The feasibility of terahertz (THz) spectroscopy as a potential pesticide residue analytical tool was evaluated by using cis-permethrin as the test compound. THz spectra were measured by fourier-transform spectroscope at the THz region, frequency range from 20 to 400 cm^-1. Freeze-drying was effective to remove interference of water from samples. The absorption wave numbers of cis-permethrin were similar with or without the presence of biological matrix such as spinach, and other pesticide compound such as fludioxonil. The clay and emulsifier in the commercial formulation Adion,interfered with the absorption of cis-permethrin. Further works to determine the sensitivity and detection limit of the THz methodology are in progress.

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Sunagoke moss is one of the plant products that are cultivated in a plant factory. One of the primary determinants of moss growth is water availability. The present work attempts to apply precision irrigation system using machine vision in plant factories. The specific objective was to evaluate the ability of bio-inspired approaches as pre-treatment algorithm of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for determining water content of moss. The results showed that ANN was capable for predicting water content of moss using RGB intensities, and then some bio-inspired approaches such as Honey Bees Mating Optimization (HBMO), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), Genetic Algorithms (GAs), Simulated Annealing (SA) and Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization (DPSO) were capable of optimizing the feature selection process.

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Food waste and poultry manure mixes inoculated with effective microorganisms (EM) were composted by a rotating drum composter under initial moisture conditions of 63-74% (w.b). Composting was performed for 24 hrs using steam from a firewood boiler (450MJ/hr) which heated the composting mass in order to maintain the temperature of the compost between 60 and 80°C. Parameters monitored over this period included the nutrient content, heavy metal content, maturity and stability indices etc. Changes in pH, moisture content, EC (electrical conductivity), NaCl and C/N during composting were consistent with those generally observed in ordinary composting systems. The parameters were influenced by the feedstock materials but not affected by inoculation with EM. The C/N ratios and moisture content of the composts decreased with the composting time. The NaCl content of the food waste compost increased with composting time but was less than 1.0% (d.b). For the finished food waste compost, the compost stability index, based on oxygen uptakes, was less than 0.3 mg/ g VS· hr and the compost maturity index, based on seed germination rates, was greater than 80%. The finished food waste compost could be utilized for land improvement whereas that using food waste amended with poultry manure could not be utilized.

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The causes for the differences in compost application rate in a field using two types of manure spreaders are investigated and clarified by measuring the travel tracks of the manure spreaders using a RTK-GPS system. The travel speed of each application pass was not constant, and the variation ranged from 0.9-1.6 m/s. The standard deviation of an individual track distance did not significantly change. However, there was a maximum change of 2.5 m between each track distance in the test field. The results show the differences in compost application rate are due to the changes in travel speeds and track distances.

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Using a machine vision with backlighting LEDs, a tomato-seedling grading and sorting algorithm was developed for a fully automatic grafting robot. A UXGA camera, a blue color backlighting device and light filtering devices were selected to acquire seedling images. The developed algorithm was used to determine the bending, nodes of leaves and stem diameter of seedlings from their images and then to grade and sort them as the initial task of the grafting robot. Results showed that the sorting success rate was 97% and the rest 3% was failed as the target portions of the images of seedlings were covered by irregular arrangement or bended leaves from all sides.

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The relationship between serum vitamin A level and tapetum reflection was investigated using ultraviolet imaging. The tapetum was obtained from eyes of slaughtered cattle in which the serum vitamin A level was below 50 IU/dl. The tapetum reflection was examined in the tapetum lucidum, tapetum nigrum, and optic disc. For each part, the tapetum reflection decreased with increasing serum vitamin A level. A high tapetum reflection value might represent the bleached tapetum symptom that occurs because of the low serum vitamin A level.

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