Tomato Harvesting Research Articles

To Study the Ripening Process of Tomato Using Ethanol

After the harvesting of tomato from the field the samples are stored in the room temperature (26.84oC±3.0oC) some sample kept as untreated samples around 4 to 5 and some samples are to be treated and are kept to the other side and treatment is done by ethanol around 2 to 5 ml per kg and after treatment in sample slightly less weight decrease in treated sample as compare to untreated samples and titrable acidity also decrease very slowly in treated sample as compare to the untreated samples. Some of the test is performed like chlorophyll test, carotenoids, titrable acidity, and weight of samples and shelf life of untreated is 6- 8 days and treated fruit shelf life is around 12 days after that decaying of the samples.

Pyrolysis of tomato harvest waste as a function of temperature and duration: Characteristics, production energy, and carbon dioxide emission in field conditions

This study aimed to determine the physicochemical properties and production energy of biochars obtained from tomato harvest waste as a function of temperature and duration (holding time), and the influence of biochars on soil CO2 emission in the field condition. Pyrolysis was conducted in a 50 L-reactor with an electrical heating system. With a rise in pyrolysis temperature and holding time, pH, carbon, ash and fixed carbon contents, and energy consumption per unit mass of biochar increased, while volatiles content, and biochar yield decreased. The nitrogen content of biochars decreased with the increased holding time under the same temperature. Soil CO2 emission rose and declined with biochars produced at low and high temperatures, respectively, when mixed with the soil. The difference between the lowest (at 500 °C with the holding times of 240 min) and highest biochars-related soil CO2 emissions (at 300 °C with the holding times of 40 min) was 38.6 %. The pyrolysis temperature of 500 °C regardless of holding time appeared to reduce the energy consumption due to the biochar production, and soil respiration.

Grain size-induced changes in carbon and nitrogen concentrations and characteristics of tomato harvest residue biochar

The production of biochar is one of the new methods used in the recycling of organic wastes. The use of biochar may increase carbon storage in the soil for longer periods of time. In this study, carbon and nitrogen contents of different sizes of tomato harvest residue biochar (TB) produced at different temperatures and holding times were determined. TB produced at five different temperatures (300, 400, 500, 600, 700 °C) and three different durations (20, 40, and 80 min) was divided into three different grain size classes ( 0.05). On the other hand, effect of TB size on C and N contents was statistically significant (p < 0.05). As TB grain size increases, BET surface area and total pore volume increased, while average pore radius decreased. The larger size of biochar (2–4 mm) demonstrated highly porous and honey-combed structures and contained both micro- and mesopores, which create a high specific surface area. It was suggested that the properties of biochar produced under the same conditions may vary according to their size and different sizes of biochar may be preferred according to the intended use.

Experimental and theoretical analysis of fruit plucking patterns for robotic tomato harvesting

Detachment of fruit from the plants is a basic and essential step either in manual or in robotic harvesting. Usually there are two methods involved in fruit detachment one is fruit cutting and the other is fruit plucking. Compared with fruit cutting, fruit plucking is more simple, low cost, and flexible in robotic harvesting. Different plucking patterns have been adopted in various prototypes for tomato, cherry tomato, apple and strawberry fruit harvesting. Although, it was found that there were differences in the success rate, efficiency and damage of different plucking patterns, moreover in-depth analysis still not carried out. In this paper, combining the classical load-deformation and fatigue break theory with the flexibility of the peduncle and pedicel are presented, theoretical modeling and discussion of different plucking based experimental results were performed. It was found from force transmission, that the load applied on the abscission layer was different from the motive power. Large deformation may happen in the whole peduncle and pedicel and lead to failure, inefficiency or even collision with obstacles in the canopy. Complex combined loading lead to the final break of the abscission layer. For reciprocating twisting pattern, long tomato peduncle and pedicel may take excessive swing times to realize the fatigue break of the abscission layer. In addition, the potential damage to fruit or the whole cluster can be well explained by this theory. The performance of different fruit plucking patterns may be related to the different species and cultivation modes, this research provides a good analytical basis for revealing the complex mechanisms of robotic fruit plucking and making a practical decision.

Cutting Point Detection Using a Robot with Point Clouds for Tomato Harvesting

This paper proposes a method to detect cutting points on tomato peduncles using a harvesting robot. The main objective of this study was to develop automated harvesting robots. The harvesting robot was equipped with an RGB-D (Red, Blue, Green, and Depth) camera to detect peduncles and an end effector to harvest tomatoes. Robots must be able to detect where to cut crops during harvesting. The proposed method was used to detect the cutting points on peduncles using a point cloud captured by the RGB-D camera. Our robot was used to identify the cutting points on target tomato peduncles at an actual farm to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach experimentally. Using the proposed method, the harvesting robot could detect the cutting points on tomatoes.

