Jin Li

Chunjiang Zhao
email: zhaocj@nercita.org.cn

Xiangyang Qin

Gang Liu

Study on the Demands for Agricultural and Rural Informationization in China and its Strategic Options

Keywords: modern agriculture, new socialist countryside, informationization, needs analysis, strategic options

China is at a critical stage of transformation from traditional to modern agriculture and its agriculture and rural economic sector faces severe challenges of shortage of natural resources, environmental degradation, agricultural disasters, sluggish income growth of farmers and widening disparity between urban and rural areas. The fundamental solution to these problems lies with the advancement of agricultural science and technology. China's agricultural and rural informationization has entered the comprehensive development stage, in which informationization is no longer a pure technical but complex systematic matter, involving natural, technological, economic and social issues, with impact on the country's food security, environmental protection and sustainable development. Based on analysis of agricultural and rural economic development, this paper thoroughly examines the demand for information technology in the drive of new socialist countryside construction and modern agriculture development and tables strategic options for agricultural and rural informationization in China.

Introduction

At late 90's of the last century, China's agricultural development entered a new stage; the supply of agricultural products has changed from shortage to an overall equilibrium of supply and demand while surplus has been maintained in years of good harvest; the structure of agricultural production has been gradually optimized; transition from traditional agriculture featuring monopoly crop farming to modern agriculture with overall development of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries has been achieved. Agricultural production has become increasingly commercialized, specialized and market oriented. In the national economy, it has transited from agriculture supporting industry to industry supporting agriculture and urban area leading the development of rural area. The development and innovation of rural economy of China have not only done away with the backwardness of rural China, but also provided strong support to industrialization and modernization of the country.

Significantly improved agricultural comprehensive production capacity and transition from traditional to modern agriculture

Since reform and opening, agricultural infrastructure facilities nationwide have been significantly improved. Farmland irrigation, agricultural mechanization and facility agriculture developed rapidly; the equipment level, disaster resistant capacity and resource utilization efficiency also improved remarkably. As a result, agricultural comprehensive production capacity has greatly improved. In 2008, the total power of agricultural machineries reached 822 million KW and the mechanization level of farmland plowing and crop planting and harvesting reached 50.8%. The gross output value of agriculture reached 5.83 trillion RMB Yuan, the added value of primary industry reached 3.4 trillion RMB Yuan. Total grain output attained 528.5 million tons and the per capita grain output reached 400 kg, providing strong foundation for national food security. The development objective of agriculture is changing from "providing sufficient food and clothing" to "high quality, high yield, high efficiency, ecological-friendliness and safety". The industrial system of agricultural sector is shifting to the establishment of modern agricultural industrial chain. Different operational models of agricultural development such as those led by dragonhead enterprises through "company + farmer households", by intermediary organizations through "cooperative + farmer households" and "specialized association + farmers households" and led by specialized markets have flourished. The process of market-oriented commercialization and specialization of agricultural production has accelerated, laying solid foundation for modern agricultural development.

Continuous optimization of agricultural and rural economy structure and gradual improvement in quality and result

At present, the structure of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries has achieved transition from traditional agriculture featuring monopoly crop farming to modern agriculture of integrated development of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries. The share of crop farming decreased while the shares of forestry, animal husbandry and fishery increased significantly in the total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries. In 2008, the gross output value of agriculture reached 3.4 trillion RMB Yuan, an increase of 5.5% on the basis of last year in comparable terms. Crop farming accounted for 53.3% of the total output value, forestry for 4.4%, animal husbandry for 29.4% and fisheries for 9.4%.

In the sub-sector of crop farming, the ratio of sown areas to grain, cash and other corps has changed from 89.2:9.0:1.8 in 1952 to 68.3:27.8:3.9 in 2008, with significantly increased proportion of cash crops. In the structure of animal production, the output of pork declined from 94.2% in 1952 to 63.5%% in 2008, while beef and mutton increased from 5.74% in 1979 to 13.6% in 2008. Poultry meat also rose from 5.80% in 1985 to 22.9% in 2008. Egg and milk production has witnessed rapid increase and their share in animal products also went up by a big margin. Even though farmers' income has been increasing rapidly, the urban-rural gap is also widening, which has expanded from 2.6:1 in 1978 to 3.3:1 in 2008 (with the income of rural resident as 1); the gap in absolute amount expanded to 11,020 RMB Yuan.

Because of the dual-tier economic and social structure established long time ago, the urban-rural gap will remain for certain period of time.

Increased impact of agriculture and rural economic development on the growth of national economy

At present, China is at the middle stage of industrialization. In 2008, the per capita GDP exceeded 3,000 USD, while the ratio of output value of primary industry in GDP dropped to 11.3% and the employment size of primary industry made up only The deterioration of arable land quality and the degradation of soil environment have become the bottleneck to the development of agricultural production, which is also a technical problem that must be addressed for sustainable agricultural development.

According to statistics, the total arable land area in China is 1.827 billion mu, 1.39 mu per person, which is less than 40% of the world average. Desertification area in the country is about 2.63 million km2, accounting for 1/3 of the total land territory; sandification area is 1.73 million km2, accounting for 1/5 of the total land territory.

