Open Journal Systems

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.

Characteristics, diagnosis and analysis of some indicators in the agricultural sector of the Trinidad Municipality, Cuba

Delvis Valdés Zayas, Mario Enrique Sánchez Morales

Article ID: 2500
Vol 5, Issue 3, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.54517/ama.v5i3.2500
VIEWS - 25 (Abstract)

Abstract

In the new policy established by the Cuban state for the agricultural sector, the achievement of food sovereignty and sustainability of said sector is established as a basic principle, which was endorsed in the current Law of Food Sovereignty and Food and Nutritional Security. For this reason, each municipality in the country, and under certain levels of autonomy, must guarantee compliance with the aforementioned law. For this, strict control of the structures of the territorial agricultural system and the behavior of its structures is necessary. With the completion of this work, the characterization, diagnosis and evaluation of some sustainability indicators for the agricultural sector in the Trinidad Municipality were established as objectives, in the period between 2015 and 2020, for this a work team was created that was able to collect, organize, analyze, compare and evaluate the information that appeared in the National Office of Statistics and Information of the Republic of Cuba, between the years 2015 and 2020, finding as one of the results that the workforce indicator used in this sector has suffered a drastic decrease, not guaranteeing the man-area relationship necessary to achieve food sovereignty and the sustainability of the sector at a territorial level.

Keywords

sovereignty; sustainability; indicators; efficiency; evaluation

Full Text:

PDF

References

1. Socorro AR, Ojeda R. Agrarian management: A multidimensional analysis of its sustainability. In: monograph CETAS. University of Cienfuegos; 2003.

2. Altieri M, Nicholls C. Agroecology, theory and practice for sustainable agriculture. United Nations Environment Programme, Mexico; 2000.

3. Santana T, Castellanos L. Evaluation of agrarian and rural development with sustainability criteria in the community of Mantecal, Apure State, Venezuela. Agroecosistemas Magazine (Carlos Rafael Rodríguez University of Cienfuegos, Cuba). 2013; 1(1): 22-33.

4. Altieri M. Agroecology. Scientific bases for sustainable agriculture. Chile. The Latin American Consortium on Agroecology and Development; 1997.

5. Beemans P. Humanity Development Library: Culture, spirituality, and economic development. IDRC; 1997.

6. Álvarez E, Castellanos L, Soto R. Sustainability indicators in five agroecological farms with different management conditions, in the territory of Trinidad, Cuba. Centro Agrícola Journal. 2012; 39(3): 91-92.

7. Socorro AR, Padrón WR, Parets ER, Pretel R. Alternative Model for Agricultural Rationality. Special Edition for the Universalization of Higher Education. Editorial Universo Sur. University of Cienfuegos; 2004.

8. Fernández V. Analysis of the economic and financial feasibility of import substitution in bean production in the municipality of Manicaragua. Universidad Central de las Villas; 2013.

9. Cardoso R, Torres CC, Menoya S. Planning of the agricultural sector as the axis of the provincial development strategy in Pinar del Río. Journal of Cooperativism and Development. 2016; 1.

10. López G, Turiño T. Local Development Strategy of the Trinidad Municipality. Trinidad People’s Power Assembly, Sancti Spiritus Province, Cuba; 2023.

11. ONEI. National Office of Statistics and Information. Statistical Yearbook of the Trinidad Municipality 2022. CHAPTER 1: Territory.

12. Valdés D, Pujol ID, Ramírez R, et al. Legal Status Until 2016 of the Land Fund, Labor, Salary and Performance in the Agricultural Sector of the Trinidad Municipality. International Journal of Science, Technology and Society. 2023; 11(1): 11-16. doi: 10.11648/j.ijsts.20231101.120

13. Maqueiras L. Evaluation of sustainability levels in farms of the UBPC “Emilio Hernández Cruz” of the Artemisa municipality, through the use of the MESMI method. Ecovida Magazine. 2021; 11(3).

14. Montesinos D. Characterization of the “La Asunción” Farm through indicators for sustainability. Agrarian University of Havana “Fructuoso Rodríguez Pérez”; 2009.

15. ONEI. Chapter 1: Territory. In: Statistical Yearbook of the Trinidad Municipality 2022. National Office of Statistics and Information; 2020.

16. Valdes D, Suárez C. Strategic model for the 13 de Marzo Agricultural Production Cooperative, in Trinidad, Cuba. Agroecosystem Magazine. 2018; 6(1).

17. Stoner J. Administration, 5th ed. Havana: MES; 2002.

18. González A. Redesign and implementation of the Management Strategy of the Siguaney Basic Cooperative Production Unit. Thesis as an option for the Academic Degree of Master in Management, Study Center for Advanced Management Techniques. Sancti Spíritus: University of Sancti Spíritus José Martí Pérez; 2007.

Refbacks

There are currently no refbacks.

Copyright (c) 2024 Delvis Valdés Zayas, Mario Enrique Sánchez Morales

License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Editor-in-Chief

Prof. Zhengjun Qiu

Zhejiang University, China

Honorary Editor-in-Chief

Cheng Sun

Academician of World Academy of Productivity Science; Executive Chairman, World Confederation of Productivity Science China Chapter, China

News & Announcements

2024-05-01

Notice on the prohibition of using AI techniques to generate papers!

This journal values human initiative and intelligence, and the employment of AI technologies to write papers that replace the human mind is expressly prohibited. When there is a suspicious submission that uses AI tools to quickly piece together and generate research results, the editorial board of the journal will reject the article, and all journals under the publisher's umbrella will prohibit all authors from submitting their articles.

Readers and authors are asked to exercise caution and strictly adhere to the journal's policy regarding the usage of Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) tools.

2024-01-14

We are recruiting Editorial Team Members

Advances in Modern Agriculture (AMA) is looking for members of the Editorial Board.

2023-12-28

Notice on the change of publication frequency

The publication frequency of Advances in Modern Agriculture is Quarterly since 2024, that means the journal will publish 4 issues per year from 2024 onwards.

More Announcements...

Article Tools

Indexing metadata

How to cite item

Review policy