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ITAFE’05 International Congress on Information Technology in Agriculture, Food & Environment

October 12-14, 2005. Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey

Congress Programme

12 OCT 05

Salon A (Orange Hall) Mithat Özsan Grand Hall

Salon B (Lemon Hall) Mithat Özsan Small Hall

Salon C (Grapefruit Hall) İ.Akif Kansu Hall

08.00-09.30 Registration (Congress Foyer)

09.30-10.30 Congress Opening Prof.Dr. Zeynel Cebeci, Co-President of the Congress Ahmet Yeşilpınar, Vice Head of Adana Chamber of Industry Ian Houseman, General Secretary, European Federation of InformationTechnology in Agriculture Prof.Dr. Ayzin Küden, Dean of Faculty of Agriculture, Çukurova University Prof.Dr. Alper Akınoğlu, Rector of the Çukurova University Prof.Dr. Vahit Kirişçi, Head of Commission for Agriculture, Forest and Rural Affairs at National Grand Assembly of Turkey & Adana Parliamenter M. Cahit Kıraç, Governor of Adana Province

10.30-11.00 Coffee Break (Congress Foyer)

11.00-11.30 Keynote Session I Chair: M. Akgül ICT in Agriculture: A Step Forwards Turkey’s Integration to the EU Alexander Sideridis (Agricultural University of Athens, Greece)

11.45-12.35 Session 1.1 Multimedia and Internet Applications-I Chair: A.Gül 026 Web Site Evaluation in the Context of Support and Promotion for Business in Forestry Sector Z. Andreopoulou, M..Vlachpoulou, B.Manos, S. Vasilladou, J. Papathanisou (GR) 079 On English Loanwords In The Romanian Of E-Commerce And E-Business G.Rata (RO)

Session 2.1IT in Biotechnology and Bioinformatics Chair: N. Özcan 068 Information Technology in Animal Breeding L. Paura, I. Arhipova (BG) 153 Solving Steady Flow Problems Under Pressure Closed Pipes M. Theocharis,S. Ntalagiorgos, C. Pontikakos, A. Giannelos (GR)

Session 3.1 Automatic Control Systems Chair: I. Houseman 107 Use of Artificial Neural Networks for Food Process Control and Modeling T.Kahyaoğlu, S.Kaya (TR) 110 Internet-Based Temperature Control System M. Arslan, A.Erişen (TR)

12.35-14.00 Lunch (Central Cafeteria)

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12 OCT 05

Salon A (Orange Hall) Mithat Özsan Grand Hall

Salon B (Lemon Hall) Mithat Özsan Small Hall

Salon C (Grapefruit Hall) İ.Akif Kansu Hall

14.00-14.30 Keynote Session II Chair: S.Öztekin ICT in Turkish Agriculture at the Accession Talks with the European Union Kamil Okyay Sındır (Ege Univ, Turkey)

14.40-15.40 Session 1.2 Multimedia and Internet Applications-III Chair: N. Açıkgöz 031 Using Metadata to Describe e-Government Services for Agriculture N. Manouselis,M. Ntaliani,N. Palavitsinis,B. Mahaman, C. Costopoulou,A. Sideridis (GR) 148 Mobile Technology-PDA’s or Paper? S.Wagner (DK) 159 Supporting Volunteers Fire-fighters Through Mobile Communities Ch. Patrikakis,M. Nonda,S. Kaloudis,A. Sideridis (GR)

Session 2.2 IT in Education and Training Chair: A.Sabancı 028 Investigating Digital Learning Repositories’ Coverage of Agriculture-related Topics A.Tzikopoulos,N. Manouselis,C. Yialouris C. Costopoulou,A. Sideridis (GR) 069 Profession Segregation Decrease in the Latvia Branch of Information Technologies I. Arhipova,S. Balina (BG) 163 Characteristics and Supporting Technologies of Blended Learning and a Methodological Framework for its Evaluation M. Vlachopoulou,S. Chrysopoulou,B.l Manos (GR)

