We discussed the changes in quality parameters for carrot samples in three kinds of branching treatments, i.e., hot water (HW), microwave (MW), and microwave with covered plastic wrap (MWP). The ratio of weight loss after MWP was the largest in three treatments. The ΔE was more than 10 in each treatment. The residual ratios of β-carotene after HW, MW and MWP were 90.0, 85.8 and 87.1%, respectively. The ratio of decrease of L-ascorbic acid and potassium for HW treatment was 2 to 4 times larger than those for other treatments. The internal porosity increased and the hardness decreased by MWP treatment more than other treatments. The injured cell walls of samples for MWP were observed by the microstructure analysis.

The drying characteristics of rice gel were investigated at air temperatures of 40, 60, and 100°C, 10 %RH, with and without forced air flow. The effects of dehydration on color and restorability of dried rice gel were also evaluated. The higher temperature and forced air flow improved the drying rate. The forced air drying was effective at moisture content of the sample above 100%d.b. The drying mainly comprised in the falling-rate drying period. The temperature dependence of drying constant was described by an Arrhenius-type relationship. At around 100%d.b., a*- and L*-values of dried samples were boosted and dropped respectively, and adhesiveness decreased rapidly.

The effects of microwave blanching of zucchini on the required processing time and quality of the frozen product were investigated. Zucchinis were cut into cylinder shapes and blanched by microwave irradiation with or without wrapping and immersion in boiled water (conventional method). The reaction rate constants of POD (peroxidase) deactivation were 1.4×10^－1s^－1, 6.6×10^－2s^－1, and 8.6×10^－3s^－1, respectively, which means that microwave blanching of wrapped samples was achieved rapidly. The effects of this method were almost equal to the conventional method regarding quality-based factors of the weight and ascorbic acid content losses during blanching and drip loss after thawing. It was revealed that the required blanching time was reduced by microwave heating with wrapping.

In this paper, we developed a method to create road surface profiles to be used for a tractor driving simulator. We employed AR(AutoRegressive) model and Fourier transform surrogate method (FT surrogate method) for one-line road profile.

In order to maintain the correlation between right and left road profiles at the low spatial frequency region, we modified FT surrogate method so that the low frequency components of right and left road profiles are in-phase. We also suggested that one-sided Hanning window can be used to remove a gap at the edge of the generated road. As the developed algorithm is able to generate roads which satisfy ISO standard, it can be used for the tractor driving simulator

To enhance the pest control effectiveness of unmanned greenhouse pest control, a spraying method combined with electrostatic spraying and an air-assist technology is proposed. An air-assisted electrostatic sprayer is developed based on a basic test. The developed sprayer consists of an automatic traveling carriage that automatically reverses to backward travel spraying once it reaches the end of a ridge, an electrostatic spray head with a ring electrode, and an air assist portion with a compressed air discharge nozzle. An air-assisted electrostatic spraying test conducted on an isolated culture bed of melons resulted in 5 times increased chemical adhesion and 1.5 times higher pest preventive value compared to conventional manual spraying, verifying its effectiveness.

By combining electrostatic spraying and air-assisted technology, we developed an unmanned pesticide-spraying machine that achieved pest control performance at par with hand spraying. In the test environment, in which an actual machine was used for tomatoes and cucumbers, the effect of pest control was better than that obtained through hand spraying even after reducing spray volume by 20%. In field verification tests for high-wire cultivation of tomatoes, the adhesion performance of the developed machine was better than that of a common machine even after reducing spray volume by half to stabilize the actual machine run. However, in case of soil cultivation, where the road surface was uneven, the adhesion performance was worse than that of common hand spraying because a stable run could not be achieved for the actual machine.

We studied the dimensional requirements of the cutting attachment guard to improve the protection performance for thrown items on the basis of the results (Tsukamoto et al., 2013a, 2013b) obtained for the direction of items thrown from the brush cutters. We measured the engine speed, the shaft speed, and the operating efficiency for three types of cutting attachment guards. We fabricated two types of prototype guards. Both prototype guards tend to improve the operating efficiency compared to the normal guard. Findings were obtained for the size criteria of the guard that can improve both the operating efficiency and the protection performance.

We developed a prototype of a heated air (HA) recirculation type dryer to dry forage rice economically and efficiently. In this dryer, we replaced a kerosene burner of standard performance with one having superior performance to generate HA at a higher temperature than that commercially available. We conducted experiments to verify the suitability of the developed dryer. We set the average temperature of 60°C, 70°C, 80°C, 90°C, and 100°C. We also set the standard drying mode of a commercially available recirculation type dryer (HA was at 40°C) as a control. When the HA temperature was raised above 60°Cin our prototype, the drying rate increased by about two to four times, and the energy consumption per kilogram of evaporated water decreased by approximately 10% to 25%. Additionally, raising the HA temperature above 60°Cretained the feeding value (nutritional quality) and indicated the possibility of improving the pepsin digestibility. Furthermore, with the increase in HA temperature, the reduction of the drying cost per kilogram of evaporated water varied from 1.6JPY (HA was at 60°C) to 4.6JPY (HA was at 100°C).

We found the raising the average temperature of the HA above 80°Cwas very effective in drying forage rice economically and efficiently. However, examining the operating system of our prototype against the moisture content of dried forage rice that fell below the standard moisture content (14.5%w.b.) was necessary.