To address the challenges of low recognition accuracy and substantial model complexity in crop disease identification models operating in complex field environments, this study proposed a novel hybrid model named ConvTransNet-S, which integrates Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and transformers for crop disease identification tasks. Unlike existing hybrid approaches, ConvTransNet-S uniquely introduces three key innovations: First, a Local Perception Unit (LPU) and Lightweight Multi-Head Self-Attention (LMHSA) modules were introduced to synergistically enhance the extraction of fine-grained plant disease details and model global dependency relationships, respectively. Second, an Inverted Residual Feed-Forward Network (IRFFN) was employed to optimize the feature propagation path, thereby enhancing the model’s robustness against interferences such as lighting variations and leaf occlusions. This novel combination of a LPU, LMHSA, and an IRFFN achieves a dynamic equilibrium between local texture perception and global context modeling—effectively resolving the trade-offs inherent in standalone CNNs or transformers. Finally, through a phased architecture design, efficient fusion of multi-scale disease features is achieved, which enhances feature discriminability while reducing model complexity. The experimental results indicated that ConvTransNet-S achieved a recognition accuracy of 98.85% on the PlantVillage public dataset. This model operates with only 25.14 million parameters, a computational load of 3.762 GFLOPs, and an inference time of 7.56 ms. Testing on a self-built in-field complex scene dataset comprising 10,441 images revealed that ConvTransNet-S achieved an accuracy of 88.53%, which represents improvements of 14.22%, 2.75%, and 0.34% over EfficientNetV2, Vision Transformer, and Swin Transformer, respectively. Furthermore, the ConvTransNet-S model achieved up to 14.22% higher disease recognition accuracy under complex background conditions while reducing the parameter count by 46.8%. This confirms that its unique multi-scale feature mechanism can effectively distinguish disease from background features, providing a novel technical approach for disease diagnosis in complex agricultural scenarios and demonstrating significant application value for intelligent agricultural management.

Potato malformation seriously affects commercial value, and its removal has become one of the core steps in the post-harvest and pre-sales process of potatoes. At present, this work mainly relies on manual visual inspection, which requires a lot of labor and incurs high investment costs. Therefore, precise and efficient automatic detection technology urgently needs to be developed. Due to the efficiency of deep learning based on image information in the field of complex object feature extraction and pattern recognition, this study proposes the use of the YOLOv3 algorithm to undertake potato malformation classification. However, the target box regression loss function MSE of this algorithm is prone to small errors being ignored, and the model code is relatively large, which limits its performance due to the high demand for computing hardware performance and storage space. Accordingly, in this study, CIOU loss is introduced to replace MSE, and thus the shortcoming of the inconsistent optimization direction of the original algorithm’s loss function is overcome, which also significantly reduces the storage space and computational complexity of the network model. Furthermore, deep separable convolution is used instead of traditional convolution. Deep separable convolution first convolves each channel, and then combines different channels point by point. With the introduction of an inverted residual structure and the use of the h-swish activation function, deep separable convolution based on the MobileNetv3 structure can learn more comprehensive feature representations, which can significantly reduce the computational load of the model while improving its accuracy. The test results showed that the model capacity was reduced by 66%, mAP was increased by 4.68%, and training time was shortened by 6.1 h. Specifically, the correctness rates of malformation recognition induced by local protrusion, local depression, proportional imbalance, and mechanical injury within the test set range were 94.13%, 91.00%, 95.52%, and 91.79%, respectively. Misjudgment mainly stemmed from the limitation of training samples and the original accuracy of the human judgment in type labeling. This study lays a solid foundation for the final establishment of an intelligent recognition and classification picking system for malformed potatoes in the next step.

Realization of an integrated seeding and compensating potato planter based on one-way clutch

The coefficient of static friction (SF), the coefficient of rolling friction (RF) for particles are two key parameters affecting the repose angle formation and flow characteristics. In this paper, the interaction effects of SF and RF on the formation process of corn repose angle was investigated by the discrete element method. Firstly, five shape kinds of corn models (horse tooth, spherical cone, spheroid, oblate, and irregular shape) were established. Secondly, aluminum cylinder and organic glass box were used to conduct the simulation experiments with taking SF and RF as independent factors and seeing the repose angle as dependent value. Based on simulation results the regression equations were established. Simulation results showed the relation between two factors and the rotational kinetic energy is not nonlinear, and SF does not significantly restrict the flow of corn models after increasing the flow direction, and the effect of SF on the contact number between corns and the bottom plate is remarkable, while the effect of RF on the contact number is not remarkable. Finally, the interaction effect of two factors on the repose angle was analyzed by variance analysis and results showed SF and RF all have a significant impact on the repose angle. Moreover, their interaction effect has an impact on the repose angle. Keywords: corn kernels, coefficient of static friction, coefficient of rolling friction, repose angle, interaction influence DOI: 10.25165/j.ijabe.20211405.4357 Citation: Shi L R, Yang X P, Zhao W Y, Sun W, Wang G P, Sun B G. Investigation of interaction effect between static and rolling friction of corn kernels on repose formation by DEM. Int J Agric & Biol Eng, 2021; 14(5): 238–246.

Potato seed-metering monitoring and improved miss-seeding catching-up compensation control system using spatial capacitance sensor

Introduction: Accurate detection of potato seedlings is crucial for obtaining information on potato seedlings and ultimately increasing potato yield. This study aims to enhance the detection of potato seedlings in drone-captured images through a novel lightweight model.Methods: We established a dataset of drone-captured images of potato seedlings and proposed the VBGS-YOLOv8n model, an improved version of YOLOv8n. This model employs a lighter VanillaNet as the backbone network in-stead of the original YOLOv8n model. To address the small target features of potato seedlings, we introduced a weighted bidirectional feature pyramid network to replace the path aggregation network, reducing information loss between network layers, facilitating rapid multi-scale feature fusion, and enhancing detection performance. Additionally, we incorporated GSConv and Slim-neck designs at the Neck section to balance accuracy while reducing model complexity. Results: The VBGS-YOLOv8n model, with 1,524,943 parameters and 4.2 billion FLOPs, achieves a precision of 97.1%, a mean average precision of 98.4%, and an inference time of 2.0ms. Comparative tests reveal that VBGS-YOLOv8n strikes a balance between detection accuracy, speed, and model efficiency compared to YOLOv8 and other mainstream networks. Specifically, compared to YOLOv8, the model parameters and FLOPs are reduced by 51.7% and 52.8% respectively, while precision and a mean average precision are improved by 1.4% and 0.8% respectively, and the inference time is reduced by 31.0%.Discussion: Comparative tests with mainstream models, including YOLOv7, YOLOv5, RetinaNet, and QueryDet, demonstrate that VBGS-YOLOv8n outperforms these models in terms of detection accuracy, speed, and efficiency. The research highlights the effectiveness of VBGS-YOLOv8n in the efficient detection of potato seedlings in drone remote sensing images, providing a valuable reference for subsequent identification and deployment on mobile devices.