Session 3.2 Miscellaneous-I Chair: S.Öztekin 008 Time dependent modulus of elasticity of vegetative material. I.Maria Dal Fabbro,E. Aparecida Cuccioli, E. Di Raimo M. A. Arantes Bastos (GR) 027 Identification and Evaluation of Traceability Schemes for a Particular Supply Chain I. Manikas, B. Manos,M. Vlachopoulou,V. Manthou G.Tsekouropoulos (GR) 041 Design, Development and Evaluation a Three Bottom Two-Way Moldboard Plow Adapted for 65-75 HP Tractors M. H. Kianmehr,J. Khazaei, S. R.H. Beygi (IR)

15.40-16.10 Coffee Break (Congress Foyer)

16.10-17.30 Session 1.3 Multimedia and Internet Applications-III Chair: K.O.Sındır 078 Computer-mediated Communication: an Impediment for “Proper” English? O.Boldae (RO) 133 Adopting E-marketing in Agriculture A.Asadi (IR) 139 Information Architecture Requirements for Agricultural Web Portals N. Manouselis,Ch. Patrikakis,C. Costopoulou,A. Sideridis (IR) 151 FloatNet: An Intelligent Web Service Environment for Tobacco Transplants Production A. Liopa-Tsakalidis,P. Barouchas,A. Koulopoulos, E. Sakkopoulos,G. Tzimas,L. Panagiotopoulos (GR)

Session 2.3 IT in Economics and Rural Development Chair: B.Manos 061 AARINENA Sub-Regional Project: Developing the Database of Western Asia Agricultural Researchers T. Ebrahimi,H. Atil,M. Motevalli Haghighi (IR-TR) 101 Existing Rural ICT In Turkey And ICT For Development: Is Transformation Possible? M.Kırlıdoğ, Ö.Gür (TR) 102 Do Information And Communication Technologies (ICT) Have Any Meaning For Rural Women? D. Özer,K. Demiryürek,Y. Yılmaz,B. Gülçubuk C. Taluğ (TR) 178 Agricultural Information System in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Z.Demirel Atasoy, D.Günay (TR)

Session 3.3 Miscellaneous-II Chair: E.Efe 009 Frequency Effect on the Dynamical Speckle of Particles in Suspension S. Rodrigues,I. M. Dal Fabbro, I. Menuzzo Lucon R. Alves Braga Júnior,A. Machado Enes (BR) 066 Electrochemical Treatment of Livestock Wastewater Using Ti/IrO2 Anode Electrode K.J.Park (KR) 072 Do Not Reinvent the Wheel: Extending the Life Span of Agriculture Models C. Teh, I. Henson,H.Harun,K.J. Goh,M.H.A. Husni (MY) 083 The Present State Ammonia Emission In Slovak Republic And Factors Conditioning Their Production And Possibility Of Their Reduction J. Šottník (SK)

18.00-21.00 WELCOME COCKTAIL (University Guesthouse Restaurant)

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FloatNet: An Intelligent Environment for Tobacco Transplants Production

