASAKI, Heita KA ...2008 Volume 43 Issue 3 Pages 135-141
Published: September 25, 2008
Released on J-STAGE: March 31, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSWe propose a photovoltaic powered farming robot system that consists of a delivery vehicle and a working vehicle. The proposed system is designed based on a newly proposed farming method called shaft tillage cultivation. As such, we have developed two automatic vehicles, as well as a 2-D localization method for the positioning of the working vehicle. In addition, we have developed an attachment for shaft tillage and transplanting, which is derived from commercially available transplanting machines. In this paper, we introduce the mechanism and control method of the developed attachment. In addition, we experimentally examined the transplanting performance and measured power consumption. In the transplanting experiment, we found that approximately 96% of seedlings were automatically transplanted when using developed attachment. Total power consumption for one cycle was found to be approximately 1kJ, two-thirds of which was consumed during shaft tillage. Although the fundamental performance of the developed attachment can be predicted based on these experimental results, several problems need to be solved before a fully automatic system can be constructed. Specifically, sensing functions for judging whether seedlings have been extracted from the cell tray as well as the budding condition of seedlings in the cell tray, and a method for examining the power consumption associated with shaft tillage cultivation of a test field covered with live weeds need to be implemented.View full abstractDownload PDF (891K) -
Tetsuro KAWASAKI, Youko MORISIGE, Eiji SUGIYAMA, Hirosi KIMURA, Hideki ...2008 Volume 43 Issue 3 Pages 143-149
Published: September 25, 2008
Released on J-STAGE: March 31, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSIn the paper, the effects of amount of seedlings which are picked off from seedling mat by rice planter and enlargement of hill distance on growth and yield of paddy rice were investigated for the case of 30cm row distance, and the possibility of reduction of the number of nursery box was discussed.
As the results, in a general hill distance, no effects on the yield were found even if amount of seedlings picked off from seedling mat by rice planter was the minimum. And the number of nursery box was reduced to less than 60%.
Still, if we accept a little decrease in yield or we do supplemental planting in the culture of a good transplanting season, the number of nursery box is reduced to less than 30% in culture by enlargement of hill distance and reduction of amount of seedlings picked off from seedling mat by rice planter.View full abstractDownload PDF (519K) -
Kota MOTOBAYASHI, Tomoyuki YUKAWA2008 Volume 43 Issue 3 Pages 151-158
Published: September 25, 2008
Released on J-STAGE: March 31, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSCompared to other crops, such as wheat, barley and soybeans, rice whole-crop-silage (WCS) conserves the functionality of paddy fields such as the irrigation systems and soil conditions, and it can also provide high-quality roughage for cattle feed. The production of rice WCS has thus been increasing significantly in Japan. Spraying a solution of lactic acid bacilli onto the rice plants prior to their being ensiled improves the fermentation and preserves the quality of wrapped silage. However, a device for spraying such a solution with high efficiency and high controllability has not been available on the market.
We have developed a lactic acid bacillus sprayer for use with a rice whole-crop harvester. It has a simple control system with three sensors and a simple control circuit for automatically switching the spraying on and off. This automatic control stops the spraying whenever the machine is not processing rice plants, so solution wastage is reduced. Moreover, it eliminates the troublesome manual switching operation. Work time simulation and field-testing showed that the amount of lactic acid bacilli needed was reduced by about 37%.View full abstractDownload PDF (859K)
- |<
- <
- 1
- >
- >|