This paper presents the results obtained regarding the realization of a functional model of equipment for managing in-depth amendments on salted lands and the results regarding the effect of the work performed in three soil conditions. At the same time, the physical properties of the amendment used (phosphogypsum), determined in laboratory conditions, in order to know the problems that may occur during the application work, are presented.

Stalk returning technology was an important way to preserve soil nutrients and reduce soil erosion. It was of great significance to improve the stalk chopping quality, reduce power consumption. On the basis of the previous research, the finger wheel and cutting disc combined device for stalk returning was developed, mainly composed of the sawtooth blade group, the finger wheel and the stalk lifting grid. The stalk was fed into the cutting area of the sawtooth blades by the rotation of the finger wheel, and the operation of the stalk chopping was completed under the combination of the sawtooth blade group and the finger wheel. The movement of stalks in the device with finger wheel and sawtooth blades was analysed by high speed photography, and the rotational speed of finger wheel, the rotational speed of sawtooth blade group, the stalk feeding speed had a great influence on the movement of the stalks. Through orthogonal test and verification test, the clamping angle was 20°, the rotational speed of sawtooth blade group was 800 min-1, the stalk feeding speed was 1.45 m/s, the rotational speed of finger wheel was 110 min-1, the cut length qualified rate was 92.47% and the cutting power was 529.97 W. The test results met the quality requirements of the Chinese national standard. The related research can provide reference for the research of stalk returning device.

Novel tillage tools with high working performance are desired in improving degraded natural grassland tillage system. This paper aimed to find the influence of various geometry structures of very narrow tines on related soil disturbance characteristics and tillage resistances. Four shank-type tillage tines with different cutting head shapes, and the test bench were designed and manufactured. Field experiments under different working depths were conducted. The working depth uniformity, soil over-turning rate, cross-section area of disturbed soil layer, and related forces were obtained, analysed, and compared. Results showed that, the working depth uniformities were above 70%, and soil overturning rates did not exceed 5%. Furrows with V-shaped cross-section were formed. The tine with an arc-shaped cutting edge (AT) obtained a lower draft force value, and the tine with chamfer structure (TTD) presented big differences on the draft force and soil disturbance compared to the tine with blunt cutting edge (TT). Both the draft force and the area of disturbed soil cross section had a good linear relationship with the working depth, and the specific draft force increased with the working depth increasing. Using a very narrow tine with chamfers to split and break the soil layer on the natural grassland without pulling or dragging the roots could be an appropriate tillage method applied for improving degraded natural grassland, but still need further surveys.

The study aimed to develop a small-scale drum dryer to meet the small enterprises demand in the context to produce ready-to-eat food products to support stunting prevention. The design, manufacture, and thermal evaluation of a double drum dryer had been carried out. The development stage consisted of sizing the main components, creating technical drawings, determining component materials, manufacturing, and performance tests. The dryer drum dimension was 500 mm in diameter and 400 mm in length and 20 mm in thickness. The capacity of the double drum dryer was 10 kg/batch. The double drum dryer was powered by a 3-phase electromotor 2.24 kW. There are three transmission systems applied, i.e. gearbox, chain-sprocket and belt-pulley. The feeding system applied was nip feeding. The heat source originated from the steamer using an electric heater. Results of the test showed that the double drum drying machine had worked well as expected. The temperature distribution of both drums was fairly uniform, and the temperature uniformity in the drum surface showed good uniformity (minimum gradient temperature). The double drum dryer was able to produce good characteristics of products in the form of ready-to-eat products made from several ingredients (i.e. millets and red bean) which contain high macro and micronutrient.