The declining trend of arable land quality is also obvious, which is mainly reflected in shortage of organic matter in soil. When examining the organic matter content of arable land of China, it is about 1-3% for most of paddy soils; upland with less than 1% of organic matter content accounts for 31.2% of the total upland cropland.

The agricultural productivity and labor production rate are not high. Farming in most parts of the country is still done by hands and draft animals. Mechanized plowing accounts for only 55% of the total arable land area, mechanized sowing for 24.9% and mechanized harvesting for 10%. Low level of mechanization and artificial intelligent control in agricultural production directly resulted in low return rate of agricultural labor and small margin of farmers' income growth.

Industrialization of agriculture needs high efficiency and convenient channel of information communication

Agricultural industrialization is a complete industrial chain that links the various stages of pre-production, production and post-production. Informationization is the fundamental requirement of industrialization and the important means of industrial development. It provides not only sufficient information resource and convenient communication channel, but also effective technical means for industry integration and management enhancement in agricultural production [START_REF] Guo | Introduction to China's Rural Market Information Service[END_REF]. Through computer management and decision-making support system, it can help simulate and make decisions in the process of industrialization and lower the cost and risk. Through networking, market and policy information can be timely obtained, hence products can be identified for production and marketing in line with market demand.

Agricultural product tracking system can track and identify products, which can safeguard quality and safety of farm produces. Informationization has significantly changed the traditional production and marketing approaches and provided greater opportunities for further development of the traditional industry.

Precision management of agriculture needs digital and precise agricultural information resources

Precision management refers to the use of programmed, standardized, digitalized and informationized means to achieve precise, efficient, coordinated and sustained operation of each organization and management unit. Since agricultural resources are dispersed, changeable and uncertain, over 85% of agricultural information resources are related to spatial position. Therefore, the application of 3S technique, database technique, MIS technique, networking technique and decision-making support technique in the management of agricultural resources to dynamically monitor agricultural resources can efficiently promote optimized resource allocation and improve resource utilization efficiency [START_REF]Strategy on the Sustainable Development of Informationization in China[END_REF]. Let's take agricultural resource management and decision-making support system as an example. Based on agricultural resource database, the system through integrating professional models and expert systems can implement various analysis and decision-making as rational utilization of water, cropping structure adjustment and fertilizer application tactics [START_REF] Zhao | Research and Practice of Precision Agriculture[END_REF].

Digitalization and informationization are important features and means in the transition from extensive to intensive agriculture.

Social development in rural areas needs information technology 3.1 Orderly transfer of rural labor for employment needs communication platform of demand and supply of labor

Along with ever sharpening contradiction of less land and large population in rural areas and protracted urbanization, more and more rural surplus labors are moving to urban areas. At present, rural surplus labor accounts for 1/3 of the total rural labor force of the country and less than 1/2 of the surplus labors can be effectively transferred to urban areas. In order to prompt the orderly transfer of rural labors and optimize the deployment of labor resources, it is essential to build and improve rural service platform for labor supply and demand to realize dynamic management of basic information of labors and employers, such as timely releasing, inquiring and communicating of employment information. Meanwhile, the development of Internet technology enables farmers to expand their information capture and provides farmers with opportunities to access employment information of urban areas, which can help expand channels of employment.

Serving the improvement of people's livelihood needs information technology to speed up social development of rural areas

The fact that information can benefit people's livelihood and network can help build harmony has become a consensus of the globe. Through informationization, farmers can better access essential information and services needed in daily life, such as those related to culture, education, medical care and social security. The programs of "broadcasting outreaching villages" and "live satellite coverage outreaching villages" implemented by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television have greatly improved the coverage of broadcasting and television and enriched the spiritual and cultural life of farmers. In the field of medical care, disease monitoring information system is beginning to demonstrate its usefulness. The application of rural cooperative medical care management information system is catching more and more attention and gaining stronger development. Explorations and trials of modern distance medical service have been carried out in some areas. The service facilities as "Digital Homeland", "Agricultural Information Courier Station" and "Agricultural Information Service Station" of Beijing have delivered information to the doorsteps of farmers, providing convenience to the life of farmers [START_REF] Li | Rural Informationization Development Report in China[END_REF]. The establishment and improvement of socialized service information system in rural area is an important means to achieve coordinated urban-rural development and reduce urban-rural gap.

