Current Issue : October-December Volume : 2023 Issue Number : 4 Articles : 5 Articles
There is currently a demand to grow more crops in less area as a result of urbanization’s reduction of agricultural land. As a result, soil fertility is gradually declining. To maintain soil fertility, various management methods are used in modern times. The conventional tillage method is a traditional tillage method that damages soil structure, but zero tillage can improve soil quality. By maintaining soil structure with no-tillage, biological processes are frequently improved and microbial biodiversity is increased. This review helps to understand the role of tillage as well as cropping systems in increasing crop production by maintaining soil fertility. For agricultural production and environmental protection to be sustained for future generations, soil quality must be maintained and improved in continuous cropping systems. The nodulation, nitrogen fixation, and microbial community are all impacted by different cropping systems and tillage methods. They also alter soil properties including structure, aeration, and water utilization. The impact of tillage and cropping system practices such as zero and conventional tillage systems, crop rotation, intercropping, cover cropping, cultivator combinations, and prairie strip techniques on soil fertility is carefully summarized in this review. The result highlights that conservational tillage is much better than conventional tillage for soil quality and different aspects of different tillage and their interaction. On the other hand, intercropping, crop rotation, cover cropping, etc., increase the crop yield more than monocropping. Different types of cropping systems are highlighted along with their advantages and disadvantages. Using zero tillage can increase crop production as well as maintain soil fertility which is highlighted in this review. In terms of cropping systems and tillage management, our main goal is to improve crop yield while minimizing harm to the soil’s health....
This paper presents a machine learning approach to automatically classifying post-harvest vegetal species. Color images of vegetal species were applied to convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers. We focused on okra as the target vegetal species and classified it into two quality types. However, our approach could also be applied to other species. The machine learning solution consists of several components, and each design process and its combinations are essential for classification quality. Therefore, we carefully investigated their effects on classification accuracy. Through our experimental evaluation, we confirmed the following: (1) in color space selection, HLG (hue, lightness, and green) and HSL (hue, saturation, and lightness) are essential for vegetal species; (2) suitable preprocessing techniques are required owing to the complexity of the data and noise load; and (3) the diversity extension of learning image data by mixing different datasets obtained under different conditions is quite effective in reducing the overfitting possibility. The results of this study will assist AI practitioners in the design and development of post-harvest classifications based on machine learning....
Lack of nutritive and consumption of polluted food sources are the main health implications in African countries. Vegetable production is an optional balanced food source easily grown in the urban and rural areas. However, the levels of contaminant heavy metals in cultivated vegetables have not yet been identified. This review scrutinizes the contamination route, sources, health effects, environmental problems, food safety complications, and remedial activities of vegetable production in Ethiopian agriculture. Informal settlement, the rapid rate of urbanization, and the lack of community-based industrial expansion lead to massive increases in toxic heavy metals in ecosystems. They are supplied with food source diets unrestrictedly, mainly for vegetable consumption. Among the assessed metals, Zn (112.7 mg/kg), Cr (47.7 mg/kg), Pb (17.76 mg/kg), and Cd (0.25 mg/kg) existed in vegetables, with the highest concentrations in Ethiopia. They have negative effects on public safety, environmental security, and nutrient levels in horticultural crops. Hence, Ethiopia has no permissible standards for vegetable consumption and hazard analysis, critical control point, or food safety system. Additionally, physical, biological, and natural remedial strategies such as phytoremediation, phytoextraction, phytostabilization, rhizofiltration, bioremediation, and phytovolatilization are not applied to curtail deadly substance contents in Ethiopia. Despite this, some mitigation strategies, such as industrial waste treatment activities, are underway in Ethiopia’s universities and beer and sugar factories. This review found that the use of integrated remedial strategies could help to improve the efficiency of strategies in a sustainable manner, solid safety control for heavy metal management in Ethiopia, and management should begin with local solutions....
Hydrothermal treatment of rice, called “Parboiling”, is an ancient traditional process in Asian countries. It consists of soaking rough rice in water and steaming it, and it both reduces the level of grain breakage and increases head yield of rice during milling. However, parboiling of rice is associated with some drawbacks regarding consumer preferences: the loss of its aroma, reduced rice-kernel whiteness and increased kernel hardness. This research study was carried out to develop a mild hydrothermal treatment that could be applied to basmati paddy by controlling hydrothermal treatment, i.e., soaking water temperature, steaming pressure and time. The Basmati 370 paddy variety was used for this study. The results revealed that, by soaking the paddy in hot water (70 ± 2 ◦C) for 75 min and steaming the soaked paddy for 20 min with non-pressurized steam at atmospheric pressure, and soaking the paddy for 120 min in hot water (70 ± 2 ◦C) and steaming the soaked paddy for 4 min with pressurized steam (4 kg/cm2), the optimum treatments are achieved. These optimum hydrothermal treatments were able to produce high head rice yield and preserve the basmati aroma, colour, hardness and palatability characteristics similar to non-parboiled basmati rice. Further, nutritional values such as vitamin B and protein content were also significantly preserved by these mild hydrothermal treatments. These optimized treatment combinations achieved minimized grain breakage while increasing head rice yield during milling and, at the same time, preserved basmati aroma, kernel whiteness, cooking and palatability characteristics similar to nonparboiled rice....
Soybean (Glycine max L. Merril) is among the key oil seed crops worldwide, providing several benefits from human consumption to the enhancement of soil productivity. In Uganda, legumes are cultivated on roughly 1.5 million ha, with soybean being produced on a lower production area of 150,000 ha compared to beans (925,000 ha) and groundnuts (253,000 ha). In terms of achievable yield, soybean emerges the highest at 1.2 t·ha−1 as compared to beans (0.5 t·ha−1) and groundnuts (0.7 t·ha−1). Despite the smallest production coverage area, the crop’s feasible grain yield is projected at 4.6 t·ha−1 under optimal environmental conditions. The major bottleneck to the crop’s production is the decreasing soil fertility, mainly caused by low nitrogen (N) but also phosphorus (P) levels in the soil. There is a high potential for supplying N from the atmosphere through biological N fixation (BNF), a natural process mediated by the symbiotic bacteria Bradyrhizobium japonicum, which requires optimum P levels for effective N fixation and increased yield. The current work reviews the present status of soybean production in Uganda, highlights its ecological requirements, importance, and constraints, and proposes the use of inoculation and P application to boost its production....
Loading....