International Journal of Sustainable Agricultural Management and Informatics (10 papers in press)

Regular Issues

• Development of a novel digestive cookies’ recipe valorising rice by-products serving circular bioeconomy  
  by Aggelliki Mygdalia, Sopio Ghoghoberidze, Themistoklis Sfetsas, Georgia Dimitropoulou, Sophia Zioupou, Tasos Mitsopoulos, Michalis Ioannou, Paschalis Lithoxopoulos, Dimitrios Katsantonis 
  Abstract: Rice production generates several by-product streams with limited valorisation in human consumption. Among them, rice bran is the most promising to serve circular bioeconomy. The current study presents the development of a novel digestive cookies (DC) recipe fortified with rice bran (RB), rice bran oil (RBO) and emmer flour. 15 formulations of DC were prepared and four of them were analysed for their antioxidant capacity and nutraceutical status. Results indicated that RB and RBO incorporation elevated total phenolics, ABTS and total flavonoids. Moreover, it decreased saturated and increased polyunsaturated, monosaturated fatty acids and dietary fibres, changes in energy profile. Furthermore, sensory evaluation showed a slight increased preference of the DC concerning aroma, texture, and crunchiness attributes concerns. Thus, a novel recipe of heathy functional RBDC can be produced. However, rice industry should consider investing in the production of stabilised RB following the regulations for a product designated for human consumption.
  Keywords: by-products; rice; bran; oil; emmer; phenolics; flavonoids; ABTS; sensory panel.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2023.10057433
   
  
• Economic sustainability of organic farming: an empirical study on farmers prospective  
  by Shubham Garg, Karam Pal Narwal, Sanjeev Kumar 
  Abstract: The shifting from conventional farming to organic farming creates a lot of hurdles and economic constraints for farmers. Therefore, the current study endeavours to examine the perspective and barriers perceived by the farmers in conversion to organic farming in Haryana by employing exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for developing a comprehensive instrumental scale. The proposed instrument is validated with 45 experts’ selected using snowball random sampling. Finally, the study has collected a random sample of 276 farmers using stratified random sampling. The result of EFA affirms five major barrier factors perceived by farmers in conversion to organic farming explaining 65.166% of the total variance. Moreover, the results of CFA confirm the five factors and proposed instrument. This study will surely assist the government and policymakers in formulating policies on organic farming in making it more viable in India.
  Keywords: constraints; confirmatory factor analysis; CFA; economic viability; exploratory factor analysis; EFA; premium prices; prospective; sustainability.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2023.10057686
   
  
• A standardised method for estimating environmental and agronomic covariates to discriminate the explanatory variables effects on bioindicators: a case study on soil fauna  
  by Stefano Macchio, Monica Vercelli, Michela Gori, Luisa Nazzini, Valter Bellucci, Pietro Massimiliano Bianco, Carlo Jacomini, Enrico Rivella, Susann D'Antoni 
  Abstract: A method was developed for the standardisation and analysis of environmental and agronomic covariates to discriminate the effects of specific explanatory variables on a given bioindicator. To test it, the effects of plant protection products (PPP) was assessed on soil fauna sampled in organic and conventional hazelnut orchards. More than 100 standardised covariates were numerically reduced, by Principal coordinates analysis (PCoA), to two derived covariates. Then, redundancy analysis (RDA) was applied using, as explanatory variables, two indexes referred to PPP input and the derived covariates. The results showed a marked differentiation of the soil fauna communities between the two groups of sampled sites and their clear response to the use of PPP. The procedure proved to be effective in reducing the background noise determined by a great number of covariates. This method can be successfully applied in monitoring activities concerning the effects on biodiversity of several initiatives aimed at reducing PPP use.
  Keywords: plant protection products impact; agricultural management; covariates; bioindicators; organic farming; principal coordinates analysis; PCoA; canonical correspondence analysis; CCA; soil fauna.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2023.10058368
   
