This study was conducted in 2008-2010 in three apple orchards in western Poland and involved a massive catch of the red-belted clearwing moth, Synanthedon myopaeformis (Borkhausen) (Lepidoptera: Sesiidae), and its parasitoid Liotryphon crassiseta (Thomson) (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) in yellow Moericke traps. The flight time for both species was correlated and fell in the first half of July. H...

Landscapes of farms and adjacent areas are known to influence abundance of various arthropods such as pollinators in commercial agricultural ecosystems. In this context, we examined the effect of heterogeneous landscapes surrounding and including commercial apple orchards on pollinator visitation and foraging distance during bloom period from 2011 to 2013 in Pennsylvania. Our results showed tha...

The present study aims the identification and quantification of trace elements in two types of honey samples: Orchard honey and Wild honey from mainland Portugal. Chemical elements content was assessed by Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA). Concentrations were determinated for Ag, As, Br, Ca, Cl, Cs, Cu, Fe, K, La, Mg, Mn, Na, Rb, Sb, Sc, U, V and Zn. The nutritional values of both...

This paper presents a novel multi-sensor framework to efficiently identify, track, localise and map every piece of fruit in a commercial mango orchard. A multiple viewpoint approach is used to solve the problem of occlusion, thus avoiding the need for labour-intensive field calibration to estimate actual yield. Fruit are detected in images using a state-of-the-art faster R-CNN detector, and pai...

—Environmental niche parameters of breeding ranges for two subspecies in the Orchard Oriole complex (Icterus spurius spurius and I. s. fuertesi) were characterized via ecological niche modeling. Niche models formulated from museum specimen collections largely agree with published breeding ranges of both taxa. Furthermore, our findings identify likely suitable habitat of migratory double breedin...

Regular monitoring and assessment of crops is one of the keys to optimal crop production. This research presents the development of a monitoring system called the Crop Monitoring and Assessment Platform (C-MAP). The C-MAP is composed of an image acquisition unit which is an off-the-shelf unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a multispectral camera (near-infrared, green, blue), and an imag...

A crop load estimation is important for efficient apple orchard management. This information is important for planning and assigning appropriate labor pool and equipment for harvesting and transportation of fruits from orchard to packing houses. Current machine vision-based techniques for crop load estimation have achieved only limited success. Two primary factors affecting the accuracy of such...

Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Olivier) (Coleoptera: Dryophthoridae) larvae are cryptic, internal tissue-feeding pests of palm trees that are difficult to detect; consequently, infestations may remain hidden until they are widespread in an orchard. Infested trees and propagable offshoots that develop from axillary buds on the trunk frequently are transported inadvertently to previously uninfested a...

Orchard target-oriented variable rate spraying is an effective method to reduce pesticide drift and excessive residues. To accomplish this task, the orchard targets' characteristic information is needed to control liquid flow rate and airflow rate. One of the most important characteristics is the canopy density. In order to establish the canopy density model for a planar orchard target which is...