Standardization and enhancement of rural management and service need the support of e-government platform

According to the survey of UNESCO, 89% of countries are about to promote e-government and have set it as an important national agenda. At present, the large amount of governance affairs in rural areas compounded by poor management means and obscurity in information disclosure is the important cause of instability of farmer-cadre relationship. Through the establishment of administrative management system in rural area, government functions can be transformed and village management can be improved [START_REF] Liu | Agriculture Information Technology and Rural Informationization[END_REF]. As an intrinsic element of the productivity system, agricultural information plays certain role in agricultural economic growth through labor tools, labor and object of labor, such as various intelligent agricultural machineries and implements, agricultural production decision-making support system, expert system and monitoring and control system [START_REF] Wang | ICT for Agriculture and Practice of Precision Farming[END_REF]. With extensive application of information technology, large-scale innovation has appeared in agriculture and rural industry, significantly improving technical performance of tools, upgrading technical qualification and operational skills of labors, optimizing the objects of labor and saving resources. Therefore, agricultural production has changed from mainly relying on increased input to improving the production efficiency of elements to achieve output increase, which has promoted the change from extensive economic growth pattern driven by quantity to intensive pattern driven by quality. Technically, informationization provides the possibility for the emergence of modern productivity of low resource consumption [START_REF] Wang | The Necessity and Possibility to Extend ICT Application for Sustainable Agriculture in China[END_REF]. Through integrating remote sensing GIS, GPS, communication and network technologies and automated technologies with geography, agronomy, ecology and soil science, precision agriculture has achieved real-time monitoring of crop and soil in macro and micro dimensions during the whole production process. Thus, rational utilization of agricultural resources, improvement of ecological environment, reduction of resource and energy consumption and increase the quality of agricultural product can be materialized [START_REF] Zhao | Advance and prospect of precision agriculture technology system[END_REF].

Informationization brings about incremental benefits of agricultural structure adjustment

Industrialization is an important way of promoting agricultural structure adjustment and an effective measure of increasing farmers' income. However, at present stage, because of small-scale operation and geographic dispersion, the circulation of agricultural products is slow and the overall integration of agriculture is not high either. Market is the center of information, from the perspective of market system, agricultural operation mainly relies on timely and accurate market information to deploy agricultural and rural industrial resources to achieve the goal of optimization and operation of high efficiency.

On the other hand, with gradual improvement of agricultural informationization, information industry in rural area will become an emerging service industry. In the future, profit oriented exchange of agricultural information service and agricultural information products in rural market system will become important elements. With the development of rural information industry, more and more people will engage in information service, including collection and processing of information, software development, marketing of information products and consultation.

Conclusion

This paper has demonstrated the demand for information technology in the drive of new socialist countryside construction and modern agriculture development. To guarantee the effect of agricultural and rural informationization, we proposed several strategic options as follows.

Institutional innovation: organizational guarantee of informationization

Promoting the application of information technology in agriculture and rural area is the foothold of informationization; it is also the inevitable way of developing modern agriculture and constructing new socialist countryside. As the user of informationization, farmers are not highly enthusiastic about the use of information technologies due to constraints of knowledge and concepts and the impact of low income and high cost of accessing information and information technologies, which severely hinders the process of agricultural and rural informationization. In order to resolve the problem, it is a must to innovate the mechanism of informationization.

Firstly, there is the need to innovate a subsidy system of agricultural information.

Capacity building: human capacity support to informationization

Along with the advancement of economic globalization,the competition for talents becomes increasingly fierce. The upgrade of national comprehensive strength increasingly relies on science and technology progress and the fostering of talents.

Since the 1990's of the 20th century and with the continuous innovation of information technology, informationization has become an important stage of modern agricultural development and new countryside construction. And the key to realize informationization lies with the setting up of human resource structure that meets the needs of agricultural and rural informationization and provides human resources to rural informationization. Therefore, efforts must be made to build up human resource capacity for rural informationization. On one hand, based on innovations, with independent intellectual property rights, of domestic first class universities and colleges as well as research bases, it is to realize innovation from the source of core technique to product equipment and foster innovation-oriented talents. On the other hand, high-level information-oriented personnel with good command of modern information technologies and agricultural production operations in the grassroots of rural areas should be fostered, so as to realize popularized application of new technologies and products in grassroots.

International cooperation: an accelerator of informationization

Along with accelerated development of science and technology, global and regional cooperation is unfolding. No country in the world can resolve all development problems on its own and international cooperation has become an important way of addressing developmental issues. Through international cooperation, strategic cooperation with information and technology enterprises of developed countries should be strengthened to introduce into the country more advanced technologies to promote leap development and re-innovation. Priority should be given to research subjects that can help attract international cooperation funds or foreign advanced technology, equipment and advanced method. Joint application with strong overseas establishments for R&D of key technologies should be encouraged.

