Monitoring the Olive Cultivation in Shodoshima Using Field ... · The aims of this study were to expand the knowledge of elemental technology that makes Field Server utilizable at

IAALD AFITA WCCA2008 WORLD CONFERENCE ON AGRICULTURAL INFORMATION AND IT

Monitoring the Olive Cultivation in Shodoshima Using Field Server Systems Yoshitaka Motonaga1, Ryoei Ito2, Tokihiro Fukatsu3, Atsushi Hashimoto2, Seishi Ninomiya3, Takaharu Kameoka2 and Tsuyoshi Nakamoto4 1 Niigata University, Japan, [email protected] 2 Mie University, Japan 3 National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Japan 4 AEON Co., Ltd., Japan Abstract The cultivation of olive in Shodoshima has 100yrs history and olive has become the symbol representing the industrials and the lifestyle of Shodoshima. However, there are several issues such as the total area under the condition that cultivation of olive has decreased to the half of its peak. This paper reports the technical know-how and the tactics that are the construction of the system obtaining the advantages of the Field Server developed by National Agricultural Research Center and the avail of it at the actual field due to the promotion of olive production. Field Server is the instrument that obtains plantation images, olive tree images and the data of growth environment using network. The system constructed in this work can be mixed with both online and offline Field Server, and enables the data and system management by the use of more commonly used Internet connection. The data of growth environment measured by this system include air temperature, humidity, the amount of solar radiation, and soil temperature and moisture. The aims of this study were to expand the knowledge of elemental technology that makes Field Server utilizable at various agricultural fields, and also to improve the consciousness of informative application at agricultural fields. Keywords: Olive Cultivation, Field Monitoring, Online and Offline Monitoring, Field Server, Shodoshima Introduction Olive cultivation dates from 1908, when Mie, Kagoshima and Kagawa prefectures started to experimentally grow olives with designation of the current Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan. Only Shodoshima in Kagawa prefecture among three prefectures successfully grew olives because it was in the Inland Sea and had a moderate climate suitable for the olive cultivation. Although the growing area of the olive was 130 ha in the heyday of 1964, it plummeted to 34 ha in the late 1980s by liberalizing imports of agricultural products, changeover to satsuma mandarin cultivation and so on. The olive promotion for development of agriculture, food and tourism industry and the growing consumer health concerns have increased the growing area up to 45 ha (Shodoshima, 2006). This year 2008 is the 100th anniversary of the olive plantation, and the further development is expected.

The improvement of the technology on olive cultivation is needed for its promotion. Since it is not enough to establish the cultivation technique appropriate for the Japanese climate, the

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cultivation management based on objective data is requested. Furthermore, it is necessary for the consumers to understand the domestic olives and to recognize their value, and the provision of their information is becoming indispensable. As the Internet spreads out, there have been attempts to send information using ICT from agricultural field. The Field Server developed by National Agricultural Research Center (Fukatsu and Hirafuji, 2003; Hirafuji et al., 2004) is the instrument that obtains plantation and tree images as well as the data of growth environment via the Internet. The Field Server is a very useful tool with rich scalability and versatility.

In this study, a monitoring system of the cultivation environment and the growth images for the olive cultivation improvement is constructed using the Field Server. Then the system is actually set up in Shodoshima and an experiment is demonstrated. In a series of operations, it is performed that the practical issues of this system are extracted and the monitoring data are examined for their actual utilization. Therefore, the significance of this work is to reinforce the knowledge on the application of the Field Server to the olive cultivation and to raise the awareness to utilize all information possible in agricultural field. Field Monitoring System

For monitoring the olive cultivation in Shodoshima, the farms both with and without Internet connection were considered. Since a lot of farms are still without Internet connection, a field monitoring system should correspond to any type of the farms such as with or without Internet connections.

A Field Server enables us to monitor the field information such as air temperature, humidity, solar insolation, images and so on. Fig. 1 shows a schematic diagram of the field monitoring systems mixed with both online and offline site systems using the Field Server..In the online site, a Field Server has been installed in the farm, and a wireless access point and a Linux box have been installed in the olive-related facility, where broadband Internet access is made available to the masses via ADSL connection. When the field information is obtained, the Linux box in the facility made an access to the Field Server in the farm using wireless LAN connection via the wireless access point and also it made a remote control of Field Server. The data obtained from the Field Server are periodically stored in the Linux box so that they can be browsed through the external computer via Internet.

Meanwhile, in the offline site, both a Field Server and a Linux box have been installed in the farm, and the data collected by the Field Server can not been browsed through an external computer in real time because of the disconnection with the Internet. However, since the data of the Field Server in this offline site can be also stored in the Linux box periodically and they are delivered to one of the online site manually by the farm administrator, the data become available for browsing through the external computers via Internet. Experimental Sites Shodoshima Olive Park is a public roadside station and is a versatile facility for olive promotion with olive farms, accommodations, restaurants, hot spring facility and so on. Therefore, the farm of Shodoshima Olive Park was

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Fig. 1 Schematic diagram of field monitoring system.

