• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems Conference
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• 2000.05a
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• pp.59-62
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• 2000

In cope with insufficient agricultural labor and requirement of high quality product Hydroponics is a really good method. It makes the high density agriculture possible and all the growing environments controllable. So its research is so much progressing to maximize the quantity and quality of farm products. Furthermore, the big progress, in the research of a future agriculture, is systematically conducted for the automatic controlled system. In this paper, a new approach to the automation of the cultivation in a green house is suggested and a practical automatic control cultivation system is implemented. To automatically control and optimize the very nonlinear and time-varying growth of farm products, a hybrid strategy(FECA; Fuzzy Expertized Control Algorithm) is proposed which serially combines a fuzzy expert system with the fuzzy logic control. The fuzzy expert system(FMES; Fuzzy Model-based Expert System) is intended to overcome the non-linearity of the growth of farm products. The part of fuzzy controller is incorporated to solve the time-variance of the growth of farm products. Finally, the efficiency and the effectiveness of the implemented agricultural automation system is presented through the cultiviation results.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.147-154
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• 2017

Purpose: To reduce the costs of potato seeds and labor of workers, a fully automatic in-situ seeding machine for cutting seed potatoes was developed. Methods: An experiment was conducted to evaluate the seeder performance of the prototype of potato planter by cutting seeds in farmlands from March to April 2017. The study tested the seeder performance at working speeds ranging from 0.28 to 0.45 m/s. The seeding rate and seeding distance were also investigated according to the planned distance between planted seeds from 20 to 30 cm, with 5 cm intervals. Results: Tests on the performance of the developed cutting blade on the automatic potato seeder show that whole potatoes should be used instead of half potatoes. The seeding rates were 88.8% and 82.5% for whole and half potatoes, respectively. When the tractor working speed was increased from 0.28 to 0.45 m/s, the successful seeding rate decreased from 98.8% to 96.3%, respectively. However, with planted seed distances of 20, 25, and 30 cm, the successful seeding rates were near 98%. Conclusions: The developed automatic potato seeder can to improve the labor productivity and cultivation environment of potato farms by the mechanization of the seeding process, which is currently associated with high-labor, -costs, and -hours. Therefore, based on this study, the developed automatic potato seeder provides the mechanization necessary for improved potato cultivation conditions in farmlands.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.703-718
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• 2021

An irrigation monitoring system is an efficient approach to save water and to provide effective irrigation scheduling for rice cultivation in desert soils. This research aimed to design, fabricate, and evaluate the basic performance of an irrigation monitoring system based on information and communication technology (ICT) for rice cultivation under drip and micro-sprinkler irrigation in desert soils using a Raspberry Pi. A data acquisition system was installed and tested inside a rice cultivating net house at the United Arab Emirates University, Al-Foah, Al-Ain. The Raspberry Pi operating system was used to control the irrigation and to monitor the soil water content, ambient temperature, humidity, and light intensity inside the net house. Soil water content sensors were placed in the desert soil at depths of 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 cm. A sensor-based automatic irrigation logic circuit was used to control the actuators and to manage the crop irrigation operations depending on the soil water content requirements. A developed webserver was used to store the sensor data and update the actuator status by communicating via the Pi-embedded Wi-Fi network. The maximum and minimum average soil water contents, ambient temperatures, humidity levels, and light intensity values were monitored as 33.91 ± 2 to 26.95 ± 1%, 45 ± 3 to 24 ± 3℃, 58 ± 2 to 50 ± 4%, and 7160-90 lx, respectively, during the experimental period. The ICT-based monitoring system ensured precise irrigation scheduling and better performance to provide an adequate water supply and information about the ambient environment.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.170-181
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• 1997

The number of modernized green houses have been increased to produce high quality and high-payoff farm products. The unit investment costs per pyeong($3.3058m^2$) for building a glass house was estimated at 449 thousand won. On the other hand, the unit prices for the PC house with iron frame and the vynil house with automatic control system were revealed 365 thousand won and 93 thousand won respectively. The main objective of the study was to identify the financial feasibility of the green house investment prevailed in rural area. At present, some farmers have selected the green house without any consideration of profitability of crops and accessiblity of their fanning practices and technology. For the soundness of green house cultivation and management, the indices of finacial efficiency for the modernized green houses were necessary. The decesion making criteria such as NPV(Net Present Value), IRR(Internal Rate of Return), B/C Ratio and Payback Period were analyzed for the individual high investment facilities considering the present farmer's technology and on-farm benefits and costs. The results of the feasibility analysis of green houses were as follows: 1. In case of 100% private burden of the investment costs, NPV revealed only positive value for the vinyl house with automatic system and IRR for the house was also estimated at more than 10% and B/C Ratio was amounted to more than 1.0. On the other hand, the other glass and PC houses showed negative NPV and unacceptable B/C ratio and IRR. 2. In case of the following terms and conditions as 50% Government subsidy, 20% loans and 30% farmers burden of the total investment cost, all the green houses showed acceptable IRR, B/C Ratio and NPV. 3. The financial feasibility of the glass house was acceptable in tomato cultivation rather than in cucumber cultivation. The payback periods of cucumber were represented as 8.9 years for glass house, 8.5 years for PC house and 4.1 years for vinyl house with automatic system respectively. In conclution, the glass and PC house cultivation of high value vegetables were only acceptable under the Goverment subsidy and loan systems from the view point of farmer's financial situations. On account of the unacceptable economic rate of return, the government subsidy and loan policy for glass house cultivation should be transfered to the vinyl and pc houses in the future.