Aglaia Liopa-Tsakalidis1, Pantelis Barouchas2, Athanasios Koulopoulos2, Evangelos Sakkopoulos3,4, Giannis Tzimas3,4, Leonidas Panagiotopoulos2. 1 National Agricultural Research Foundation, Institute of Plant Protection, Amerikis and National Road, P.O. Box 5149, Patras 26004, Greece 2Technological Educational Institute of Mesologi, Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Department of Agricultural Engineer & Water Resources, Nea Ktiria, Mesologi, Greece 3Computer Engineering & Informatics dpt, University of Patras, Greece. 4Research Academic Computer Technology Institute, Internet and Multimedia Research Unit 5, Patras, Greece Abstract A web environment has been designed for managing float system tobacco transplants cultivation. The environment is called FloatNET and includes an integrated interface supports Tobacco transplants cultivation. The float system is located in a greenhouse and consists of floor beds - so called ‘wet beds’ – were filled with nutrient solution. Transplants are developed on float Styrofoam trays filled with a soil mixture. The system is controlled for solution temperature, electrical conductivity and pH. The air temperature and relative humidity are also important for the development of transplants. The aim is to give the producer the opportunity to access for the first time float system consulting services for tobacco transplants cultivation that meet his/her particular needs over the web. Also, official managers or cooperative stations in a regional or a state level can give their work a surplus-value. Overall the design of this environment aims at encouraging the development and support of tobacco transplants float system in Greece. Keywords: Tobacco transplants, float system, intelligent information environment, web services. Introduction More than ninety percent of tobacco transplants in Greece are produced in containerized systems in greenhouses that called float systems (Ntzanis, 2003). This system is targeting in production of healthy transplants, the first step toward growing high quality tobacco. An ideal transplant is disease free, hardy enough to survive transplanting shock, and available to be transplanted on time (Smith et al., 2004). Tobacco float system requires few people, but it does demand intensive management with great attention in details. Additionally, the intense competition in the international markets of tobacco, especially from Zimbabwe and Brazil (Brown, 2004), impose the development of new technology and support systems in the production of transplants, rather than the improvement of quality. This will give an add value for flavor tobacco in the international markets. Internationally transplants production based ever increasingly on automated control systems. This type of systems based on advanced information and communication mechanisms that assist producers to manage their transplants cultivation. These systems can record, classify, manipulate and send advise about various data connected to various applied techniques such as yield data, disease control, plant nutrition control, plant physiology and market conditions. The result is improved yield, increases transplants quality and integrated management of transplants cultivation. In this work is proposed an intelligent computer assisted environment for managing Tobacco transplants production called FloatNet. It is based on web services architecture and it intends to boost production rates and transplants quality facilitating the use of information technology in the tobacco floats systems techniques.

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Previous work on Float System There is sufficient work in the international literature today that could be used to design an integrated, effective and useful hydroponics’ cultivation management environment. Studies which are referred to indicatively are those of Jones & Terrill, 1984; Jones et al., 1992; Liopa-Tsakalidis et al., 2005; Lychak & Brown, 1995; Ntzanis, 2003; Palmer et al., 1993; Pearce et al., 1998; Pearce et al., 1999; Pfeiffer et al., 1990; Reed, 1996; Rideout et al., 1995; Smith et al., 1993; Smith et al., 2004; Stephenson et al., 1984; Suggs & Mohapatra, 1988; Suggs et al., 1988; Walker, 1981; Walker & Reynolds, 1982. Float System overview Today, tobacco float system is considering the most modern technique for transplants production. The float system was introduced by Speedling, Inc, a large producer of vegetable and other transplants in the USA, in the mid 1980s. In Greece, approximately 90% of the tobacco seedlings were produced in greenhouse float systems during 2002. In the float system, tobacco seedlings are grown in polystyrene trays that contain a soil mixture of peat and perlite with various combinations. The trays are floated on a bed of water that has been fertilized with a mixture of soluble fertilizers. Each tray contains approximately 220 cells that are shaped like an inverted pyramid. In Greece, the most of the float plants are grown in simple-type greenhouses constructed by farmers and covered with polyethylene film. Economic studies have shown greenhouse float systems to be slightly more expensive than field plant beds (Luchak & Brown, 1995). However, float systems offer significant labor advantages as compared to plant beds. In particular, the float system saves labor during the critical planting period, allowing tobacco to be transplanted in a timely manner. Seedling production in the float system requires a good water quality. Factors that impact seedling production include high bicarbonate, low and high boron concentrations and low calcium. Growing media is another important factor for seedling production. In Greece tobacco media are peat-based with various combinations of perlite. Particle size distribution and nutrient charge are important factors in the suitability of a medium determines many characteristics that are important in plant growth, such as aeration, water holding capacity, drainage and capillarity. The nutrition of transplants in the float system is achieved with a two-step fertilization program. This program includes an application to the float water phosphorous, potassium and nitrogen. The form of nitrogen is important in seedling growth in the float systems. Proper clipping is an important tool in increasing the number of usable seedlings, transplant hardiness, stem length and diameter uniformity. Clipping can be used to delay transplanting when field conditions are unfavorable. Tobacco seedling production with float system constitutes an alternate cultivation method in greenhouses, which presents very few disadvantages and many advantages such as:

