Abstract
Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz), a root crop utilized as food and industrial starch product, develops and maintains its marketable product sub-surface. Often, however, it is difficult to determine the potentially marketable goods available at any given time due to the sub-surface nature of the product and the inability to non-destructively sample. This dilemma has provided an avenue for application of ground penetrating radar. Relatively available designs of this technology, however, are cumbersome and do not provide the efficiencies for field applications. The objective of this research was to determine the functionality of a two Gigahertz frequency IDS GeoRadar C-Thrue antenna for the detection and parameterization of root architecture to be utilized for estimating marketable product. Cassava roots were buried across three horizontal and two vertical orientations to simulate the multi-directional nature of cassava roots. The antenna has dual polarization which also allowed to testing efficacy of polarization for detecting the varying root orientations. This study found that the C-Thrue system, more specifically, the Vertical transmit and Vertical receive polarization, was the most effective at accurately estimating cassava root length and widths at varying angles that simulate root development in true fields.
Highlights
Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is a tropical root crop originally from South America and serves as a staple food source for an estimated 800 million people [1]
This was done since the objective of the article was to establish what are the capabilities of a methods
The objective of this research was to determine the functionality of currently available antenna design for the detection and parameterization of root architecture to be utilized for estimating marketable product, root shape
Summary
Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is a tropical root crop originally from South America and serves as a staple food source for an estimated 800 million people [1]. 20.7 million hectares, which was the biggest percentage increase among the world’s five major food crops. Most of this cultivated increase occurred in Africa (with an increase of 39.2%), which alone produces nearly 145 million metric tons of cassava per year while South East (SE) Asia’s (Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam) average fresh root yields have almost doubled in the last 20 years [4]. In SE Asia, cassava is mostly an industrial crop used for the production of starch and dried chips which allow the breeders to concentrate basically on high fresh root yield, high dry matter content, and adequate plant architecture [3,5]. Strong markets in SE Asia encourage the adoption of new technologies (e.g., highly productive varieties and appropriate cultivation practices)
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