1 . 5

 15 39.6% of the entire society; urbanization rate reached 45.68%; indicating that industrialization and urbanization of China have already entered a new stage. The complementarities and interactions in development between rural and urban areas have been enhanced. Agriculture and rural economy is increasingly integrated with industrial and urban economy. The impact of agriculture and rural economy on the national economy has increased significantly. Particularly, during current international financial crisis, China's central government staged up investment in rural areas and stimulated rural residents' consumption, which is an important way of expanding domestic demand. Through implementation of programs such as getting household electric appliances, motorcycles, building materials and vehicles to rural areas, the government aims at achieving new momentum of economic growth pulled by increased consumption in rural areas, which provided important foundation to achieving the objective of "maintaining growth". Severe challenges in the development of agriculture and rural economy The 5th Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party proposed the mission of building new socialist countryside. The key of building socialist new countryside is to promote the development of modern agriculture. For the time being, China is at the critical stage of transiting from traditional to modern agriculture and its agriculture and rural economic development faces severe challenges of natural resource shortage, ecological environment degradation, frequent agricultural disasters, low labor productivity, sluggish income growth of farmers and widening urban-rural gap. In China, the situations of water resource shortage and low-efficiency use exist at the same time. At present, water use for agricultural irrigation accounts for 70% of total water use of the entire society. Due to problems in water transportation, irrigation, on-farm irrigation infrastructure facilities, farming system and farming practices, agricultural water use efficiency in China is still low, the grain production efficiency of unit net water consumption is less than 1kg/m3, which is far behind 2-3kg/m3 in developed countries. Agricultural irrigation water use in the Yellow River basin accounts for 92% of the total water consumption, but almost 80% of the farmland is irrigated through gravity flooding and only 20% or about 22.76 million mu is irrigated through water-saving techniques.

2

  Demand for information technology triggered by substantive changes in agricultural production patter in China 2.1 Scale production of agriculture needs automated and intelligent machinery and equipment Scale operation, intensification and informationization are not only the features of modern agricultural production, but also important ways for transiting from traditional to modern agriculture. Currently, China has built up an agricultural mechanization development system in consistent with China's national condition. The level of agricultural equipment and mechanization achieved leap development. In 2008, the comprehensive mechanization level of farmland plowing, crop planting and harvesting reached 50.8%. Field machineries with high performance and power and the corresponding farm implements increased rapidly; therefore, agricultural mechanization has entered the intermediate stage of development. Along with the development of science and technology in the globe as well as the development of computer technology, remote sensing and detecting technology, information processing technologies, controlling technology and global positioning technology,the performance of agricultural machineries has been greatly improved. In case of harvester for example, with the application of grain flow-sensing unit, the quality of grain harvested per second can be rapidly detected. With the use of grain moisture sensor, the humidity of the grain harvested and stored can be measured and monitored on-line. Agricultural robot that depends on artificial intelligence technique to sense crop species and environment change can work under extremely hot, humid or noxious environment and easily accomplish production-related works such as picking, sorting and application of pesticides. The utilization of those advanced techniques has greatly increased the efficiency and safety of farm operations[START_REF] Sun | The General Theory about Agriculture Informationization[END_REF]. At present, the first GPS-based intelligent variable seeding, fertilizer application and rotary plowing machine with independent intellectual property rights has been successfully developed and used in Maoxin Farm of Songjiang of Shanghai. The first domestically made GPS harvester has been released by Foton Heavy Industries. The application of new and high technologies represented by information technology is the key for modern agriculture to become a technology-intensive industry of scales[START_REF]Rural and Social Development Division[END_REF].

4 . 1

 41 The daily work of grassroots government can be achieved via Internet and this paperless work style can greatly reduce procedures and enhance the efficiency of work. The development of e-government increases farmer's political participation, safeguards their rights to be informed of village affairs and improves their sense of being masters of their own and ultimately promotes institutionalized and standardized administration of rural areas.4 Agricultural and rural informationization is an important means of achieving leap development in productivity Informationization promotes the shift from extensive to intensive economic growthThe mechanism of turning information technology into economic growth is that, with the innovation of information technology, the cost of manufacturing and prices of information products and equipment fall rapidly, which stimulates investments in information technology by various economic sectors, forming the so-called IT capital deepening. It not only improves the productivity of the sector, but also gains spillover effect onto other sectors in terms of behavior and productivity, hence it promotes technology progress and organizational change of economic sectors, thereby fosters the transition of the entire economic growth pattern.

4. 2

 2 Informationization reduces energy and material consumption in agricultural production and alleviates pressure of economic development on population, resources and the environment Traditional industrialization and economic growth pattern of "high investment, high consumption, high pollution, low output, low quality and low efficiency" has caused global resource shortage, environment pollution and ecological deterioration. Statistic data of the Ministry of Agriculture shows that the annual chemical fertilizer application in China is 47 million ton, while the effective utilization rate is only 35%;the annual pesticide use is more than 1.4 million ton while the effective utilization rate is about 30%, irrigating water utilization efficiency is only 45%. Large amount of livestock manure is not fully used as resources and its contribution of methane to greenhouse gases is 21 times of CO2. Energy conservation and emission reduction in agriculture not only plays decisive role in achieving the national goal of energy conservation and emission reduction, but also bears great significance in developing modern agriculture and safeguarding food security of the country.

