No abstract

<span>Agricultural sector is one of the economic pillars of developing nations, because it provides means of boosting gross domestic profit. However, weeds pose a threat to food crop by competing with it for nutrients and undermining the profit to be made from it. The treatment of these weeds is necessary, but at minimal impact on the actual food crop. Herbicide usage is one major means of weed control, owning to the expensive and labour-intensive nature of hand weeding. Recently, the need for site specific spraying has been on the rise because of health concerns which have been raised on the effect of herbicides on food crops and the effect on the environment. Most research on the field focuses on accurately identifying the weeds whilst neglecting the weed control. In this research, we apply fuzzy logic-based expert system to control how herbicide is sprayed on low-land rice in order to reduce excessive herbicide usage. The system supplies the control with weed density (Box size) and confidence level. The values of both are then passed to the fuzzy logic control for spray decision. The Sugeno as well as Mamdani models were tested using generated values for detected weed box size and confidence levels of the computer vision. The mean absolute error obtained was 0.9 for both, and 0.3 and 0.2 respectively, for the mean square error. The error shows how accurate the system can be and with low error value, it shows that the system implementation is capable of providing control for spraying of herbicides which in turn will yield more returns for low-land rice farmers.</span>

No abstract

Micronutrient imbalance in some soils is a major challenge for cultivation of crops. Hence the need to assess their status and variability in agricultural soils. The aim of this research was to assess the micro-nutrient status, variability and hazard potential in some soils within eastern part of kogi state of Nigeria. Six mapping units, 2a, 17a, 19a, 19c, 21b and 22b from soil map of Nigeria, which dominated this region were chosen for the experiment. These represent wetland and savannah areas, with well drained and poorly drained loamy sand, sandy loam or sandy loam surfaces over sandy clay loam subsurface. Surface samples were collected in each mapping unit using soil auger. Samples were well-labelled in sampling bags and used for laboratory analyses of micronutrients. The results showed that the available zinc in the surface soils was moderate with exception of high values recorded at two points within the 2a mapping unit. The boron levels were low to moderate while moderate to high contents of iron were observed. The findings also showed that harmful effects of zinc were not likely in pedons 17a4, 19a1, 19a3, 19c2, 21b1, 21b3, 21b4 and 22a4 where the Hazard Quotient (HQ) values obtained were less than 1. Other pedons in Kogi East have likely harmful effects of iron as their calculated HQ values were greater than 1.