  
• The moderating role of digitalisation on smart-green production willingness in agriculture  
  by Nguyen Thi Hanh, Nguyen Thi Khanh Chi, Le Nhat Hoang, Nguyen Phuong Chi, Nguyen Thi To Uyen, Ngo Thi Nhu 
  Abstract: In the era of the modern 4.0 economic revolution, most countries worldwide are well aware of the need to develop smart agriculture because the negative impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly evident on a large scale. Agricultural development is becoming a trend on a global scale at a rapid rate. Therefore, this study investigates the role of digitalisation in increasing smart-green production willingness in the agriculture sector from the farmers’ perspective through the interaction with deforestation, mechanical power, organic fertiliser, and renewable organic resource. This study conducted multiple analyses to test these proposed relationships. The results found that the interactions between digitalisation with mechanical power, deforestation, and renewable organic resource enhance the smart-green production willingness. This study also contributes several implications to literature and practices based on these findings.
  Keywords: digitalisation; deforestation; environment protection; smart-green agriculture; carbon emission; green production; innovation.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2023.10058610
   
  
• Automatic detection and diagnosis of cocoa diseases using mobile tech and deep learning  
  by Richard K. Lomotey, Sandra Kumi, Rita Orji, Ralph Deters 
  Abstract: Cocoa is a cash crop that contributes about 3% to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Ghanas economy and makes up about 20% of total export receipts according to the Ghana statistical service. However, revenue has been hampered recently by the outbreak of cocoa diseases such as Swollen shoot and black pod thereby causing up to 11% loss of the crop. There is, therefore, a need for urgent intervention by all stakeholders within the cocoa production sector. In this research, we aim to employ mobile technology and machine learning (ML) techniques to enhance the early detection and diagnosis of the two major diseases that affect cocoa production namely swollen shoot and black pod. Specifically, a distributed mobile application is developed that enables farmers to take a picture or video of the cocoa and the app will analyse and automatically detect the specific disease. The app consequently suggests the best treatment to undertake using an inbuilt-information guide. The automatic detection and diagnosis of diseases are based on deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) for image analysis, classification, and detection. The research analysed 2,828 cocoa images spread across 3 class labels. We built and trained four CNN models, namely CentreNet ResNet50 V2, EfficientDet D0, SSD MobileNet V2, and SSD ResNet50 V1 FPN. We found the best generalised and fastest model to be the SSD MobileNet V2 with a detection confidence score of approximately 88.0%.
  Keywords: agriculture; mobile; deep learning; cocoa production; machine learning; ML; convolutional neural networks; CNN; classification; detection.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2024.10059217
   
  
• Supply chain traceability: a case of blockchain modelling application to agro-business product in India  
  by Supriyo Roy, Sanket Ghosh, Cliff D. Beck, Anand Prasad Sinha 
  Abstract: As products move from production to consumption, an agri-food value chain is a complicated system; it should be traceable to its origin, maintaining customers' health. Farm-to-fork food safety and quality certifications have become mandatory and should follow the Food Safety and Standards Act. But, in reality, this is not happening. Pressure regulates by the end users because of malpractices during harvest, additional toxic chemicals, and illicit trades. Adopting data-driven practices demanded due to malpractices and pressure regulation forces researchers to develop better traceable value chain systems. A blockchain-based solution applicable to agri-foods (securing the real-time exchange of information with centralised structure intermediaries) is proposed. It adheres to standards of safety throughout the supply chain. Considering the perishability, fruits are taken as a domain for validation. The proposed solution makes a significant addition to the existing literature on Indian agri-food, which is substantial in the traceability and safety of agri-food products.
  Keywords: supply chain traceability; agro-business product in India; business modelling; blockchain technology; food safety.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2023.10054944
   