Seaweed Extract Improved Yields, Leaf Photosynthesis, Ripening Time, and Net Returns of Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum Mill.).

Overuse of chemical fertilizers in the intensive greenhouse tomato cultivation system has limited the increase of plant production. Nowadays, seaweed extract has been gradually applied in agriculture as an effective way to achieve a higher yield of crops, but its effects on tomato cultivation have not been fully explored. In this study, a greenhouse experiment was conducted in Shandong province of China with a novel seaweed extract (SES) originated from Sargassum horneri, to investigate the effects of different doses of SES (0, 30, 60, and 90 kg hm–2) on yields, quality, ripening time, and net returns of tomato. The results indicated that the application of SES significantly increased tomato yield by 4.6–6.9% compared to the control, which is attributed to the improved photosynthetic capacity of tomato leaves. The yields of tomato increased first and then decreased with increasing dosage of SES, and SES applied at the dose of 60 kg hm–2 achieved the highest tomato yield. Compared to the control, SES at 60 and 90 kg hm–2 significantly increased the hardness of tomato by 10.2 and 19.8%, respectively, and this can help to reduce losses during transportation and storage. Moreover, SES shortened the ripening time of tomato, and the coincidence between tomato harvest and sale price peak achieved a high net return.

Assessment of information and training needs of tomato producers in northern states of Nigeria

To achieve sustainable growth in tomato value chain, evaluation of the critical needs of actors in the chain is imperative. The study therefore examined personal characteristics, training, information needs and production challenges of tomato producers in Kano and Katsina states. Primary data were collected with the aid of structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics. All respondents were male, 91.8 per cent married, about 73.6 per cent were below 50 years old and 51.0 per cent had more than four family size. Farming was the major occupation of respondents (93.1%). The predominant farming system practices include mixed farming (42.8%), mixed cropping (35.8%) and sole cropping (18.9%). Most of the producers were cultivating 1–5 ha (45.9%). Yield range of 26–40 t/ha was realized by 61.7 per cent of producers. The major sources of information on tomato production among respondents were radio (48.4%), friends (30.2%) and extension agents (28.3%). The most important Information needs were on credit/loan procurement (69.8%), marketing channels (64.8%), processing and harvesting of tomatoes (57.9%), weather (56.6%) and health/nutrition (56.6%). Whereas, the most important training needs were on safe use of agro-chemicals (85.5%), storage of seeds and fruits (82.4%), nursery preparation techniques and weather (79.9%), weed management (78.6%). Challenges experienced by the respondents were on pest and disease infestation (98.1%), high cost of planting materials and farm chemicals (95.0%), high transportation cost (93.7%), high labour cost (89.9%) and inadequate storage facilities (89.3%). The study recommends intervention in the areas of needs in order to achieve meaningful development in the tomato value chain.

Designing of CNC Based Agricultural Robot with a Novel Tomato Harvesting Continuum Manipulator Tool

Designing of CNC Based Agricultural Robot with a Novel Tomato Harvesting Continuum Manipulator Tool

Development of an automatic tomato harvesting robot by deep learning using a universal vacuum gripper

Development of an automatic tomato harvesting robot by deep learning using a universal vacuum gripper

Технічне та технологічне забезпечення краплинного зрошення овочевих культур

The article proposes a scheme of drip irrigation for growing vegetables in the backyard. In the conditions of change of climatic conditions, the question of lack of moisture sharply arises. For growing vegetables in areas of risky agriculture, irrigation is an important condition for obtaining high yields. In order to increase the technological efficiency of growing vegetables at the department of general agriculture of the Central Ukrainian National Technical University developed a prototype of a drip irrigation system for vegetables. A series of studies was conducted to provide moisture to the site and preserve soil air exchange. With the use of conventional irrigation, possible negative consequences in the form of soil flooding, the root system of plants is not able to develop evenly and is deficient in oxygen. The calculation and the scheme of drip irrigation of tape type are offered. In the proposed design for drip irrigation of the area under vegetable crops used a container with water to provide a small constant water pressure in the strips. This made it possible to water as needed, as well as to use a solution tank to feed the plants, protect them from stress, improve development and increase yields. The use of drip splicing allowed the first fruits to appear a decade earlier and increase yields by 25-50%. The use of drip tape irrigation system on the experimental plots allowed to increase the quantity and quality of tomato harvest. Also, the use of drip irrigation allowed to maintain the optimal water-physical regime in the root layer of the soil, which created the conditions for a better harvest. Thus, with the change of climatic situation, most of the Kirovohrad region was looking for in the zone of risky agriculture. Drip irrigation has an almost universal application, is effective in intensive technologies for growing crops and ornamental crops, as well as in garden areas, when the condition of the plant largely depends on the accuracy of maintaining the humidity and nutrition of plants.