• Radical root disease management of seedlings. • There is no need to combat weeds, which compete with cultivating plants. • There is no need to disinfect the soil. • Reduction in pesticide application and consequently production of healthier tobacco

transplants. • Management of fertility problems, which appear in many field plant beds. • Control and monitor of desired minimum temperature in the root environment may be

more easily achieved and at a lower cost, granted that the plant roots grow within a restricted mass of the substrate or into nutrient solution.

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• Plant nutrition is much more precise; it can be controlled and monitored more efficiently and reliably. Moreover it can be readily and quickly readjusted in the case of an error.

• Plant cultivation above ground saves the grower from soil preparation. • The better physical and chemical properties of the substrate in comparison with the soil,

the optimal nutrition and capability of keeping higher temperatures in the root layer finally result in an increased yield and quality in tobacco transplants production.

• The float system cultivation may include recycling of the run-off solution and consequently the restriction or even the elimination of nitrate pollution problems.

In reality, the basic disadvantage of float system concerns the facts that it is a cultivation method, which is based on the application of modern technology and equipment and consequently requires know how. Motivation In United States and other countries where float system is developed, the problem has been resolved by means of developing efficient advisory support systems provided to farmers, by the public service authorities, but also by the private sector too. In all such cases, the advice support to farmers is based on the existence of standardized information systems, through which individualized layouts are designed for each producer and the necessary re-adjustment of nutrient solution is decided during the course of cultivation. In Greece, until now, there is nothing similar and as a result, various agricultural supplies providers, who are active in this sector, are co-operating with European and American private agents in order to acquire scientific and technical support. This is not a flexible nor efficient solution, because the consulting services offered do not follow the curve of the farmers needs. It is obvious from the above that there is a necessity for the development of an integrated information management environment for the support of tobacco float systems by taking into account the Greek reality in the fields of greenhouse cultivation. This work is presented in the following sections as follows: In section the FloatNet system model is presented. In section 3 the functional details are provided. In the sequel the design and architecture are described. In the following section 5, implementation issues of the environment are outlined. In section 6 the design of the evaluation and testing procedures is described. In section 7 final conclusion and future work will be found. FloatNet model The system is modeled according to a web design methodology named WebML in order to support popular best practices in web engineering. We will present a solid conceptual model for the organization of the information in the data and hypertext layer of the application and point out effective design solutions concerning the specification of a web application framework in the specific domain. In the early stages the prevailing approach to Web application development, was simply "building the solution", with little emphasis on the development process itself. However, many organizations are now experiencing severe problems in the management of Web sites, as they grow in size and complexity, inter-operate with other applications, and exhibit requirements that change over time. To this end, several Web application modeling methods have been proposed, based on the key principle of separating data management, site structure and page presentation. Some proposals derive from the area of hypermedia applications like the RMM (Isakowitz et al., 1995) and HDM (Garzotto et al., 1993) which pioneered the model-driven design of hypermedia applications and influenced several subsequent proposals like Strudel (Fernandez et al., 1998), and OOHDM

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(Schwabe and Rossi, 1998). There also exist several proposals for using UML (Booch et al., 1998) for modeling the architecture of web applications. In this work, WebML (Ceri et al., 2000) has been utilized as design platform for the design and development of the whole system, mainly because of the robust CASE tool called WebRatio (WebRatio, 2005) that it is supported by. The first step of designing in WebML is to specify the data schema of the Web application, in order to express the organization of contents using E-R primitives. The next step is Hypertext Design, which produces schemes expressing the composition of content and the invocation of operations within pages, as well as the definition of links between pages. Using WebML the system design is implemented. As a result the system supports efficiently and effectively distribution of innovative information about cultivation methods and techniques, greenhouse design and float bed design. It also supports training, support and recommendation services, adaptive web and user interaction services and remote online access services. The web services offered are coupled with smart mechanisms such as dynamic information flow, interface adaptation and intelligent web structure reorganization. The exploitation of various state of the art technologies takes place, in order to achieve a user centric approach for the collection, presentation and dissemination of data. The aim of the integrated environment is to cover a set of fundamental functions and operations according to the specifications explained below. o Information service and educational portal o Scientific and technical consulting service