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adopted as the online site. This location is quite effective so that it is possible for us to contribute to the olive promotion by providing the field monitoring information on the olive and deepening the understanding of the olive cultivation, because the visitors to this facility are mostly olive farmers nearby or olive consumers visiting as a tourist. A Field Server was installed in the farm of Shodoshima Olive Park, and a wireless access point and a Linux box were installed in the facility named Sun Olive, with the cooperation of Shodoshima Olive Park Foundation and Shodoshima Town.

Yamahisa Co. Ltd., that is a soy sauce maker, has been working on the olive cultivation for about 20 years. At the same time, Yamahisa Co. Ltd. is a leading company among the olive production in Shodoshima. Considering the importance of their position in olive production, their farm was selected as the offline site. It is necessary for supporting cultivation management with field information to examine the relation between current know-how on the olive cultivation and field information considered to be objective. A Field Server and a Linux box were installed in the farm itself with the cooperation of Yamahisa Co. Ltd.. The data collected by Field Server has been delivered manually from Yamahisa’s offline farm to online Shodoshima Olive Park by an administrator of its farm.

A photograph of the Filed Server installed in the farm of Shodoshima Olive Park is shown in Fig 2(a) and that in Yamahisa’s farm is shown in Fig. 2(b). Network Configuration A network board of the Field Server, produced by elab experience, was used in this work. It consists of two wireless LAN interfaces and one wired LAN interface, forming several network segments in the Field Server. The network configuration of the online and offline sites is shown in Fig. 3. The Linux box in the offline site (Fig. 3(a)) has been connected to the Field Server with a wired line. When a program of the Linux box obtains the data through the Field Server, it can directly access to the instrumentation board and the network camera inside the Field Server because of their having a same network segment. One of the wireless LAN interfaces of the Field Server plays a role of access point, which provides a hotspot available for the farm administrator to collect the data. Another one is prepared for a peer-to-peer mesh network needed when two or more Field Servers are installed.

(a) Shodoshima Olive Park (b) Yamahisa’s farm

Fig. 2. Field Servers installed in each experimental site.

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In the online site (Fig. 3(b)), since a wireless access point and the Linux box of our system are installed in the office room of the facility, the system network is composed of these two devices and existing office automation equipments in it. As for network connection to the Internet, the access point uses a 1.5 Mbps ADSL internet connection in this facility. One of wireless LAN interfaces of the Field Server is prepared for a peer-to-peer mesh network as is also used in the offline site, and the other, configured as the client mode, participates in the wireless LAN segment provided with the wireless access point in the facility. Therefore the connection from the Linux box to the Field Server is made by wireless LAN via the wireless access point. The use of the hotspot provided by the wireless access point inside the facility enables us to transport the data collected at the offline site to the Linux box of the online site. Field Information Monitored by the Field Server This subsection explains the data obtained by the Field Server in the online and offline sites. Field Server in both sites measures air temperature, humidity, solar insolation, soil temperature, soil moisture with internal and external sensors, It also take images with internal web camera. Considering that olive tree forms the relatively shallow root zone, the soil temperature and moisture sensors were buried about 30 cm deep under the ground. The data other than image were measured every 10 min. In the acquisition of images at the online site, the 8 scene images were measured every 10 min. Scenes No.1 to No. 5 were long shots of the preset places in the farm. Scene No. 6 covers the whole view of olive tree. Scene No. 7 was a zoom-in image of leaves and branches of olive tree. Scene No. 8 was an image focusing on the root.

At the offline site, 5 scene images were taken every 10 min in consideration of the hard disk drive capacity of the Linux box. Three scenes were long shots of the preset places in the farm, and two scenes were zoom-in images of the olive tree. Constitution and Function of the Linux Box OpenBlockS266 produced by Plat’Home Co., LTD was used as the Linux box. A Silicon Disk Drive whose capacity was 30GByte was added to the Linux box because of heat resistance and accidental power shutdown. Vine Linux 4.1 was applied as the operation system, and software packages with SSH, OPENVPN, DDCLIENT, APACHE and SAMBA were installed. The

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Field Server Monitoring Agent developed by National Agricultural Research Center was used for the data acquisition from the Field Server (Fukatsu et al., 2006(a) and 2006(b)).

Dynamic DNS service provided by Dynamic Network Services, Inc. (DynDNS, 2008) was used in this study since the online site, the farm of Shodoshima Olive Park, does not have a global IP connection to the Internet and the IP address could be renewed every time the Internet connection is established Dynamic DNS service with the daemon, DDCLIENT, enables us to keep a unique domain name.