Development of automatic tomato harvesting system using universal vacuum gripper and RGB-D camera

Development of automatic tomato harvesting system using universal vacuum gripper and RGB-D camera

Using Fuzzy Mask R-CNN Model to Automatically Identify Tomato Ripeness

Manual inspection and harvesting of ripening tomatoes is time consuming and labor intensive. Smart agriculture can emphasize the use of digital horticultural resources for farming and can increase farm sustainability; to that end, we proposed a fuzzy Mask R-CNN model to automatically identify the ripeness levels of cherry tomatoes. First, to annotate the images automatically, a fuzzy c-means model was used to maintain the spatial information of various foreground and background elements of the image. Then, a Hough transform method was applied to locate the specific geometric edge positions of the tomatoes. Each data point of the image space was annotated to a JavaScript Object Notation file. Second, annotated images were trained with Mask R-CNN to identify each tomato precisely. Finally, to prevent preharvest abscission of tomatoes, a hue-saturation-value color model and fuzzy inference rules were used to predict the ripeness of the tomatoes. A trigonometric function with Euclidian distance was calculated from the origin of calyx and stem to the bottom of the tomato to obtain the position of the pedicle head and dissect the fruit in a timely manner. For detection of 100 tomato images, Mask R-CNN achieved an accuracy of 98.00%. The ripeness classification of tomatoes achieved overall weighted precision and recall rates of 0.9614 and 0.9591, respectively. Thus, automatic tomato harvesting applications can empower farmers to make better decisions and enhance overall production efficiency and yield.

Tomato harvesting assist robot system

Tomato harvesting assist robot system

Nitrogen in soil and subsurface drip-irrigated processing tomato plants (Solanum lycopersicum L.) as affected by fertilization level

Over the last 20 years, subsurface drip irrigation has been widely adopted for processing tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) production in California. Subsurface drip irrigation allows application of water and nitrogen (N) fertilizer throughout the season. As a result, optimal N fertilization approaches are likely different than for furrow-irrigated systems. A project was initiated to develop and validate an N fertilization budget with site specific input for drip-irrigated processing tomatoes. Nitrogen partitioning in the aboveground biomass was determined in ten commercial fields. At harvest, the N concentration in the fruit averaged 1.5 g N kg−1, which accounted for 64% of the total N in the aboveground biomass. A budget, which considered residual soil mineral N, nitrate in the irrigation water and N mineralized from soil organic matter, was implemented in a replicated field trial with three application rates ranging from 152 to 306 kg ha−1. Average yields reached 130 and 140 Mg ha−1 in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Nitrogen application rates had no significant effect on yield. However, across both years the total N in the aboveground biomass increased significantly by 0.875 kg kg-1 of additional N. Nitrogen mineralization of residues incorporated after the tomato harvest was slow during the winter, with soil nitrate levels in the top 60 cm of the profile not being different from soil where the residues had been removed after the tomato harvest.

Galant – new sort of tomato for the Far East

Relevance. Tomato is one of the most spreaded vegetable cultures in Khabarovsk Territory. Presence of the favourable weather conditions in the region, high ecological plasticity of tomato sorts promote the tomato cultivation in open and protected ground everywhere and in large areas. The main cause of crop failure or large losses of tomatoes in the Far East is a complex, unpredictable, not meeting anywhere else in Russia the monsoon climate causing a strong waterlogging observed almost every year in July-August, the period of the main tomato harvest forming. Such weather conditions promote the development of main diseases of the solanaceous cultures, and their most aggressive races often appear. Therefore a high natural infectious background and a sharply variable hydrothermal regime are the main limiting factors in the cultivation of tomatoes in the Khabarovsk Territory.Methods. Work on the creation of a new variety with the given parameters was started in 2007 by conducting intervarietal crossings between Volgogradsky 5/95 and Zarya Vostoka varieties, followed by multiple selections against a natural infectious background. The early ripening variety of Zarya Vostoka is a local selection variety, was used in the breeding process as an early maturity donor, and Volgogradsky 5/95, a stem type of plant. The main method of breeding work to create new varieties of tomato was analytical with continuous selection. All the necessary phenological, biometric and phytopathological observations and counts according to methods generally accepted in this culture. The purpose of our research was to create a new strain tomato variety with a short period of vegetation, forming the harvest of fruit before the appearance and spread of the disease and high productive potential.Results. This publication presents the information about the new local tomato sort Galant. This sort was received by inter-sort hybridization between the stem sort Volgogradsky 5/95 and local early ripening sort Zarya Vostoka. The sort was selected as a result long-term selection on the natural infectious background with the assessment by progeny of promising lines for a complex of morpho-biological and economically valuable traits in monsoon climate conditions of Priamurye. The new sort is different from other studied non-district and local sorts by fastripeness, high productivity, resistance to main diseases and also by stem type of plant.