5 . 2

 52 Through subsidizing modern technologies (equipment) and lowering the economic access requirements to modern information technology, it is to support large farmer households, intermediary agents and farmer cooperative organizations to actively use modern information technologies. The demonstration and leading role of these actors should be fully tapped to promote agricultural industrialization through informationization. Secondly, there is the need to innovate diversified investment system. The guiding role of government's agriculture-supporting and benefiting funds should be fully used to usher credit and capital investment of the society in agriculture and rural information development, building a financing system integrating government's input, capital investment of the society and farmer's contribution. An effective organization and coordination mechanism should be established among agricultural and agro-sectors. Close cooperation mechanism should be established among the telecommunication operators, IT enterprises, civil organizations and farmers[11]. Science and technology innovation: the driving force of informationization Science and technology is first productivity. Agricultural science and technology innovation is extremely important to a developing country like China that is short of agriculture resources. In the research field of rural informationization, efforts should focus on the demonstration, application and large-scale use of mature technologies, such as "the integration of the three networks" in rural areas, mobile broadband connectivity and its service, LAN data exchange technology based on power distribution network, sharing of rural information resources, network information discovering and intelligent analysis technology, cloud calculation platform and cloud service model and public information and management service platforms in rural areas. In rural informationization research area, priority should be given to monitoring and management of water and soil resources, early warning of epidemic diseases of intensive livestock farming environment, long distance monitoring of biological environment of facility horticulture industry, monitoring of agricultural production environment and transportation process, long-distance dispatch and diagnosis service of large agricultural machineries[8].

1.3 Significantly improved farmers' livelihood and great success in new countryside construction

	100% areas have improved substantially; farmers' income and consumption have both %
	% increased. In 2008, the per capita net income of rural residents reached 4,761 RMB
	80% 100% Yuan, which was 34.6 times higher than that in 1978, presenting an average annual
	20% 40% 80% growth rate of 12.7% and 7.1% after deducting price factors. The number of farmer Tertiary industry households with per capita net income over 5,000 RMB Yuan accounted for 39.3% of 60% Fisheries Animal husbandry 60% the total farmer households, of which 9.3% garnered more than 10,000 RMB Yuan in Secondary per capita net income. A historic leap from subsistence to moderate prosperity has industry Foresty Crop farming 40% been achieved in the livelihood of rural residents and it is advancing towards the goal Primary Industry of well-off society in all-round manner.
	20%
	0%	Year
	0%	1997 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Figure1 Composition of value added by agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Year
		and fisheries 2000 to 2008 Figure 2 Composition of value added by sectors of rural areas from 1997 to
		2008
	Data resources: Analysis and Forecast of China's Rural Economic Situation
	(2008-2009), Rural Development Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Social
	Sciences and Rural Social and Economic Department of National Statistics Bureau of
	China: Social Science Literature Publishing House, 2009.
	The 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party proposed for the first
	was 54.6% time the "acceleration of social development focusing on improving people's
	and 16.3% respectively, representing an increase of 10.1% and 9.3% on the basis of livelihood". From 2003 to 2008, the total expenditure in "agriculture, rural areas and
	1997. In the past two years, due to the impact of global economic slowdown, demand
	farmers" from the central government finance reached 2.2 trillion RMB Yuan, which
	decline and changes in domestic economic environment, the development of township
	resulted in significant improvement of the livelihood in rural areas. Rural power grid
	enterprises slowed down significantly and secondary and tertiary industries
	transformation program has provided electricity to more than 5.3 million households
	experienced the same pattern of decline. However, the overall trend of coordinated
	of about 24 million people who had no access to power otherwise; rural safe
	development of the three industries will not change.
	drinking-water program benefited 130 million rural residents. The proportion of
	administrative villages in the country with access to road, telephone, electricity and
	television signal accounts for more than 95% of the total and more than 80%
	townships have postal services. Education, sanitation and medical service in rural

Data resources: Analysis and Forecast of China's Rural Economic Situation (2008-2009), Rural Development Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Rural Social and Economic Department of National Statistics Bureau of China: Social Science Literature Publishing House, 2009. At the same time, rural economic structure has also changed from being dominated by agriculture to coordinated development of the three industries. According to statistic data of the Second National Agricultural Census, China had a total number of 239,000 agricultural enterprises engaged in various industries of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries at the end of 2006. In 2008, the added value of primary industry accounted for 29.1% of the total added value, a drop of 19.4% on the basis of 1997. Correspondingly, the added value of secondary and tertiary industry

Acknowledgements

This study is funded by the National Social Science Fund (approval number: 10OCQ006) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (approval number: U0970173). The authors wish to thank Academician Maohua Wang, Professor Liping Chen, Professor Xinting Yang for their constructive comments and suggestions which increase the quality of the manuscript significantly.


Jian Wang
email: wangjian@caas.net.cn

Ding-Feng Wu

Guo-Min Zhou

Yun Qiu

The New method of fruit tree characteristics acquisition using electromagnetic tracking instrument

Keywords: Fastrack, tree characteristics, fruit tree, measurement

To achieve informatization for Orchards and fruit trees and to obtain real-time tree characteristic parameters in orchard, data acquisition system of fruit tree characteristics has established by using electromagnetic tracking instrument, Fastrack and data acquisition software. The process of acquiring tree's parameters and the method for acquiring tree characteristics using this system are discussed in detail. Finally, Outdoor measurement experiment was conducted on five 3-year-fruit trees in the experimental base. Five characteristics of fruit trees: tree height, the first main lateral branch height, angle between main branch and angle between main branch and a trunk, are acquired and compared with measurement results got from the traditional direct method. It shows that parameters of trees are basically the same: The difference of these two results is about 0.12cm ±0.06 cm. The relative error is less than 2mm and the mean difference in angle is no less than 1 degree. This means the proposed approach is feasible and has a high practical value.

