Abstract
Rice-duck integrated farming is an effective step under today’s sustainable development background. To make better economic and ecological benefits, a rice-duck agroecosystem is established and kept, in which the paddy field, rice, and the duck mutually promote one another. But the duck density and complex stocking time must be rationally selected. Aiming to attain quantitative assessment and optimal selection of the duck density and complex stocking time in this kind of systems, a methodology based on proposed mathematical models in terms of comparative economic and ecological benefits is addressed. Then the models are solved by a hybrid intelligent algorithmNN-GAthat integrates the Neural Networks (NN) and Genetic Algorithm (GA), making use of the fitting ability in nonlinear fitness context of Neural Networks and the optimization ability of the Genetic Algorithm. Besides, numerical examples are demonstrated in order to test the proposed models. Results reveal that the methodology is reasonable and feasible.
Highlights
Nowadays, the sustainable development has been a hotspot issue and there is a growing concern on high crop production because of its high cost of pesticides and expensive fertilizers and on their corresponding forms of environmental pollution [1]
How many ducks should be bred in a given paddy field? How long should they grow together with rice in the paddy field? What can be done for a farmer to select a rational duck density and a reasonable complex cultivation and stocking span of time? That is one of the most important problems in practice
Raising too many ducks or the complex stocking time is too long in a certain paddy field can badly affect rice tillering, reduce the highest seedlings and efficient panicles, and even affect the rice with respect to panicle and maturity, which means a considerable reduction of rice yields
Summary
The sustainable development has been a hotspot issue and there is a growing concern on high crop production because of its high cost of pesticides and expensive fertilizers and on their corresponding forms of environmental pollution [1]. Due to rice cultivation, greenhouse gases are emitted from the rice field as by-products, including CH4, CO2, and N2O [2]. Rice-duck integrated farming is such an effective way that an agroecosystem is established and kept to reduce the dosage of pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers, to reduce the fluxes of greenhouse gas emission and to improve the quality of rice and duck products. Jin et al have investigated the effect of raising ducks in paddy field at a density of 180 ducks/hm2 [7]. There exists no literature contribution on the issue of integrated effect of duck density and complex cultivation and stocking time (called complex stocking time for short ) on economic and ecological benefits that can be attained
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