• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.537-546
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• 2002

In this study an automatic soil hardness measuring system mountable on agricultural tractors was developed to improve the accuracy of manual soil hardness testers by a constant penetrating rate, right direction of the cone-penetrometer and the isolation of vibration from the operator. This was necessary to supply similar experimental condition for performance test of new model and comparative experiment. The results of the study are summaried as follows; 1. The system consisted of a sensing part of soil hardness, a driving part of the measuring system and an attaching part between the tractor and the measuring system. 2. The allowable limit value of the system developed was set to 392N to protect from breaking the serve motor and the coupling used in this system. 3. The driving shaft penetrated into soil by 0.3m to measure soil hardness. The soil hardness was measured at the depth of 0.3m from the soil surface but the penetrating work was stopped and the driving shaft was pulled out to protect the system when the value of the soil hardness was too big on foreign substances like stones or straws. 4. Two values measured by automatic measuring system developed in this research and manual penetrometer were compared by statistics hypothesis testing method. When two people measured the soil hardness at the depth of 0.1 and 0.15m by manual cone penetrometer, there was no relationship between two values by two people but the values at the same depths by automatic measuring system developed showed similarity. The automatic system, therefore, developed in this research was proper for measuring soil hardness.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.373-379
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• 2010

This study was carried out to develop a belt pick-up type one-row soybean cutter, using physical properties and production conditions of soybeans. The prototype soybean cutter consisted of 4 parts: cutting part, conveying part, collecting part, and travelling part. The prototype soybean cutter was designed to cut soybeans planted with a row spacing of 600 mm, and at a height of 30 mm from the bed bottom using a disk saw. Through various trials with different peripheral velocities of the disk saw and forward speed of the cutter, determined ranges of the peripheral velocity of the disk saw cutting soybeans stems were greater than 18.3 m/s. Spacing between pick-up belts (clearance) was in a range of 60~90 mm so that soybeans could be picked at heights greater than 25 cm, and the size and shape of the pick-up belt were determined the conventional manual harvesting method. The optimal ratio between the forward speed of cutter and the peripheral speed of pick-up belts were from 1 to 1.2 by theoretical analysis. the pick-up belts had a $35^{\circ}$ of tilted angle and $90^{\circ}$ of twisted angle to pick up soybeans safely from the plant input to the lower end of the belts and convey soybeans to the upper end of belts nearby a container. The soybeans at the rear container were dropped down on the soybean row with an interval. The effective field capacity of the prototype soybean cutter was 0.136 ha/h, reducing the working hour by 92% when compared with the manual cutting.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 2000.11b
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• pp.438-445
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• 2000

Positioning garlic cloves in upright standing in garlic field has been regarded as a very important job because it affects clove rooting, growing and, eventually, quality and yield in garlic production, Because of the geometrical uniqueness and irregularity of garlic cloves in shape, the planting operation has been conducted by manual work that needs a tremendous human labors and increases garlic production cost. The overall objective of this research was to develop garlic planting machine through investigating physical properties of garlic and designing clove upright positioning device after figuring out the factors affecting metering device and upright clove positioning mechanism. With the outcomes of the metering and posture positioning experiment, a garlic clove planter having twelve planting rows was developed for 37kW type tractor and feasibility test was carried out in the field. And, According to the performance test and cost analysis, the planter could accomplish planting operation of one hectare plot in 6.3 hours giving 48 times better efficiency, 6.3hrs/ha, and 74.2% of production cost reduction effect, 1,092,546won/ha, than the manual works of 299hrs/ha and 282,258won/ha. And, break-even point ofthe planter was calculated as of 2.71 hectares.

• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.139-155
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of abolishing the low-pesticide agricultural product certification on environmentally friendly farming. A survey was conducted to quantitatively analyze farming practices and factors that change farming practice. It was found that only 17.0% of low-pesticide fruit farmers said that they will change their farming practice into organic or pesticide-free farming. With regard to the factors of farming practice change, binomial logistic regression model was applied for the analysis. In the analysis, it was found that farmers who grow the low-pesticide agricultural product are more likely to change their farming practice into organic or pesticide-free farming, as their expected price of organic or pesticide-free products is high, their area size is small, price premium of low-pesticide agricultural product is low, the frequency of their training is high. It is necessary to enhance the direct payment system to enlarge organic and nonpesticide acreage, and pest management techniques for fruits should be developed for low-pesticide fruit farmers to change their practice into organic and nonpesticide practice. Dissemination of cultivation manual, introduction of insurance to farmers, improvement of certificate system, and advertising and marketing of environment-friendly agricultural products are useful to develop environment-friendly agriculture.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.453-461
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• 2008

This study was conducted to develop a root-removed splice grafting system for cucurbitaceous vegetables, mainly watermelon and cucumber seedlings, for the seedlings factories where currently most of seedlings grafting works are carried out by manual works. The major results of the study are as follows. The dimensions of rootstocks and scions, except cotyledon width, of root- removed splice grafting of watermelon and cucumber were shown to be varied within the 2.5-fold range. The growth status of seedlings were not consistent in terms of cotyledon sprouting direction and angle which were considered as one of the important factors for in root-removed splice grafting. The grafting work of root-removed splice for grafted watermelon and cucumber could be divided by four sub-operations: seedling supplying, cutting, clipping and potting, while a part or all root of the rootstock was removed in the seedlings supplying operation. The cutting angles of the rootstock and scion were $34-45^{\circ}$ and $20-45^{\circ}$, respectively, while the stem length of the scion varied from 6 mm to 12 mm. The splices of rootstock and scion were heaped up in parallel and then fixed by a clip. It indicated that the ideal grafting system, adopting conventional grafting processes of seedlings specifications as well as conventionally manual root-removed splice grafting method, performed very well for seedlings gripping and transporting, supplying clip, clipping and discharging grafted seedlings while workers supplied seedlings to the semi-automatical system.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.177-181
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• 2015

