State of the Art in Agricultural Machinery and Equipment

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Agricultural Biosystem and Biological Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (22 December 2021) | Viewed by 6260

Special Issue Editor

Agro Intelligence, Aarhus, Denmark
Interests: agricultural machinery and equipment; route optimisation; tractors; combine harvesters; tillage

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Modern farmers are continually tasked with improving their efficiency and productivity to meet the demands of a growing global population while also limiting the use of resources, such as land area, chemical inputs, work force, etc. Mechanization was key to enabling farmers to do more and increase their overall productivity, however more recently, with the integration of digital technologies, agricultural machines are able to be more effective and intelligent, and produce better quality crops.

GPS and camera systems have allowed machines to have higher levels of precision, leading to better utilization of input materials such as seeds, chemicals, and minerals, so that plant care can be focused on smaller and smaller scales. Wireless communication technologies are also being used to link in-field equipment to the cloud, meaning that large amounts of data can be processed quickly and harnessed to make complex classification and influence decisions in real-time. Moreover, with the integration of autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles into the agricultural fleet, many technologies can be combined to create versatile tools capable of working long hours whilst maintaining high operational standards.

This call in open for original or review papers which cover the state of the agricultural machinery and equipment, and advances which push the boundaries of the current landscape.

Dr. Gareth T. C. Edwards
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Agricultural machinery
  • Future farming
  • Agricultural robotics
  • Digitalisation
  • Precision plant care
  • Plant recognition
  • Optimised field operations
  • In-field variability

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 6085 KiB  
Article
Performance Evaluation of Electrically Driven Agricultural Implements Powered by an External Generator
by Massimiliano Varani, Michele Mattetti and Giovanni Molari
Agronomy 2021, 11(8), 1447; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agronomy11081447 - 21 Jul 2021
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 2051
Abstract
In the last decade, many studies have been conducted on tractor and agricultural machinery electrification. In particular, the electrification of power take-off (PTO)-powered implements could support many benefits, such as improved comfort and safety during implement connection, less noisiness, accurate control of the [...] Read more.
In the last decade, many studies have been conducted on tractor and agricultural machinery electrification. In particular, the electrification of power take-off (PTO)-powered implements could support many benefits, such as improved comfort and safety during implement connection, less noisiness, accurate control of the implement rotational speed, and fuel consumption reduction. However, commercially available tractors do not generate sufficient electric power to run electrified implements. A solution to this issue is powering eventual electrified implements with an external electric generator powered by the PTO and mounted with the front three-point linkage. This study aimed to evaluate the potential benefits of using this combination with respect to PTO powered implements. The types of implements analyzed in detail in this study were a sprayer and a mulcher. Field tests were performed acquiring performance, operational, and environmental parameters. Results show that on the electrified implements, the absence of the cardan shaft and hydraulic remotes shortened the time required for the hitching phase and reduced the in-work noisiness. Field tests demonstrated that the electrified implements permitted an improvement of the fuel consumption per hectare, up to 33.3% and 29.8% lower than their PTO-powered homologue for the sprayer and the mulcher, respectively. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue State of the Art in Agricultural Machinery and Equipment)
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16 pages, 7781 KiB  
Article
Integrated Design and Evaluation of a Soil-Covering and Film-Mulching Device for Sugarcane Transverse Planters
by Ke Li, Shizeng Li, Xiao Teng, Zhanglin Deng, Wenbo Huang, Fangfang Gan and Fanglan Ma
Agronomy 2021, 11(7), 1382; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agronomy11071382 - 08 Jul 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3013
Abstract
To solve the problem that the covering device of sugarcane cannot be adequate for the agronomic standards of seed cane setts planting, a soil-covering and film-mulching device for sugarcane transverse planting was designed. The device includes a soil-covering part, soil-compacting part, and film-mulching [...] Read more.
To solve the problem that the covering device of sugarcane cannot be adequate for the agronomic standards of seed cane setts planting, a soil-covering and film-mulching device for sugarcane transverse planting was designed. The device includes a soil-covering part, soil-compacting part, and film-mulching part. Through theoretical analysis of key components, the factors affecting the cane seed covering quality for the device were obtained. A quadratic orthogonal rotation regression test was conducted by a homemade prototype to explore the effects of disk diameter, central distance, disk depth in soil, and dip angle on soil covering thickness. The results showed that the above factors all have an extremely significant effect on the soil covering thickness, and the effect degree of each factor from high to low is central distance, disk depth in soil, dip angle, and disk diameter within the range of test parameters. The optimal parameter combination, with the disk diameter, the dip angle, the central distance, the disk depth in soil, and the diameter of the soil-compacting wheel being 304.7 mm, 55.1°, 386.5 mm, 32.4 mm, and 300 mm, respectively, was obtained by Design-Expert software and verified by comprehensive field tests. The results showed that the covering thickness is in the range of 94–111 mm, the average value is 102.6 mm, and the breakage rate is no more than 2.6%. The emergence rate is 86.4%, which is an improvement of 9.3% over that of a traditional covering device. The results suggested that the device can conform to the agricultural covering standard of sugarcane planting and provide a design basis for the application and popularization of the soil-covering and film-mulching device. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue State of the Art in Agricultural Machinery and Equipment)
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