In agriculture, it is important for reaching at high productivity to monitor field information regarding environment conditions, growth stages of crops and farm operations. We have developed a “Field Server” (compact monitoring robot which is equipped with sensors, a Web server, a wireless LAN access-point, a data acquisition system and high-resolution digital cameras) for easy installation and remote operation in any field; and we have constructed a field monitoring system which can monitor field information in real-time by installing a massive number of Field Servers within a field.
In the field monitoring system, we can monitor field information, and control equipment via a Web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer, Netscape). We attempted to monitor field information by actually installing Field Servers at various sites within a field, and showed that the field monitoring system could be constructed easily and economically with Field Servers. In this system, Field Servers are not only monitoring robots but also infrastructure, that will be needed for future kinds of agriculture, so further utilization of the field monitoring system is expected.

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To increase the agricultural content available through the Internet, we discuss applying XML Web Services as a method of integrating distributed legacy models in stand-alone machines. First, we discuss the advantages of XML Web Services in comparison with other similar Web extension methods. Next, we describe a practical experiment in which we applied XML Web Service to a legacy model, which was a standard program running under the command prompt of Windows NT/2000/XP and had no network access, in order to examine the capability of XML Web Service to convert legacy models into modern ones fitting the Internet environment. We implemented a web application and an XML Web Service application wrapping the functions of the program without modifying it. Though this practical implementation, we confirmed the capability of XML Web Services as a method of integrating distributed legacy models.

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Fluorescence spectrometry is a suitable method to non-destructively and remotely obtain information on the pigments, cell structure and physiological functions of plant leaves. In this study, the excitation-emission matrices of water-stressed spinach leaves in the dark were measured by a 3-D fluorescence spectrophotometer, and changes with time of these matrices were analyzed. Independently of the excitation wavelength, local maximum fluorescence intensities were captured at 450nm, 680nm, and 725 nm (F450, F680, and F725, respectively). F450/F680 and F450/F725 drastically changed with decreasing relative water content in the early stage of the water-deficit process. F450 hardly changed during the water-stressed treatment, which implied UV-defensible pigments were not accumulated in the dark. On the other hand, at an early stage of the water-deficit process, F680 and F725 appreciably decreased, and at that time, chlorophyll concentration increased, which implied chlorophyll contents in the measurement area were increased by the shrinkage of leaves, and fluorescence yield accordingly decreased. In the latter stage of the water-deficit process, F680 and F725 appreciably increased, which implied the photosynthetic reaction process was damaged by the extent of the water-deficit. As the excitation wavelength was shorter, F450/F680 and F450/F725 changed more extensively because F680 and F725 were smaller and F450 was larger. These results showed F450/F680 and F450/F725 excited by short-wavelength ultraviolet rays (for example, 330nm) were suitable for detecting changes of relative water content in spinach leaves.

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Recently, genetic algorithms (GAs) have received a lot of attention because of their easy-to-use features for solving many engineering problems. They are capable of locating a good approximation in extremely large search spaces with a reasonable amount of computational effort. In this study, we have developed DNA algorithms (DNAAs). The distinction between GAs and DNAAs comes from the fact that GAs take into account only exons whereas DNAAs are concerned about not only exons but also introns. Exons are parts of genes embedded in DNA. Introns are the segments of DNA remaining after the removal of genes. It is said that exons do not contain any information for protein synthesis. It speculated that introns might have some hidden roles. If all parts of DNA had important information, mutations or mal-duplication would be expected to cause fatal problems. It can be hypothesized that introns, therefore, serve as protection for exons against mutations. On basis of this hypothesis, we investigated the role of introns by using an artificial life. Then a string search problem and a knapsack problem were solved by DNAAs in order to evaluate performance of DNAAs. DNAAs performed robustly even under a fairly high ratio of mutation. It was also found that more introns were accumulated near exons whose role seemed more important than other exons.

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The market economy is affected by the development of electronic commerce that now is progressing in cyber space. The paradigm of the world economic system is changing, and old concepts and structures in agricultural industry are also changing because of information technology and new physical distribution systems. Both producers and consumers can avail themselves of various kind of market information through the Internet; producers can decrease marketing costs through this distribution channel revolution and agriculture can take advantage of the many opportunities in e-business. This electronic commerce has been introduced in the agricultural sector and has great potential. The purpose of this study is to examine the current trends and strategies of electronic commerce in Korean agriculture, which is developing very rapidly under the digital economy.

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