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Featured Articles

Classification of cotton water stress using convolutional neural networks and UAV-based RGB imagery

Embracing smart irrigation management techniques empowers growers to irrigate with greater efficiency, thereby promoting sustainable agricultural production. In this context, growers often rely on crop evapotranspiration (ETc) as a key factor in making informed irrigation decisions, underscoring the significance of accurately determining and spatially mapping crop water status. Technological progress, exemplified by the emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has brought about a revolutionary shift in agricultural monitoring. UAV platforms can capture high-resolution images with centimeter-level spatial accuracy and offer higher temporal coverage compared to satellite imagery. Considering these advancements, this study introduces a robust method for classifying water stress in cotton using a compact UAV platform and convolutional neural networks (CNN). The experiment was conducted at the USDA-ARS Cropping Systems Research Laboratory (CSRL) in Lubbock, Texas, where the cotton field was divided into 12 drip zones. The study included three replications to evaluate four irrigation treatments: “rainfed”, “full irrigation”, “percent deficit of full irrigation”, and “time delay of full irrigation”. The results demonstrated that the CNN model successfully classified the cotton water stress using the UAV-based RGB image, achieving an overall best prediction accuracy of approximately 91%. By segmenting the original cotton images into separate canopy and soil areas using morphological image processing methods, the authors also isolated and analyzed the individual contributions of these components to cotton water stress. Additionally, a random forest classifier revealed the relative importance of different image features in the classification process through feature importance analysis. These findings highlighted the state-of-the-art performance of the proposed system in cotton water stress classification and provided valuable insights into the key image features contributing to accurate classification. The authors concluded that integrating UAV-based RGB imagery and CNN models had great potential for assessing water stress in cotton.

A new approach to measure spatial variability of soil parameters and field technique to test-value specific fertilizer

Information on the distribution of soil properties is important to know the status of nutrients in the soils based on which fertilizer nutrients are recommended. Given the variability of nutrients in the soils, making a site-specific fertilizer recommendation seems to be a compelling work. To determine the spatial variability of soil nutrients and to make judicious and precise fertilizer recommendations, new measures are designed with this study. These measures are tested against the soil samples (n = 43) for total nitrogen (N), organic matter (OM), phosphorus (P2O5), and potassium (K2O) in the study area. The descriptive statistical analysis indicated an average of low nitrogen and organic matter, while phosphorus was found to be very high and the level of potassium was high. The spread of nutrients across the data sets, however, included low, medium, high, and very high levels of ratings. The Deviation Square Index was developed and applied for the variability measurement and found that the largest variation was with phosphorus distribution, followed by potassium, nitrogen, and organic matter. The coefficient of variation (CV%) analysis also exhibited similar trends in nutrient distributions. Nitrogen was the main determinant explaining the variations in rice yield, while phosphorus and potash were negatively related to the yield. An index of fertilizer nutrient recommendation called Test-Value Specific Dose (TVSD) was developed and used to calculate the nutrient recommendation for each sampled location. This new method gave easy and more accurate doses of fertilizer over the blanket recommendation to fit the variations across the soil samples.

Transgenic agriculture. A bioethical assessment of the Colombian case

José Edwin Cuéllar Saavedra

Article ID: 2092
Vol 4, Issue 1, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.54517/ama.v4i1.2092
VIEWS - 95 (Abstract)

Abstract

Transgenic technology promises, among several sustainable development objectives, to overcome hunger and poverty in the world, and, therefore, the adoption of this technology is relatively growing. However, there are positions that point out the issues brought out by such expansion. This article is a reflection derived from a research project on the bioethical implications of adopting transgenic technology for agriculture in Colombia. The aim is to justify the fact that this adoption poses a bioethical risk. The paper, on the one hand, addresses the problem arising from confronting arguments for and against the adoption of this technology and, on the other hand, notes the absolutism of the economic aspect in the provision of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the general difficulties of Colombian national regulations with regard to the control and surveillance of GMOs. Finally, it specifically expounds the bioethical implications underlying the adoption, from the illusion of a transformative technology, going through the political will of the government, to its final delivery to the consumer.

Keywords

agriculture; bioethics; biotechnology; GMO; hunger

Full Text:

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References

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Editor-in-Chief

Dr. Joan Estrany

University of the Balearic Islands Spain

News & Announcements

2023-08-22

New version of Author Guidelines are update

Please follow the journal's author guideline and the required article template to prepare your manuscript

2022-09-10

The 2022 World Food Forum will be held in Italy

The 2022 World Food Forum (WFF) flagship event will take place from 17 to 21 October at the Headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, Italy and virtually.

2022-06-07

Italian researchers are protesting a law that may equate “biodynamic” methods with organic agriculture

One line in the draft law concerns scientists above all. Article I states that “for the purposes of this law, the biodynamic agriculture method […], when applied in compliance with the European Union’s dispositions on organic farming, is equated with organic farming”. A few articles later, the law requires one representative of biodynamic farmers to sit in a technical committee that will oversee the application of the law, including allocations of public funds.

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Section Collections

Proposal a Section Collection

Deadline: 2024-12-31

Food Science

Keywords: food science; functional foods; food ingredients; nutrient fortification; crop biomass; sustainable food; processing technologies; cross-disciplinary approach

Special Issue

Proposal a Special Issue

Deadline: 2023-08-24

Sustainability of modern agriculture

Keywords: sustainable agriculture, objectives of sustainable farming, involving devices, involving technology, pros and cons, etc.

Deadline: 2023-08-24

Technology in modern agriculture

Keywords: the agricultural device, the technology used in farming different plants, the impact of technology on agriculture, the evolution of agricultural technology, robotic systems, etc.