Basic study on a garlic (Alliumsativum L.) upright planter

Abstract

Garlic is one of the most popular seasoning bulb vegetables in Korea and is the most commonly used food ingredient. However, the cultivation areas are decreasing every year as the price drops due to imported garlic, and labor is insufficient to produce garlic by conventional methods. Cultivation requires various tasks until garlic is harvested. Seeding is one of the important and laborious tasks; thus, mechanization is necessary. When seeding garlic, the sprout should face upwards; otherwise, it may rot or produce poor quality garlic. This study investigated the extent of growth of northern- and southern-type garlic in eight different positions. The results show when the roots were not planted properly, the stems were weak, and the garlic bulbs were small. A simple garlic planter was manufactured with a crank-press mechanism to plant garlic in an upright position. Using this machine, a three-fold experiment was carried out with 100 strips of garlic. The test results showed that 99.4% of the planted garlic strips were positioned upright or close to being upright, and 0.6% failed to take root. An image processing algorithm was developed to locate the root part of the garlic, and the result showed a success rate of 81%. A future study will develop an automatic garlic upright planting system with a viewing system.

Fig. 1. Position of planted garlic.

Fig. 2. Design and actual appearance of a garlic upright planter. (a) Detailed parts of garlic upright planter and (b) The actual garlic upright planter with the garlic inlet.

Fig. 3. Image processing fowchart for locating garlic position.

Fig. 4. Growth results of garlic by various seeding positions.

Fig. 5. A typical example of damaged garlic by wrong seeding position. (a) An abnormal growth appearance and (b) A rottenness in the soil.

Fig. 6. Typical examples of normal seeding results when planting with garlic upright planter.

Fig. 7. Analysis of garlic position using image processing (a) Red, Green, Blue (RGB) image of garlic and red arrow indicates supply direction of garlic, (b) Converted RGB image to grayscale, (c) Removed the morphological structuring element from the grayscale, and (d) Converted (c) image to binary image and measured the angle of the roots based on the garlic supply direction

Table 1. Growth results of northern and southern type garlics by seeding position.

Table 2. Results of seeding test using a garlic standard upright planter.