The purpose of this study is to detect damaged rice grains, which are unhulled and internally damaged by stinkbugs, using an image processing system. The experimental apparatus mainly consists of a multi-spectral camera, fiber-optic light sources, plane-emission light sources, sample plate and personal computer. More specifically, the transmitted light images of 50 grains on the sample plate were generated when the grains were illuminated from the back of the sample plate. Furthermore, while the sample plate was fixed, the light sources were changed over to the fiber-optic light sources irradiating the grains equally from four corners on the upper side of the sample plate. In succession, the raw grains were hulled and visually confirmed to see if any damage had been caused by stinkbugs. The images were processed in the methods using binary conversion processing, contraction processing and mask operation. In this regard, the mean gray level of each normal grain and the number of pixels within the damaged parts of grains were obtained to draw a scatter chart from which the linear discriminant function was derived. As a result, the undamaged grains and stinkbug-damaged grains were discriminated from each other. It was found that the total discrimination rate was 94.6 percent. In conclusion, the possibility of detecting stinkbug-damaged grains using raw unhulled grains can be suggested when the image processing algorithm constructed during this research comes into use.

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The purpose of this study was to examine the features of consumer decision process to discuss the advertising communication strategies of small cheese factories. We applied theoretical framework of brand and advertising research to analyze the feature of consumer awareness and the relation between consumer involvement and information search for small factory-made cheese, using consumer survey. The analytical results are as follows. 1) Consumer awareness of small factory-made cheese almost depends on recognition, and nearly half of those are in the case of impulse buying that category-need is driven by recognition. Therefore, the advertising executions for consumer awareness should show the name and the package associated with the context of target category-need, and the package should be shown to be recognizable and attractive in store display. 2) Before and at point-of-purchase, consumer information search related to attitude formation is based on food-safety involvement, especially cognitive one. By contraries, after point-of-purchase affective product-quality involvement drives consumer information search. The result suggests that the advertising communication for attitude formation should provide the persuasive information to increase consumer confidence in food safety before and at point-of-purchase, and should include emotional messages tailored to consumers' value and lifestyle after point-of-purchase.

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The Kansei engineering is a method to translate Kansei and images of human being into physical factors of design in order to design products, environment, etc. which meet the Kansei. Utilizing this technology is considered to be significant in the fields of food or environment in future with the following reasons: if Kansei can be comprehended, it will be possible for agricultural or food products that are highly evaluated by consumers to be designed, developed, and evaluated. Likewise, for comfortable room space, city and rural landscape with high amenity effects to be constructed. So far we have focused on the relation between facial expression and Kansei, and we have specified significant face nodes and constructed the 2-dimensional facial expression - Kansei estimation system using degree of similarity and the nearest neighbor rule. This system has implied the possibility that Kansei is presumable from expression of the face. In this paper, extending from 2-dimensional, we constructed the 3-dimensional facial expression - Kansei estimation system using stereovision and made an evaluation. When we evaluated for the object of positive Kansei, negative Kansei, and surprise, we obtained good results particularly for the positive Kansei and negative Kansei. As for surprise, the discernment result was lower than the other two Kansei because of individual differences, expressional differences of Kansei, or etc. But we consider that this system indicates the possibility of Kansei to be estimated.

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This study had developed a raster-based tool in order to automate the soil erosion vulnerability assessment. The tool that designed based on the empirical USLE (Wischmeier and Smith, 1978) was built using various available GIS geoprocessing tools. The data used in this study were prepared using Erdas Imagine and ArcGIS softwares. The cluster Municipalities of Real, Infanta and General Nakar (REINA), Quezon, Philippines were selected as study area as it was previously hit by strong typhoon that led to severe landslide and deluge in 2004. Damages to lives and properties were remarkably the biggest in the history of these Municipalities. Using the raster-based tool, erosion vulnerability was assessed. The results were categorized into six (6) classes. It showed that None to slight covers 33.42% of the total area while Very severe ranked second with 23.83%. Other categories were Moderate with (2.26%), High (14.05%), Very high (18.80%) and Severe (7.63%) respectively. Higher percentage of None to slight can be justified by the fact that the area is still having 47% dense vegetation. However, high percentage of Very severe was attributed to presence of hundreds of bare/eroded areas in the mountain created by landslide due to heavy rain during a disaster in 2004. The developed tool is believed to be useful in the current situation wherein the country is on the process of nationwide hazard mapping.

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The web-based food risk communications system was developed such that it could be accessed through cellular phones. The effectiveness of the system and direction of its improvement were examined on the basis of a questionnaire survey. Respondents were requested to access the system through their cellular phones, browse the web pages containing the information regarding agricultural chemicals, and then write down their evaluation of both-the information and the system-on their questionnaires. Many of them understood the information regarding agricultural chemicals and expressed the effectiveness of the system. However, the results revealed the existence of pecuniary and psychological barriers in browsing the web for information on food safety. The extent of incentives that should be provided in order to help users overcome such barriers has been designated as a topic for further studies.

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In order to reduce the administrative load on farm management for farmers who manage many fields, we are developing a work planning and management support system that uses Geographic Information System (GIS)-compatible field maps. We developed software to create a GIS-compatible field map as an indispensable element of this system. The field map is created from the background figure containing raster image data and a field shape figure containing vector data. Using the MapObjectsLT2.0 component, which is a product of ESRI Corporation and free from runtime licensing fees, we were able to decrease the time required for development. It was used to display the field map and create field shape data. By developing an additional shape support class for this component, we made this software GIS compatible. The software is under free distribution by Web release. As we receive feedback from users following Web release, we will add new functions and that will make the software even more useful to farmers.

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Japanese wheat price did not reflect the wheat quality until the abolition of the government control, resulting in the excess supply of unfavorable wheat for millers and consumers. The introduction of price bidding system in 2000 resulted to a wide price gap between varieties. Thus, the objective of this paper is to find the factors causing this gap that helps breeders and farmers set up breeding targets and choose a variety. Applying hedonic model to wheat quality data, we obtain the marginal implicit values of protein content, ash content, color, weight and amylo. Results show that hard wheat and protein content explain much of price gap, suggesting that hard wheat with high protein content is the best breeding target to maximize farmers' benefit.

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The combination of global warming, economic development, increasing population, and so on gives rise to the uncertainty and risk in supply and demand of world grain market. As a result of that, the world has suffered increasing the price of grains in recent years. The world market structure of grain can be summarized as a few exporters and many importers. It is necessary to test if this structure is monopolistic or not. If the market is dominated by some exporters, food security will be fragile in the grain import countries. Not only self-sufficiency rate but also information on the market situations becomes important to assess food security. Food security can be understood by three concepts of availability, affordability and utilization. In this study, A new food security index is developed by considering information on the market situations-exporters' market power and importer loyalty in the concept of affordability which did not include in the previous study. Importer loyalty and market power are estimated by Markov process model and residual demand elasticity model, respectively. Interpreting the developed indices will be helpful for policy-maker to understand the national food security more precisely.

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