• 한국균학회소식:학술대회논문집
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• 2014.05a
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• pp.13-13
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• 2014

Two kinds of mushrooms, Gumji (金芝; Ganoderma) and Soji, were described in old book of Samguksagi (History of the three kingdoms; B.C 57~A.D 668; written by Bu Sik Kim in 1145) in Korea-dynasty. Many kinds of mushrooms were also described in more than 17 kinds of old books during Chosun-dynasty (1392~1910) in Korea. Nowadays, mushroom cultivation has been increased through out the world last decade years. Production of mushrooms has also been increased 10-20% and many varieties have been cultivated. Similar trends were also observed in Korea. Approximately two hundred commercial strains of 37 species in mushrooms were developed and distributed to cultivators. Somatic hybrid variety of oyster mushroom 'Wonhyeong-neutari' were developed by protoplast fusion, and distributed to grower in 1989. The fruiting body yield index of somatic hybrids of Pleurotus ranged between 27 and 155 compared to parental values of 100 and 138. In addition, more diverse mushroom varieties such as Phellinus baumi, Auricularia spp., Pleurotus ferulae, Hericium erinaceus, Hypsizigus marmoreus, Grifola frondosa, Agrocybe aegerita and Pleurotus cornucopiae have been attempted to cultivate in small scale cultivation. Production of mushrooms as food was 190,111 metric tons valued at 800 billion Korean Won (one trillion won if include mushroom factory products; 1dollar = 1,040 Won) in 2011. Major cultivated species are Pleurotus ostreatus, Pleurotus eryngii, Flammulina velutipes, Lentinula edodes, Agaricus bisporus, and Ganoderma lucidum, which cover 90% of total production. Since mushroom export was initiated from 1960 to 1980, the export and import of mushrooms have been increased in Korea. Technology developed for liquid spawn production and automatic cultivation systems lead to the reduction of the production cost resulting in the increasement of mushroom export. However some species were imported because of high production cost for these mushrooms requiring the effective cultivation methods. Developing of effective post-harvest system will be also directly related to mushroom export. In academic area, RDA scientists have been conducting mushroom genome projects. One of the main results is the whole genome sequencing of Flammulina velutipes for molecular breeding. An electrophoretic karyotype of of F. velutipes was obtained using CHEF with 7 chromosomes, with a total genome size of approximately 26.7 Mb. The mususcript of the genome of F. velutipes was published in PLOS ONE this year. For medicinal mushrooms, we have been conducting the genome research on Cordyceps and its related species for developing functional foods using this mushroom. In 2013, Korea Food and Drug Administraion (KFDA) approved Cordyceps mushroom for its value as an immune booster.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.267-274
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• 2017

Recently, several researches have been studied on agricultural automation system according to convergence of IT technology with agriculture. An automatic control system of the growth environment in crops is one of the these researches. The controls of damages caused by diseases and insects pest in crops are mainly carried out by manual mode or semi-automatic mode because of farmer's concerns for poor efficiency. But, this situation needs to be improved because it occurs various problems, such as human exposure to toxic pesticides, environmental pollution and waste due to drug overuse. In order to solve these problems, we developed an automatic quantity control system which based on the amount of pesticides for area under cultivation. The amount of pesticides is calculated according to the manufacturer's instruction for pesticides. To verify the effectiveness of our developed automatic system, we also compared with the systems of manual mode and the semi-automatic mode. The experimental results of a pest control performance of an automatic quantity control system showed that automatic system can reduce overuse of drugs. These results suggested that it can be expected to replace the existing system, with equivalent effectiveness to the manual mode.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.73-86
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• 1995

The automatic control system in the greenhouse have to be developed to the direction of considering various factors the variables such as condition of the cultivation and greenhouse, the properties and types of products. Therefore, it is more important to set up variables appropriately than the problems of automatic control system itself, and the automatic control system which satisfy these problems should be simplified in the aspect of operation. In addition, even the individual automations are not perfect yet, so more studies are required for the development of comprehensive automatic system in korea. This study was carried out to automatize environment control systems for greenhouse, especially from most intensive labor requiring parts such as watering, irrigating liquefied fertilizer, spraying chemicals, mixing and ventilation system, etc. The results are summarized as follows. 1. Control type tensiometer was expected to be desirable in the automation of watering system, therefore, a new tensiometer was designed and developed through this study. 2. The chemical spraying system developed through this study was found to be excellent in the aspect of operation. 3. When pulse type water discharge meter was used in the mixing of liquefied fertilizer and chemical solution, the error of mixing were range $\pm$0.1~0.15%. 4. The water level switch of electrod type used for controlling water level was found to be affective in both control performance and operation cost. 5. The water and level control system can be omitted if each tank size are standardized in accordance with greenhouse size, therefore, the installation cost might be significantly reduced. 6. The developed general controller was excellent in hardware parts, but still remained to be improved in software parts.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
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• 2017.06a
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• pp.252-252
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• 2017

