The use of geographic information systems (GISs) has become popular in many sectors, including agriculture. A GIS requires map data, which need to be purchased in most cases. In 2008, the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan began to publish fundamental geospatial data (FGD) on the Internet. The data are free to use, but not easy to use, because users must extract the area they need and convert the data to their own GIS format. To resolve this problem, we developed a service to map areas requested by users from the FGD (1 : 25,000). This service accepts requests from desktop GISs via the Internet and returns images based on the Web Map Service protocol. Because most GISs can work as Web Map Service clients, many GIS users can now download maps of Japan without having to extract or convert the FGD. In addition, under some conditions, Web applications using this service can publish maps without seeking permission from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan. The images provided by the service are suitable as simple background layers because the service does not use the more detailed 1 : 2,500 FGD.

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Japanese gentian (Gentiana triflora var. japonica) is one of the most important floriculture crops grown in Iwate Prefecture; it is generally grown for cut flowers. Because the flowers gradually deteriorate after harvest, along with the commercial value, the growth stage of harvested flowers could be essential information for scheduling storage and transport so as to maintain the commercial value for as long as possible. However, to date, no practical technique has been developed to discriminate the growth stages. By examining the corollas of the flowers destructively by spectroradiometer, we found that the spectral radiance of older samples was lower than that of younger samples at wavelengths between 700 and 900 nm. However, for practical application of this information, an inexpensive, nondestructive technique is needed. So we attempted to distinguish the growth stage by measuring the pixel values of the corollas in far-red (720 nm) images with a new, low-cost imaging system. The pixel values decreased gradually and significantly with senescence of the flowers. Furthermore, a test of the technique's ability to discriminate younger from older samples showed fairly good performance. We discuss the suitability of the method and the cost performance of the imaging system.

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Japanese gentian (Gentiana triflora var. japonica) is one of the most important floriculture crops grown in Iwate Prefecture; it is grown mainly for cut flowers, but the flowers gradually deteriorate after harvest, and lose commercial value. To maintain the commercial value for as long as possible after harvest, various techniques for determining the growth stage of cut flowers have been studied. We previously reported that the spectral radiance of the corollas of older flowers was significantly lower than that of younger ones at wavelengths between 700 and 900 nm. We later reported that corollas of flowers that had just opened glittered significantly in the UV region when irradiated with UV light, and suggested that this glittering could be a useful guide for determining the growth stage of flowers. Because these studies did not examine the usefulness of information possibly contained in the luster of corollas, we developed a new, efficient, low-cost system to image luster by using a pair of polarizing filters, and propose a new method for quantifying luster as, for example, an index of smoothness. We then examined the relationship between this information and the growth stage of flowers. The index of smoothness showed a linear relationship with growth stage, and could distinguish fairly well between young flowers and old flowers.

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