Introduction

China is the world's first country of fruit production. In recent decades, fruit production is improved year by year and has become one of pillar industries in some agricultural provinces. During the actual production, an advanced system of orchard management techniques, production standards and fruit production in all aspects of high-tech are important guarantees to ensure sustainable growth in fruit production due to fruit characteristics of continuous production, technically demanding and long production cycle. It is essential for the establishment of China's fruit production technology system to obtain accurate data on the characteristics of fruit trees. The accurate and quantitative description to spatial form parameters of the fruit tree may not only provide reliable evidence for the establishment of fruit production technology system and production standards, but also provide technical support to the development of fruit morphology.

There is usually two ways to acquire the characteristics of fruit trees: Direct measurement, such as the traditional measuring by using tape and pole; indirect measurement, such as the coordinates of the tree's characteristic points can be obtained by using modern surveying, information technology and electronic technology. Direct measurement is not only inaccurate and heavy workload but also bad to fruit trees. Indirect measurement can effectively fill up the deficiency of direct measurement, so it has been increasingly applied in practical production. Wang [START_REF] Wanzhang | Performance of tree canopy diameter measurement based on ultrasonic sensor and DGPS[END_REF] built a tree crown diameter measurement test system in the tractor by using ultrasonic sensors, GPS receiver and electronic compass. Which can be tested by error analysis method, and the result is good. Tumbo et al detected the volume of fruit tree by using laser sensors and ultrasonic sensors, and compared the results of orange trees of indirect measurement and manual measurement.

Comparison results show that the data obtained by indirect measurement have better accuracy than manual measurement. In addition, domestic and foreign scholars have also studied the effect of various external factors during indirect measurement on the measurement accuracy.

During the actual production, the local characteristic parameters of fruit trees are very important, such as the leaf length, leaf area, shoot length, branch diameter. The present research on fruit tree characteristics acquisition mainly focused on the acquisition to the overall characteristic parameters. There is only few studies use indirect measurement to acquire the local characteristics of fruit trees. For this reason, the article studies rapid acquisition of the characteristic parameters of fruit trees branches under the orchard environment by using electromagnetic tracking instrument FASTRACK and related software. Thus it provides a reliable basis for the establishment of fruit trees production technology system and pruning techniques.

And then it provides technical support for the development of fruit morphology and pruning techniques.

Materials and methods

Measurement system

The system which our experiment used is composed of two parts: electromagnetic tracking instrument and the self-developed data acquisition software. The electromagnetic tracking instrument of our system is Fastrack which is developed by the Polhemus Corporation in the United States, as Figure 1 shown. Fastrack has always been considered the industry standard of electronic positioning during the last ten years. It provides the perfect solution for the position/orientation measurement and its Orientation tracker can accurately calculate the micro receiver's the orientation when it moves in space. The device eliminates the potential problems which are happened when it is carrying out dynamic 6 degrees of freedom to measure the position (Cartesian coordinates in the X, Y, Z coordinates) and orientation (azimuth, height and rotation). So it means that Fastrack is the most accurate electromagnetic tracking system. Data acquisition software system can display points' data collected in a graphical way and stored them into the database. Fastrack is connected with computer through the USB interface and is controlled by data acquisition software in computer. By this way, this system can collect Fruit characteristic point coordinate data and display them in graphical way, then store them in Access database.

Experimental Materials

In this passage, our experiment has been done in the test base of Fruit Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, which locations in the east longitude 120 ° 44 ' and latitude 40 ° 36'. It attached to the city of Huludao. The Subjects of our experiment are five 3-year-apple trees which are chosen within Hua Xing and Hua Ping species (figure 2). Before the experiment, several tree parameters, such as height, branch length, section spacing and so on, should be measured by tape.

These results which are gotten by tape can be used for comparison and analysis during the following experiment.

Experimental Methods

Fastrack that our experiment used is a measurement system based on the principle of electromagnetic wave and its precision of measurement is affected by External environment and the properties of subjects. For that reason, we must select the appropriate time and place based on the actual situation during the process of collecting data. For example, because the effective measurement range of Fastrack is limited by electromagnetic emission radius, the standard radius of Fastrack's transmitter is 1.2m. On the other hand, the height of the object in this experiment is about 2m. In order to ensure the integrity and accuracy of measurement data, the enhanced transmitting antenna of Fastrack is applied in our measurement. In the measurement process, we placed the transmitting antenna near to the target location of the tree and measured trees in the windless moment of morning or night so as to reduce the impact of external environmental factors and ensure the accuracy of experimental results.

Equipment placement

Before measuring using Fastrack, equipment must be placed well. The process of placement includes three sections: GPS orientation, transmitting antenna fixed and checking the environmental impact. The purpose of equipment placement is to place the Fastrack transmitter in a stable position and ensure one of its axes parallel with the GPS antenna. At the same time, through the section of checking environmental impact, the device is less affected by external so as to ensure experiments carried out smoothly.