Nowadays water shortage is becoming one of the biggest problems in the Korea. Many different methods are developed for conservation of water. Soil water management has become the most indispensable factor for augmenting the crop productivity especially on soybean (Glycine max L.) because of their high susceptibility to both water stress and water logging at various growth stages. The farmers have been using irrigation techniques through manual control which farmers irrigate lands at regular intervals. Automatic irrigation systems are convenient, especially for those who need to travel. If automatic irrigation systems are installed and programmed properly, they can even save you money and help in water conservation. Automatic irrigation systems can be programmed to provide automatic irrigation to the plants which helps in saving money and water and to discharge more precise amounts of water in a targeted area, which promotes water conservation. The objective of this study was to determine the possible effect of automatic irrigation systems based on soil moisture on soybean growth. This experiment was conducted on an upland field with sandy loam soils in Department of Southern Area Crop, NICS, RDA. The study had three different irrigation methods; sprinkle irrigation (SI), surface drip irrigation (SDI) and fountain irrigation (FI). SI was installed at spacing of $7{\times}7m$ and $1.8m^3/hr$ as square for per irrigation plot, a lateral pipe of SDI was laid down to 1.2 m row spacing with $2.3L\;h^{-1}$ discharge rate, the distance between laterals was 20 cm spacing between drippers and FI was laid down in 3m interval as square for per irrigation plot. Soybean (Daewon) cultivar was sown in the June $20^{th}$, 2016, planted in 2 rows of apart in 1.2 m wide rows and distance between hills was 20 cm. All agronomic practices were done as the recommended cultivation. This automatic irrigation system had valves to turn irrigation on/off easily by automated controller, solenoids and moisture sensor which were set the reference level as available soil moisture levels of 30% at 10cm depth. The efficiency of applied irrigation was obtained by dividing the total water stored in the effective root zone to the applied irrigation water. Results showed that seasonal applied irrigation water amounts were $60.4ton\;10a^{-1}$ (SI), $47.3ton\;10a^{-1}$ (SDI) and $92.6 ton\;10a^{-1}$ (FI), respectively. The most significant advantage of SDI system was that water was supplied near the root zone of plants drip by drip. This system saved a large quantity of water by 27.5% and 95.6% compared to SI, FI system. The average soybean yield was significantly affected by different irrigation methods. The soybean yield by different irrigation methods were $309.7kg\;10a^{-1}$ from SDI $282.2kg\;10a^{-1}$ from SI, $289.4kg\;10a^{-1}$ from FI, and $206.3kg\;10a^{-1}$ from control, respectively. SDI resulted in increase of soybean yield by 50.1%, 7.0% 9.8% compared to non-irrigation (control), FI and SI, respectively. Therefore, the automatic irrigation system supplied water only when the soil moisture in the soil went below the reference. Due to the direct transfer of water to the roots water conservation took place and also helped to maintain the moisture to soil ratio at the root zone constant. Thus the system is efficient and compatible to changing environment. The automatic irrigation system provides with several benefits and can operate with less manpower. In conclusion, improving automatic irrigation system can contribute greatly to reducing production costs of crops and making the industry more competitive and sustainable.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.171-177
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• 2020

Under the influence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, there are many tries to promote productivity enhancement and competitiveness by adapting smart farm technology that converges ICT technologies in agriculture. This smart farming technology is emerging as a new paradigm for future growth in agriculture. The development of real-time cultivation environment monitoring and automatic control system is needed to implement smart farm. Furthermore, the development of intelligent system that manages cultivation environment using monitoring data of the growth of crops is required. In this paper, a fast and efficient development method for implementing a cloud-based smart farm management system using a highly compatible and scalable web platform is proposed. It was verified that the proposed method using the web platform is effective and stable system implementation through the operation of the actual implementation system.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.137-147
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• 2023

Purpose The domestic aquaculture industry in South Korea utilizes both formulated feeds and live feeds for the cultivation of fish. While nutrient-rich live feeds, particularly using fry, have been preferred since the past, formulated feeds are gaining attention due to issues related to overfishing and environmental concerns. Formulated feeds are advantageous for storage and supply but require a sustained feeding regimen due to the comparatively slower growth rate compared to live feeds. As the aging population in rural areas leads to a shortage of labor, automated feeding systems are increasingly being adopted in aquaculture facilities. To enhance the efficiency of such systems, it is crucial to quantitatively analyze the behavioral changes in fish based on the presence or absence of feed. Design/methodology/approach In the study, RGB cameras and infrared cameras were used to analyze fish activity according to feeding, and an outline extraction algorithm was applied to analyze the differences resulting from this. Findings Unlike RGB cameras, infrared cameras are more suitable for analyzing underwater fish activity as they convert objects' thermal energy into images. It was observed that Canny, Sobel, and Prewitt filters showed the most distinct identification of fish activity.