Physical methods and their influence on seed sowing qualities and harvest of tomatoes of different precocity

The results of studies of the influence of laser treatment on tomatoes’ seeds are given. The treatment increased germination and seed germination energy, as well as the yield.

Toward Smart Tomato Greenhouse: The Fourth Tomato Harvesting Robot Competition

Agriculture, one of the most important industries for human life, is faced with serious problems, the shortage of workers, the falling birthrate and the aging population, global warming and natural disasters, etc. Tomato is one of the most important fruit vegetables, and most tomatoes in Japan are cultivated in the greenhouses, or large scale farms as the solution for effective production toward smart greenhouses, whereas the high temperature and high humidity, construction and management costs are big problems and technologies such as environmental control system, factory automation technology, AI, robotics are required. We had held Tomato Harvesting Robot competition from 2014 toward realization of smart tomato greenhouse aiming at promote the automated tomato harvesting to reduce the working time of harvesting. In this paper, we report on the tomato harvesting robot competition and the results mainly from the fourth competition.

Domates hasat atıklarının farklı sıcaklıklarda prolizi ile elde edilen biyokömürün toprağın dönemsel besin elementi konsantrasyonlarına etkisi

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of biochars obtained by pyrolysis of the tomato harvest residues at different temperatures on some available nutrient concentrations of soil. For this purpose, biochars were obtained by pyrolysis of the tomato harvest residues at 500 and 700° C for 80 minutes. The biochars were applied to the parcels prepared in 50x50 cm dimensions under field conditions to 3 tons per decare and they were left to stand in natural conditions. 2 months after the application, soil samples were taken in 4 periods at one-month intervals. In these examples, plant available and/or extractable nutrients were determined. According to the results, it was observed that biochar applications did not affect the nutrient concentrations of the soil and had a negative effect on some nutrients. The pyrolysis temperatures had no effect on the efficiency of biochar on soil nutrient concentration.

Diagnosis of losses in the mechanized harvest of two cultivars of industrial tomato

The production of industrial tomato in Brazil has been growing in the last years and the form of harvest adopted has been mechanized. The diagnosis of tomato fruit losses is fundamental to the harvesting process. The industrial process was destroyed and the statistical process control. The experiment was carried out in a field of 45 ha in an industrial tomato crop irrigated by central pivot in the municipality of Corumba de Goias, GO, Brazil. A sampling grid of 60 x 60 m (120 sample points) and 100 x 50 (84 sample points), respectively, were used as georeferenced samples to quantify weight loss and poisoning. As the main losses, in the mechanized harvest, the fruit of industrial tomato do not occur with mature fruit. A N901 cultivar had a lower quality relation than a HMX7885. The mechanical tomato harvesting process is influenced by the random power medium during a larger part of the operation. However, throughout the year, the tasks are not random, they are involved with the operation and the maintenance and maintenance of the process is necessary.

Dual-arm cooperation and implementing for robotic harvesting tomato using binocular vision

Dual-arm cooperation is considered as an available approach to improve the poor efficiency by autonomous robotic harvesting. While, cooperating arm movements using visual information is a key challenge for harvesting robots working in non-structured environments. In this paper, we develop a dual-arm cooperative approach for a tomato harvesting robot using a binocular vision sensor. Firstly, a tomato detection algorithm combining AdaBoost classifier and color analysis is proposed and employed by the harvesting robot. Then, a fast three-dimensional scene reconstruction method is obtained in the simulation environment by using point clouds acquired from a stereo camera. Integration of tomato detection, target localization, motion planning and real-time control for dual-arm movements, the dual-arm cooperation for robotic harvesting can be implemented. To validate the proposed approach, field experiments were conducted with the potted tomatoes in greenhouse. Over 96% of target tomatoes were correctly detected with the speed of about 10 fps. The positioning error of robot end-point of less than 10 mm was achieved for large scale direct positioning of the harvesting robot. With the vacuum cup grasping and wide-range cutting, the success rate of robotic harvesting achieved 87.5%. Meanwhile, the harvesting cycle time excluding cruise time was less than 30 s. These results indicate that the dual-arm cooperative approach is feasible and practical for robotic harvesting in non-structured environments.