Food waste has been widely considered as a recycling resource to be applied to agricultural lands due to the effects of organic matter and nutrient for plant productivity. but the maturity and salt concentration in the compost produced from food waste processing facilities should be considered firstly, which was little information on compost quality produced from food waste treatment facility. In this study, we examined actual situation of food waste processing facility on the composting of food waste and evaluated the characteristics of composts produced from food waste processing facilities. The quality of composts was analyzed on the basis of the criteria of fertilizer processing manual. The 46% of food waste treatment facility registered composting produced actually the compost mixed with food waste or animal waste. The compost maturity and salt concentration as indicators of the quality of compost were not met 46.8% of composts collected from food waste processing facilities to the criteria of fertilizer processing manual. Also, 15.6%(moisture) were not satisfied with the criteria. In conclusion, the compost produced from food waste processing facilities is firstly required with better compost maturity and reduced salt concentration in order to use to agricultural lands as an amendment.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.731-737
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• 2011

In the modern society, GIS-based decision support system has been used in evaluating environmental issues and changes due to spatial and temporal analysis capabilities of the GIS. However without proper manual of these systems, its desired goals could not be achieved. In this study, audio-visual SWAT tutorial system was developed to evaluate its effectives in learning the SWAT model. Learning effects was analyzed after in-class demonstration and survey. The survey was conducted for $3^{rd}$ grade students with/without audio-visual materials using 30 questionnaires, composed of 3 items for trend of respondent, 5 items for effects of audio-visual materials, and 12 items for effects of with/without manual in learning the model. For group without audio-visual manual, 2.98 out of 5 was obtained and 4.05 out of 5 was obtained for group with audio-visual manual, indicating higher content delivery with audio-visual learning effects. As shown in this study, the audio-visual learning material should be developed and used in various computer-based modeling system.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.227-233
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• 2017

Purpose: Morphological properties of soybean roots are important indicators of the vigor of the seed, which determines the survival rate of the seedlings grown. The current vigor test for soybean seeds is manual measurement with the human eye. This study describes an application of a machine vision technique for rapid measurement of soybean seed vigor to replace the time-consuming and labor-intensive conventional method. Methods: A CCD camera was used to obtain color images of seeds during germination. Image processing techniques were used to obtain root segmentation. The various morphological parameters, such as primary root length, total root length, total surface area, average diameter, and branching points of roots were calculated from a root skeleton image using a customized pixel-based image processing algorithm. Results: The measurement accuracy of the machine vision system ranged from 92.6% to 98.8%, with accuracies of 96.2% for primary root length and 96.4% for total root length, compared to manual measurement. The correlation coefficient for each measurement was 0.999 with a standard error of prediction of 1.16 mm for primary root length and 0.97 mm for total root length. Conclusions: The developed machine vision system showed good performance for the morphological measurement of soybean roots. This image analysis algorithm, combined with a simple color camera, can be used as an alternative to the conventional seed vigor test method.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.437-441
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• 2011

Objective: The objective this paper is to introduce the agricultural ergonomics and to show the importance of it in improving the agricultural works. Background: Despite of rapid advancement of technologies and adoption of modern mechanical equipments at farms in Korea, most of agricultural works have still remained manual and thus have regarded as one of the hardest works. With aging and feminization in rural areas, the need to improve agricultural works has grown quite much. Agricultural ergonomics have been known as a good tool in improving agricultural works around the world. Recently Korean government initiated a national program of providing assistive equipments to help farmers and a few ergonomists started to apply agricultural ergonomics in our rural villages as a part of this program. Method: This study reviewed how Ergonomics was used for the agricultural work. Results: Methods of Ergonomics which are used for the agricultural ergonomics and the simple procedure of the agricultural ergonomics were presented. Conclusion: It was found that agricultural works can be improved quite much using the agricultural ergonomics principle and the musculoskeletal stress of farmers can be reduced significantly.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.286-294
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• 2009

A high prevalence of protected horticulture farmer's work-related musculo-skeletal disorders (MSDs) have been reported in precedent studies. One of the tasks required ergonomic intervention to reduce the musculo-skeletal risks is the task of product transporting. The purpose of this study is to evaluate quantitatively the spinal load of operator using manual vehicles to predict and prevent musculo-skeletal risks. Spinal load in operators using 4 kinds of manual vehicle were analyzed. Before evaluating spinal load on operator using the manual vehicles by bio-mechanical approach, it is needed to validate human model. In this study, ADAMS LifeMOD human model shows satisfactory results, comparing with already validated model's results or measured results. While Operators pushed the manual vehicles(wheelbarrow, Trolley, 2 wheel cart, and 4 wheel cart) contained loads that were 0 N and 800 N, their spinal loads(compression force, shear force) were evaluated. The compression force demonstrated under the NIOSH action limits - 3410N - for all 4 manual vehicle's operators(McGill 1997; Marras 2000). However, the lateral shear force demonstrated over the University of Waterloo - 500N - for all 3 manual vehicle's operators except 4Wheel cart (Yingline and McGill, 1999). Therefore, operators have risks in prevalence of the musculo-skeletal disorders due to shear force. The findings of this study suggest that it need to be determine the spinal load, especially lateral shear force in designing the manual vehicles in the future.