Readjustments and corrections in the course of cultivation Regulation of environmental conditions in the greenhouse Other float system’s Aspects

Functional Details

The main scope of FloatNet system is to provide a group of basic functionality that will facilitate float system based cultivation as explained in the following.

FloatNet information service and educational portal A first gap in the float system community that our proposed systems tries to fill is informative. The concept is to provide the cultivator with updated information and basic education about the float system. The corresponding application content comprises a relatively large variety of data. General information and basic education regarding float system are constructively provided to facilitate comprehension. The initial goal is to introduce smoothly the user with the general function framework of float system based cultivation. A second aim of FloatNet portal is to update the interested cultivator/ visitor regarding the transition purpose in a float system, the advantages and disadvantages, its particular demands, the different kinds of hydroponics’ cultivation in general and the disposable types of substrates utilized. In the educational part of FloatNet, computer based courses are provided for the new cultivators in order to boost their involvement with modern cultivation techniques. The module is designed to adapt to the individual learning curve of each user personalizing topics and information flow of the educational process. Visitor’s learning model and preferences are logged implicitly to enable this feature. Initially, a profile is created based on a multiple choice questionnaire and it keeps evolving according to the visitor’s activities. FloatNet consulting service

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This module provides adaptive support to the cultivator about the equipment involved in a float system cultivation and additional equipment and establishment details. It is a added-value service, designed to enable targeted consulting to the particular needs and problems of a cultivator. The potential cultivator has the chance to receive recommendations and advice after introducing to the system his/her individual cultivation specifics and production aims. The specific information that is usually introduced is:

• the cultivation market to address, • the geographic area where the greenhouse establishment, • the already existing infrastructures in transport, storage, etc.

This service is a recommendation-like service allowing the user to provide details and choices in order to get a proposal for an integrated design of a hydroponics system that meets best his/her specific profile. Design Issues The component services that comprise the system follow the service oriented architecture paradigm (SOA, W3C). The environment design that supports the above functionality is presented below. FloatNet system comprises several components: a) the web service based core subsystem, b) the information delivery subsystem c) the educational layer that retains, manages and delivers float system information and d) the personalization subsystem which enables topic based adaptation. The overall design is depicted at Figure 1.

Figure 1. FloatNet Environment Design

Following details of the design issues are described. FloatNet core components and coordination services Recent developments in information and communication technology and especially in the sector of net centric computing have enabled a more sufficient and satisfying cross-platform application-to-application cooperation. In particular, development approaches move far from tightly coupled solutions leaning towards more loosely coupled systems. A new standard is quickly penetrating the design and development of business-to-business application interaction; the web services and service oriented architecture. Web Services have provided a widely accepted platform for new