The blurring of crop images acquired by agricultural Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) due to sudden inputs by operators, atmospheric disturbance, and many other factors will eventually affect the subsequent crop identification, information extraction, and yield estimation. Aiming at the above problems, the new proposed combined deblurring algorithm based on the re-weighted graph total variation (RGTV) and L0-regularized prior, and the other two representative deblurring algorithms were applied to restore blurry crop images acquired during UAV flight, respectively. The restoration performance was measured by subjective vision, and objective evaluation indexes. The crop shape-related and texture-related feature parameters were then extracted, the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier with four common kernel functions was implemented for crop classification to realize the purpose of crop information extraction. The deblurring results showed that the proposed algorithm performed better in suppressing the ringing effect and preserving the image fine details, and retained higher objective evaluation indexes than the other two deblurring algorithms. The comparative analysis of different classification kernel functions showed that the Polynomial kernel function with an average recognition rate of 94.83% was most suitable for crop classification and recognition. The research will help in further popularization of crop monitoring based on UAV low-altitude remote sensing.

In the abandoned mine area with Karst landform in China, soils are few and thin but rocks are common, traditional planting hole diggers are unequal to work in rocks for vegetation restoration. A reamer bit with variable lateral drilling radius was designed based on the PDC (polycrystalline diamond compact) bit technology and metamorphic mechanism. Two lateral camber blades with PDC teeth were installed inside the bit body, a screw mechanism was employed as the actuation and a spatial double triangle mechanism was taken for the transmission. The curve of the camber blade was specially defined thus the reaming load was decentralized to 85.7% teeth on the blade. The kinematics of the lateral reamer bit was analysed, the mapping models from the actuation to the reaming radius and speed were established. Concrete samples were reamed indoors from 240mm to 407mm in diameter, the reaming cutting load and time length were measured and analysed. The lateral reamer bit was approved with the experiment results, this study provided equipment support for digging the planting hole in rocky abandoned mine areas and also expanded the PDC bit application.

The farmland in Xinjiang of China is mainly sandy loam soil, on which the crops are subject to flat planting with mulched film. Before planting, the soil should go through deep ploughing in a short operation period, thus there is high demand on the high-speed plow and it is necessary to optimize the plow based on tillage resistivity to improve its working performance. In view of optimal design of the surface of high-speed reversible plow, simulation test was adopted to optimize the resistivity model, then finite element method was used to test the force condition of the plow. At last, the tillage resistivity of the plow after optimization was tested by soil bin test. Test results showed that, at tilling depth of 300 mm, tilling speed of 12 km/hm, and when the plow height was 250 mm with cutting angle of 37° and dozer angle of 84°, the plow achieved the optimal tillage resistivity and the optimal combination was 2.85 N/cm2; at tilling depth of 300 mm, soil moisture content of 17%, and soil compactness of 220 N/cm2, the maximum tensile stress on the surface of the plow was 115.61 MPa and total deformation was 2.869 mm; the maximum flexible strain of the plow was 9.38e-4. Soil bin test showed that, at tilling depth of 300 mm, dozer angle of 84°, the optimized high-speed reversible plow reduced the tillage resistance by 17.9% compared with common high-speed reversible plow made in China, and can provide reference to the design of high-horsepower tractors.

The Brabender farinograph is a device with which important indications for baking are obtained, namely: dough development time (DDT), water absorption (WA), dough stability time (DST), softening degree (SD), Farinograph Quality Number (FQN), important parameters for determining flour mixtures. These parameters are represented on the farinographic curve drawn during the farinograph test. Dough development or formation (formation of gluten) is represented by the ascending branch of the farinographic curve, which has a steep ascending slope, because time (expressed in minutes), fixed on the abscissa of the diagram, has relatively low values (about 1.2–3 min for regular flours), while consistency, fixed on the ordinate of the diagram, reaches the maximum value (peak time) of the dough. In comparison, the descending branch of the farinogram, which starts from the maximum value of the dough consistency (peak time), has a slow descending slope, because the kneading time is extended up to 20 minutes, and the consistency decreases relatively little. The paper presents the appreciation of this branch of the farinogram by mathematical equations for several types of doughs from wheat flour mixed with different percentages of salt.