Web service with APACHE provides with browsing the data stored in the Linux box from web browser connected to the Internet. SSH and OPENVPN in this system allows us to make a remote management. SAMBA, a service for sharing file system with Windows PC, was used for manual data transport from the offline site to the online site. Results and Discussion A Field Server monitors the environment data on the plant growth such as air temperature, humidity, solar insolation, and soil temperature and moisture. It also takes images such as farm image and olive tree image. The web site on Shodoshima olive monitoring is shown in Fig. 4. Fig. 4(a) is the top page of this site, and the data of both online Olive Park site and offline Yamahisa’s farm site could be browsed through the following link of this web page. Fig. 4(b) has displayed the latest environmental data on the plant growth and some images obtained by the Field Server in Olive Park. This web page had been automatically generated by Field Server Monitoring Agent program. When using java applets like Field Server Viewer and NetCam Viewer developed by Tanaka et al. (2006), linked with this web page, they show previous data, present the graphs of the environment data and display the images like animation.

The environmental data of the plant growth measured by the Field Server are shown in Fig. 5 from Dec. 7, 2007 to Mar. 20, 2008 in the Olive Park. The soil temperature was not measured, because the soil moisture sensor was broken down. Some periods with 0 value in the graph means no data during each period because of the troubles of the Field Server. These periods are from Dec. 30 to Jan. 6, from Jan. 9 to Jan. 11, Feb. 21, and from Mar. 3 to 4. Although some types of data has average or less accuracy since they are

(a) Top page of this site

(b) Field data browsing site

Fig. 4. Web site of Shodoshima olive monitoring system.

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measured by simple sensors, it is thought that the tendency of the variation in each measuring item have been automatically and continuously captured.

On the image monitoring, tactics for image analysis has not decided yet. The only purpose at present stage has been to continuously obtain the growing images of olive tree and the farm images to find the variation inside the farm. Currently it is a bit small but the typical outcome is to able to perform image acquisition every 10 min. for about 4 months from Dec. 7, 2007 to Mar. 20, 2008 using this system though a small amount of data was missing. Unfortunately, since olive is an evergreen tree and it does not change dynamically in the winter season, it is very difficult or impossible for us to extract a useful information from the images of olive tree obtained in winter. Meanwhile, even in winter, the information on the weather or farm work was grasped from the farm images.

It is an issue in the next stage that continuous field monitoring for at least one year should be necessary for us to extract an useful information for olive cultivation management from monitoring data. Conclusions The field monitoring system was constructed in this work, mixed with both online and offline site systems using Field Server. This system enables us to make a data and system management by use of commonly used Internet connection. This system was installed in the agricultural filed and had been under operation for about 4 months. For this reason, one of the aims of this work was to expand the knowledge on elemental technology that makes utilizable Field Server in various agricultural fields. Another aim is to promote and accelerate the use of information at agricultural fields. The issue in the future is to figure out how to extract the useful information for the olive cultivation and promotion from the field monitoring data. Acknowledgement Authors would like to thank Shodoshima Olive Park and Yamahisa for offering the installations of their olive farm and for

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working together with us in this experiment. ALFAE and AEON supported part of this work. References DynDNS (2008) DynDNS Free Dynamic DNS (DDNS) Service [Online]. Available at

http://www.dyndns.com/services/dns/dyndns/ (verified May 28, 2008). Dynamic Network Services, Inc., Manchester, NH.

Fukatsu, T. and M.Hirafuji (2003) Development of Field Servers for a Field Monitoring System (in Japanese). Agricultural Information Research, 12(1), 1-12.

Fukatsu, T., M. Hirafuji and T. Kiura (2006(a)) An Agent System for Operating Web-based Sensor Nodes via the Internet, Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics, Vo. 18, No. 2, 186-194.

Fukatsu, T., M. Hirafuji and T. Kiura (2006(b)) A Distributed Agent System for Managing a Web-based Sensor Network with Field Servers, Proc. of 4th World Congress on Computers in Agriculture (WCCA), pp.223-228.

Hirafuji, M., T. Fukatsu and Hu Haoming (2004) Full-Wireless Field Monitoring Server for Advanced Sensor-network, Proc. of AFITA/WCCA Joint Congress on IT in Agriculture, pp.692-697.

Shodoshima Town Office (2006) About Shodoshima Town and Olive (in Japanese) [Online]. Available at http://www.town.shodoshima.lg.jp/olive_station/olive/shodoshima_olive.html (verified May 25, 2007). Shodoshima Town Office, Kagawa, Japan.

Tanaka, K., T. Fukatsu and M. Hirafuji (2006) Data and Image Viewer Application for FieldServer, Proc. of SICE-ICASE International Joint Conference 2006, pp.4852-4855.

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http://www.town.shodoshima.lg.jp/olive_station/olive/shodoshima_olive.html

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Monitoring the Olive Cultivation in Shodoshima Using Field ... · The aims of this study were to expand the knowledge of elemental technology that makes Field Server utilizable at