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generation systems by both the IT professionals and IT vendors. Their success is based on the use of open, platform independent standards such as XML (XML, 2004), SOAP (SOAP, 2004), WSDL (WSDL, 2004), UDDI (UDDI, 2004) as well as the widely used protocol HTTP. They have marked current web engineering approaches and are ubiquitously supported. In short, Web Services are nothing more than interoperable software components that can be used in application integration and component based application development. Web Services send and receive data with the use of XML-based messaging. It is a technology that enables strong abstraction mechanisms between the definition, the implementation and the final consumption of a service. Web services allow applications and Internet-enabled devices to easily communicate with one another and combine their functionality to provide services to each other, independent of platform or language. Overall, they minimize in several aspects the complexity of cross computer application interaction. In the design of the proposed system, the approach is to provide a system that will support float system cultivation processes in an autonomous and 24x7 availability sense effectively. An initial approach would lead to a rather expensive solution utilizing multiple dedicated machines for each necessary service of the environment. This would complicate the users’ data interaction and possibly result to network traffic and management overhead (synchronization of user accounts, nutrition & yield data manipulation per geographic position etc) We have dealt with all the previously named operational discomforts using the design presented in Figure 1. The proposed web services oriented architecture enables the interaction and communication of numerous though simple legacy systems each one located in a geographic region of the country. This means that the cultivators’ access servers can be low cost web servers that they will provide a lightweight interface to the main services through consumption of Web Services. In this way only the Web Services’ provider host is a “heavy” server, while the user will have a quick and efficient interaction with a web information server close to its access location. The prescribed WSs deliver initial information to the float system interested group. Furthermore they present their complete functionality to existing hydroponics’ activated farmers through a common standard interface. As a result existing agricultural community web informational systems are provided with all the necessary collaboration details to enable access to the internal hydroponics’ core environment. Finally, the use of XML web services, allows including interconnection with third party service providers such as chemists or weather forecast centers. It simplifies and accelerates the process of communication.

Implementation Considerations FloatNet is a large-scale web service based environment. Standard portal functionality is based on Microsoft .NET technology using .NET framework 1.1 (DOTNET, 2004). For the WS technology integration is supported by the Web Services Enhancements for Microsoft .NET (WSE) component. WSE simplifies the development and deployment of secure Web services by enabling developers using Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework to more easily apply security policy, establish long-running secure conversations, retrieve and validate security tokens, and more. Enhancements 3.0 allow developers to build secure Web services based on the latest specifications. An application designed following SOA is based on services that interact with business components. Each service defines a particular business function. These services interact with each other to accomplish hydroponics’ processes. The web services architecture (also known as Service Oriented Architecture abr. SOA) (SOA, 2004a) is beneficial in the proposed hydroponics environment because:

• Complexity is hidden from the consumer of the service.

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• Components can reside on any machine, anywhere in the world and still be accessed the same way.

• Developer roles are focused on a specific development layer. • More re-usability of components across the heterogonous platforms is possible. There

are no language and platform integration problems when the functions are defined as services.

Field testing and evaluation For the evaluation of the whole system to be developed, user testing will be considered as the most appropriate method as in our case only members of the target group along with specialized personnel are in position to provide valuable feedback, identify problems and suggest modifications. Testing and in-field evaluation is designed for a period of 6 months before the formal release of the first version of the environment. The testers’ group will vary in terms of cultivation region, the size of the commercial enterprise, and the way they endeavor to use the software. We also plan a series of evaluation sessions using lab observation with groups of test users corresponding to the types of target groups, intending to have more precise results on the systems’ performance. We will also prepare a series of short questionnaires in order to identify system the systems’ usability and performance problems after the in-field testing. Conclusions The study for the FloatNet environment contributes an integrated system for float system based cultivation management systems with benefits such as:

• Introduction of new technology in crop production and transmission of high-level knowledge.

• Programmed quantity and quality of product during the whole production period. • Energy saving due to brevity of the whole production process.

Future work for the proposed environment includes further investigation of implementation, deployment and project dissemination issues. Additionally we will also focus on:

• development of crop-oriented portals to provide targeted information on specific crop types to minimize navigation effort,

• interconnection with related governmental and EU portals providing critical information on farming,

• provision of a fully personalized Main web page of the system providing personalized news for each user

References Booch, G., Jacobson, I., & Rumbaugh, J. (1998). The Unified Modeling Language User Guide. The Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series. Brooks, F. (1995). The Mythical Man-Month. Addison-Wesley. Brown, A.B. (2004). U.S. flue-cured tobacco farming in 2004: Outlook and situation, from http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/agecon/tobacco Ceri, S., Fraternali, P. & Bongio, A. (2000). Web Modeling Language (WebML): a Modeling Language for Designing Web Sites, in the Proceedings of WWW9 Conference / Computer Networks, 33, 1-6, 137-157.

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