Michael Boyette

Inconsistent quality and aesthetics in agricultural crops can result in increased consumer and producer food waste, reduced industry resiliency and decreased farmers������������������ and growers������������������ profit, poor consumer satisfaction, and inefficiencies across the supply chain. Although there are opportunities to characterize and quantify sources of phenotypic variability across the agricultural supply chain - from cultural practices of growers and producers to storage and handling by distributors - the data available to allow for assessment of horticultural quality drivers are disparate and disconnected. The absence of data integration platforms that link heterogeneous datasets across the supply chain precludes the development of strategies and solutions to constrain variability in produce quality. This project������������������s central hypothesis is that multi-dimensional produce data can be securely integrated and used to optimize management practices in the field while simultaneously adding value across the entire food supply chain. We propose to develop multi-modal sensing platform along with a trust-based, data management, integration, and analytics framework for systematic organization and dynamic abstraction of heterogeneous data across the supply chain of agricultural crops. The projects short term goals are to (1) engage growers to refine research and extension priorities; (2) develop a first-of-its-kind modular imaging system that responds to grower needs by analyzing existing and novel multi-dimensional data; (3) establish the cyberinfrastructure, including analytics and blockchain, to make meaningful inference of the acquired data as related to management practices while ensuring data security; (4) deploy the sensing system at NCSU������������������s Horticultural Crops Research Station in Clinton, NC and on a large-scale system at a major commercial farm and distribution facility, and (5) extend findings to producers and regulators through NC Cooperative Extension. The proposed sensing and cyberinfrastructure platforms will be crop-agnostic and our findings will be transferable to other horticultural crops produced in NC and beyond.

One of the most expensive labor costs associated with sweetpotato production occurs during transplanting. Current approaches require multiple (between 4 and 16) human operators to manually sort and singulate individual slips from a pile and feed them into a planter that buries the slip into the ground. The ability to automate the slip singulation process would allow growers to save on prohibitively expensive labor costs while increasing transplanting efficiency. This project will take an integrated computer vision, mechanization, and robotics approach to automatically separate, identify, and grasp a single slip for transplanting operations.

The objectives of this research continue and build upon findings of a project begun in 2016 to investigate the influence of different cultural practices, especially different nitrogen types and timing of applications, on the shape and size development and yields of multiple sweetpotatoes varieties. Additional specific aims are to: 1. Continue to fine tune the unique equipment and analytical methodologies that have been developed in the last two years to scan and analyze the shape and size characteristics of different treatment populations of sweetpotatoes. 2. The ultimate aim of this work is to minimize the production of over/under sized and misshappened sweetpotatoes by identifying those numerous factors that influence size and shape.

The overall objective of this project is to determine how conditions (specifically temperature and relative humidity) during ocean shipment might influence the received quality of North Carolina sweetpotatoes. Specifically: Install instrumentation (three to five data pods per container) to monitor the temperature and relative humidity experienced by the sweetpotatoes from the time they are loaded into shipping containers in North Carolina until they are unloaded from the shipping containers in Europe. This monitoring will involve there or four shipping containers per week total from different cooperating shippers. We anticipate a two-week turnaround time. We expect to commence this work in late spring 2019 and end by fall 2019. This test sequence may be extended depending on results obtained. Upon retrieval, the data pods will be express shipped by air back to NCSU where the data will be downloaded and analyzed. The data will not be downloaded in Europe. The data from each specific container will be shared with the original shippers only. Otherwise, the identity of the shipper and destination will be kept confidential or made anonymous for research and Extension purposes.

The objectives of this project are: 1. Determine the effects of nitrogen form, time of application and use efficiency on sweetpotato yield and root shape. 2. Evaluate the effect of phosphorus at low, medium, and high levels, use efficiency and determine their effects on sweetpotato yield and shape.

Objectives of this project are: 1. Evaluation of the incidence and severity of internal necrosis in Covington sweetpotato cultivar when grown under controlled preharvest conditions and cured at six different commercial facilities that have either routinely had or not had internal necrosis incidence. 2. Effect of using alternative curing temperatures and durations on the incidence of Rhizopus disease.