Measurement of spatial data

Fastrack that our experiment used is controlled by software, which means that there During the measurement process, a set of rules is designed for choosing and measuring key points of trees so as to recorder the key data of fruit trees' points. As the right side of figure 4 shown, six points which located in each knot of tree are chosen. On the other hand, between the neighboring knots, two points of tree are chosen for measuring which are as the right side of figure 4 shown. To measure as this rule, we can get

6 8 2 6 ) 1 ( + = × + × + n n n
data when measuring a branch with n knots. When measuring a tree, one operator chooses every selected point with detecting pen and coordinates of points are recorded by the data collation software. At the same time, the other information of selected points, such as point type and branch type, are also recorded for data analysis of the next step. As usual, a skilled operator can complete measurement of a fruit tree in 30 minutes, which can get data of 1000 The figure 5 is the interface of collecting software.

Calculation of characteristic parameters.

After having gotten feature points' three-dimensional coordinates of fruit trees with Fastrack, we can compute some tree parameters, such as height, stem length, shoot length, the angle between any stems, interlayer distance, crown width, crown diameter and so on , with these coordinates of collecting data in the software.

To any pairs of points on the branch: ) , , (

2 2 1 2 2 1 2 2 1 ) ( ) ( ) ( z z y y x x d - + - + - = (1)
By the formula (2), we can obtain any tree branch length: ) ,..... , max( The angle between any pair of stems can be computed by using the theory of the angle between two vectors, as Formula (3) shown: As the same principle, the interlayer distance of a tree can be gotten by using the distance between any two vectors, as Formula (4) shown:

AB proj d u = (4)
where u proj represents the vector projection of AB onto the axis.

)} , , {(

i i i z y x P =
is a set of feature point coordinates of a fruit tree, where n i ...

. ⎪ ⎩ ⎪ ⎨ ⎧ - = Δ - = Δ - = Δ ) min( ) max( ) min( ) max( ) min( ) max( z z z y y y x x x (5) 2 , 1 , 0 =
According to Formula (5), tree height is given by Formula ( 6)

z h Δ = (6)
Based on the same principle, crown width of a fruit tree can be given by Formula [START_REF] Tumbo | Laser, ultrasonic and manual measurements of citrus tree canopyvolume[END_REF] h

y x f Δ Δ + Δ = (7)
where h Δ represents the crown height of a fruit tree.

Results and Analysis

We have measured the height and the first major lateral branch height of NO.1st to 5

trees with a tap in detection height of Fastrack. The angle between main branches and the radian between the main branch and trunk can be gotten by micrometer.

Theoretically, when measured, the lower the tree height, the more accurate the detection as the tree having more close to the transmitting antenna of Fastrack.

Measurement results of these five fruit trees with two kinds of measurement methods which are mentioned above, are shown in table 1

Conclusion and discussion

In this passage, we select five 3-year-fruit trees in the experimental base of XingCheng Fruit Research Institute as research objects. Five characteristics of fruit trees: tree height, the first main lateral branch height, angle between main branch and angle between main branch and a trunk, are acquired With Fastrack. After compared these results with measurement results gotten from direct method with the tape and micrometer, it shows that parameters of trees are basically the same and relative error rate is no less than 3%. This means the proposed approach of Fastrack is feasible if the right condition is chosen and the possibility of electromagnetic interference is eliminated. Consequences using Fastrack have the same accuracy as measurement results gotten from the traditional direct method. This method using Fastrack which is characterized as convenient, fast and no damage has a high practical value.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. the Fastrack measuring equipment

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. Fruit samples in the experiment

Fig. 3 .

 3 Fig. 3. Flow chart of measurement

Fig. 5 .

 5 Fig. 5. the interface of collecting software

Fig. 4 .

 4 Fig. 4. the location of key point

Table 1 .

 1 and table 2.From the data of table 1, for NO 1st to 5th trees measured with a tape and micrometer, the average height is 132.97cm, the average height of first major lateral branch is 31.00cm, the average angle between main branches is 37.2 degree and the average Radian between the main branch and trunk is 1119.4 degree. Meanwhile, from the data of table 2, for NO 1st to 5th trees measured with Fastrack, the average values mentioned above are 133.04cm, 30.89cm, 36.8 degree and 119.8 degree.Comparing mean parameters of fruit tree gotten by these two measure methods, we can find that the relative error of the height is the smallest while the angle between main branches' relative error is largest. Values of these errors are 0.05% and 3%. It Measurement results of fruit trees using tape

	means that the result gotten by indirect measurement with Fastrack is very near to that
	of direct measurement with tape. The difference of these two results is about 0.12cm
	±0.06 cm. The relative error is less than 2mm and the mean difference in angle is no
	less than 1 degree. So results from indirect measurement with Fastrack have a very
	high precision, which can meet the needs of the measurement parameters of fruit
	trees.
	Specific research and comparison dada in table 1 and table 2, we can find that the
	result of NO 3rd tree has the largest difference among two measurement methods.
	Because the result gotten by direct measurement is the mean value from the results of
	three professional operators, the error of direct measurement can be ignored. Further
	investigation can be found that the site of No 3rd tree is near to a pumped well which
	framework contains fixture. The fixture can affect the measuring tools of Fastrack that
	causes higher error. Meanwhile other trees relatively far away this pumped well
	which can get less influence by electromagnetic interference when measured and
	results of them have less error. Therefore, it is important for the accuracy of Fastrack
	to choose the right condition and smooth away the possibility of electromagnetic
	interference.

