Principles for determining moisture content and mass of individual peanut kernels by microwave resonator measurements are discussed, and data are presented showing the application of these principles. By measuring the shift in the resonant frequency and the change in the cavity transmission characteristics when a peanut is inserted into the cavity, it is possible to obtain the moisture content ...

Soil moisture is a key variable in dryland ecosystems since it determines the occurrence and duration of vegetation water stress and affects the development of weather patterns including rainfall. However, the lack of ground observations of soil moisture and rainfall dynamics in many drylands has long been a major obstacle in understanding ecohydrological processes in these ecosystems. It is al...

In this study rhubarb stem slices were dried as single layers with thickness of 3 mm in the inlet air temperature range of 50-70  and air velocity of 1 ± 0.2 m/s in a laboratory scale cabinet dryer. The effect of drying air temperature on the drying characteristics was determined and the relationship between the drying parameters with temperature and moisture content was examined. Moisture tran...

The determination of water application parameters for creating an optimal soil moisture profile represents a complex nonlinear optimization problem which renders traditional optimization into a cumbersome procedure. For this reason, an alternative methodology is proposed which combines a numerical subsurface flow model and artificial neural networks ~ANN! for solving the problem in two, fully s...