  
• The role of management in sustainable African protected agriculture: case study Egypt  
  by Amr A. Ghanem, Abd El-Azeem M. Mostafa, Enas S. Sadek 
  Abstract: Protected agriculture is one of the most flexible methods for facing severe changes in the agricultural environment in a sustainable manner, building up community capacity and socioeconomic stability. This study aimed to measure the level of farmers' performance of the production and management skills in protected agriculture, as well as the effect of management patterns on the performance level of farmers and the economic profitability in sustainable protected agriculture. This study used path analysis and (ANOVA) as statistical methods to measure the effects of management patterns on the management skills of farmers and economic profitability. The results indicate that farmers' performance levels of management skills vary according to the management patterns controlling farm management. The results confirm that farmers' management of productive resources and economic profitability of protected agriculture are improving with the change in the management pattern. Therefore, policymakers should focus on developing and assembling weak management patterns (individual, family, etc.) into cooperative institutions to improve performance levels of management skills and the economic efficiency of greenhouse cultivation crops.
  Keywords: protected; agriculture; greenhouses; management; skills; pattern; profitability; vegetables; Egypt.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2023.10055892
   
  
• Strategic communication and sustainable agricultural competitiveness: a Greek case study  
  by Stavros Kalogiannidis, Fotios Chatzitheodoridis 
  Abstract: Most countries around the world continue to experience economic expansion and growth influenced by the agriculture sector. The ability of farmers to record significant yields and contribute to the sustainable development of a region is unfortunately threatened by a number of issues. The purpose of the study was to examine agricultural competitiveness through strategic communication and its impact on sustainable development using Greece as a case study. The study equally established the effect of aspects of strategic communication on sustainable development, the relationship between approaches to agricultural communication and sustainable development, and the relationship between strategic communication, agricultural competitiveness, and sustainable development. The growth of the agricultural industry, which seems to be trailing behind, is prioritised more, nevertheless. This study urges the government to adopt regulations regarding land that is conducive to agriculture or for the production of crops in the nation.
  Keywords: agricultural competitiveness; strategic communication; sustainable development.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2023.10056114
   
  
• Design of optimised model for nitrogen deficiency in rice leaves  
  by Swami Nisha Bhagirath, Vaibhav Bhatnagar, Linesh Raja 
  Abstract: A major crop for agricultural productivity is rice. This study aims to create a convolutional neural network model that is precisely predicting nitrogen deficiency in rice plants. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) must be tested with a variety of configurations for various numbers of convolutional layers, filter size in each layer, number of convolution filters in each layer, and pool size sampling the images in order to get optimal performance. In this paper, rice leaf dataset was used to predict nitrogen deficiency in rice crop. Secondary data is used to perform convolutional neural network. From which 30% of the total data were used for testing and 70% of the images were used for training the model. After comparing the Adam optimiser accuracy and RMSprop optimiser accuracy, it is clearly seen that Adam optimiser gives higher accuracy. The model achieved 99% of classification accuracy using genetic algorithm (GA).
  Keywords: genetic algorithm; N-deficiency; RMSprop optimisation; DenseNet.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2023.10056814
   
  
• Exploring the project manager and project management in agricultural operations: a review  
  by Caio Senna Do Amaral, Fernando Tobal Berssaneti 
  Abstract: This article analyses how the project manager and project management methodologies are used in the agricultural supply chain. The methodological approach was a systematic literature review based on bibliometric techniques, network analysis, and content analysis. The literature analysis reveals that despite the constant use of projects as a way of obtaining strategic results for the agricultural supply chain and the use of project management techniques and tools by this community, there is no mention of the role of the project manager and very little of the use of methodologies showing a low level of maturity in terms of project management. As a practical application, this paper exposes the need to discuss traditional models of the structure of the agricultural supply chain, suggesting the inclusion of the project manager as an agent of business integration. The originality of this paper is reviewing the role of both project management and the project manager in the agricultural market.
  Keywords: project manager; project management; agriculture; supply chain.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2023.10057979