Research On Digital Orchard Precision Management Technologies On Single Fruit Tree Identification

With the aim to realize orchard precision management, this paper investigates the identification of single fruit tree, orchard production information collection, fruit tree yield estimation, fruit quality traceability, etc, and develops a digital orchard precision management and traceability system, and then establishes a technology system of digital orchard precision management. The sections below outline the following:(1) A new identification method of single fruit treeThe RFID tags with2D barcodes were used to identify the single fruit tree. The test was conducted in four treatment conditions, which were different distance between RFID tags and reader antennas (condition1), different vertical hanging height on the fruit trees (condition2), different horizontal hanging distance on the fruit trees (condition3) and different shades in the front of tags (condition4). Then the optimization method of single fruit tree identification was proposed, and the results showed that the method could realize identification of single fruit tree with sound application in orchard. The RFID tags with2D barcodes can be read not only by handled RFID readers, but also by the non-professional and low cost equipments, such as cell phones, which realized the identification problem of single fruit tree at low cost.(2) Cell-phone-based bidirectional service technology for orchard production informationBased on the2D barcode for identification of single fruit tree, the bidirectional service technology system was proposed using cell phones, and with the cell phone scanning barcode for production information collection technology and fruit-tree-position-based query technology for environmental information, the bidirectional obtaining system for orchard production information was developed. The system can be transferred into common smart phones to realize rapid collection of agricultural information for single tree and real-time obtaining of nearby environmental information for fruit trees. The system could decrease the cost of professional equipments such as portable RFID readers and writers, which was a low-cost and high-efficiency solution for orchard production information collection.(3) The yield estimation model of fruit image identification on treesTaking Fuji apple as the objects, the matured apple images were photographed using common digital camera, and selected segment threshold combining RGB and HSV color space to identify the images. An identification determination method for single apple was developed based on circle fitting analysis, to solve the problems that single apple was hidden and separated to be misclassitled as multi apples, and multi apples were overlapping to be misclassified as single apple. With hedgerow or similar system of apple trees as the objects, the correlation was established between identified characteristics parameters and single apple tree yield. Taking the identification fruit number sum from images of southeast and northwest directions as the variables, the estimation model was constructed. This method can solve the problem of rapid yield estimation on single fruit tree for orchard precision management.(4) Developing a digital orchard precision management and traceability systemWe designed a digital orchard precision management and traceability system including three sub-systems, and mainly studied the fruit traceability coding and precision traceability method for single fruit tree. The sub-systems included orchard harvest information collection, WebGIS-based precision management for digital orchard and traceability of fruit quality safety. The systems were applied in the experiment district and could realize precision management and fruit traceability for single tree in orchard production.