Internal Necrosis (IN) continues to be a concern across the North Carolina sweetpotato industry, especially since ���������������Covington������������������ is the primary clone grown and it is prone to this problem. IN is characterized by necrotic areas in the sweetpotato flesh at the proximal end of the root. IN often occurs minimally as small black or brown areas in the flesh very near where the root was removed from the stem; generally these roots are marketable. Although the majority of IN occurrence is minimal through out the North Carolina sweetpotato industry, there are cases when IN can nearly blacken or cause browning across most of the root������������������s cross section when cut, which renders the roots as unmarketable. Even when this problem is severe, it will generally disappear about 1/3 to ��������� of the length of the root from the stem end. Thus, if the root is cut from the distal or root end, IN may go undetected. The insidious thing about the IN disorder is that one cannot identify if a root has this problem unless it is cut open. We propose to 1. Determine if there is a preharvest effect of high chlorine levels and mowing on incidence and severity of Internal Necrosis in ���������������Covington������������������, 2. Determine the postharvest temperature curing duration effects on incidence and severity of Internal Necrosis in ���������������Covington������������������, and 3. Further evaluate apparent IN ����������������problem��������������� and ����������������clean��������������� production fields and link with commercial storage facilities that have either routinely had or not had IN incidence. Because the Covington variety comprises nearly 90% of the planted acreage in North Carolina, and because it is a preferred variety by US and international consumers, it is critical to gain a better understanding of what causes IN and ways that it might be minimalized or possibly eliminated.

This project is meant to continue and build on sweetpotato drying work commenced nearly 20 years ago in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering. This work was given a renewed emphasis as a result of a project conducted in 2011 sponsored by the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission Foundation and the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) and various North Carolina sweetpotato grower/packers. In the last year, more focused work has been continued in the Department of Biological Engineering at NCSU by support from Universal Leaf North America - parent company of Carolina Innovative Food Ingredients, Inc., (CIFI).

Through producing and demonstrating low-input, appropriate technology for dehydration, the aim of this project is to reduce yield losses by demonstrating to North Carolina vegetable growers how straightforward value-added processing can be. Understanding the process, and directly extending the shelf-life of nutrient-dense crops, will enable growers to seek out new markets for their products, potentially leading to improved profitability. A portion of every harvest is unmarketable because the shape, size, or color does not meet industry standards, which are usually higher than US No. 1 quality. An estimated 20% of unharvested crops could be recovered and transformed into marketable products through value-added processing. At the same time, utilizing the entire crop that has been produced promotes efficient use of the resources that were used in production, such as land, water, and chemical inputs.

Poultry brooding is expensive as it requires lots of propane. Further, many poultry producers reduce ventilation during brooding and winter to conserve propane. Reduced ventilation can degrade barn air quality which may adversely impact bird performance and worker health. Solar heating using transpired solar collector (TSC) can help reduce propane use by warming the incoming air temperature. However, conventional metal TSCs are very expensive. Our preliminary data show that a collector made of black plastic sheet can raise air temperature by up to 35 F and such a plastic TSC (pTSC) will cost only a fraction of the metal TSC. Hence, the overall objective of the proposed research is to evaluate the economic and technical feasibilities of using a pTSC in turkey brooding. A 4 ft by 8 ft pTSC module will be designed and fabricated for heating a room housing 250 turkey poults. The performance of this pTSC module will be evaluated based on temperature rise at different airflow rates as well as energy recovered (Btu/h and propane replaced). Energy use, environmental conditions, and air quality will be compared in the room heated with the pTSC with the adjacent control room, also with 250 poults; both rooms will also have conventional heating. Over two brooding flocks (total 10 weeks), bird performance (average daily weight gain, feed conversion, and mortalities) will be compared between the rooms with and without pTSC. Since the pTSC acts as a blackbody, it can provide supplemental cooling during nighttime. Hence, a bench-scale pTSC will be tested at different suction velocities to evaluate cooling effectiveness. Coconut coir as a desiccant to dehumidify the fresh air will also be examined.