Table 2 .

 2 Measurement results of fruit trees using Fastrack

	Tree number	1	2	3	4	5
	Height(cm)	132.76	131.84	133.99	133.56	133.06
	Height of first major lateral branch (cm)	26.01	31.54	29.53	35.01	32.34
	Angle between main branches(degree) 33	36	38	41	36
	Radian between the main branch and trunk(degree)	117	115	125	122	120

Acknowledgements: Funding for this research was provided by "basic scientific research special fund of nonprofit research institutions at the central level" (2010j-1-06) and the "863" project of research and application of field crop diseases intelligent diagnosis system (Number: 2007AA10Z237).


H U Lin

Zhou Guomin

Yun Qiu

The simulation of the Apple tree form's effects on its photosynthetic efficiency

Keywords: apple trees, light, intercept ratio, mathematic model, fine management, simulate

the form of the Apple tree is decided by the organ position of the tree,it affects not ONLY the relationship between the vegetative growth and the fruit production , but also the fruit quality 。 In this research , the continuous growth for 3 years was gotten with polhemus fastrak, and the apple tree model was built in the POV-ray to simulate the interception of the sunlight. A mathematic model was built between the form and the photosynthetic efficiency, the growth as the index of the form while the interception of the light as the index of the photosynthetic efficiency. Utilizing this model to analyses the effects of the form on the apple tree's photosynthetic efficiency, this result show a reference for the apple trees management.

Introduction

The study of plant architecture emerged as a new scientific discipline some 30 years ago. Plant architecture is a term applied to the organization of plant components in space which can change with time (2007, Daniel Barthelemy). Plant architecture is introduced into the research of the apple tree (2003, E. Costes). One of the researches is about the interactions between light and vegetation (2005, Rodrigo A.). The geometrical structure of the vegetation canopy, i.e. the location, shape and orientation of the apple tree elements determine the light distribution in the canopy (2005, J. Phattaralerphong). Many methods for the measurement of canopy geometry may involve direct measurement or may be inferred from radiation measurement using light sensor. Of the direct measurements, current induction in magnetic fields is the most convenient one.

In this paper, we use a polheumes fastrak to measure the parameters of the apple tree structure, such as the node, internodes, orientation angle, etc. the measured data was used to descript the apple tree in POV-Ray (Persistence of Vision Ray-Tracer). POV-Ray is a high-quality, freely available ray-tracing software package that is available for PC, Macintosh and UNIX platforms. POV-Ray is used in every industry widely, such as chemistry, art painting, architecture, agriculture, remote sensing and medicine. We simulate the light transfer in the crown, and evaluate the affection of the apple tree architecture on the interception of the sunlight.

The test area is located at the Fruit Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural sciences (Figure1).

The apple tree is HuaHong, a variety of Fuji apple, bred by the institute own self. We began this project form 2006, for about 4 years.

Fig. 1. Agricultural Fruit Research Institute

The data of the apple tree was measured with polhemus fastrak (1988, H. Sinoquet), the error is 1 mm per meter in theory, but it could be about 1 cm outside for the wind and other elements.

Topology and Geometry

The apple tree's structure is descripting as module which can be divided in detail into two components, i.e. stem and bud. A bud develops into a flower or a branch.

We define the Apple tree structure with key points which can be divided into two kinds. One is the form key point and the other is the functional key point.

The form key point (Figure 2) is such a point which decide the apple tree form, if use a single sentence to descript, that is such a point it is not in the straight branch, or branch direction is horizontal or vertical (1999, C. Godin).

These import points can be measured by polhemus fastrak. The point data is descript with five items, i.e. point type, point-function, prepoint, next-point and the current point orientation (x, y, z, r), as table 1. It is very convenient to conscript the apple tree structure in such a topology (Figure3), and can be implemented in computer language easily.

Fig. 3. Tree topology 2.3 Apple tree simulate

The apple tree data took with polhemus fastrak is stored in data file. The 3d apple tree is implemented by POV-ray with the data reformatted from point data to triangle data with python.

Python is a very popular script language (2010, python development team), is used in many industry. We use python to write the measured data according to the POV-ray format.

POV-ray is ray trace software, a POV-ray file mainly include an object, lights and camera.

The apple tree POV-ray file includes the sun, the camera and the tree, the tree is composed by meshes (2005, Loch B.), and the mesh is compound by triangles.

The frame of the POV-ray program is as the follow:

sunpos(Year, Month, Day, Hour, Minute, Lstm, LAT, LONG). Camera{ persp|ortho location <> direction <> right x up y } //object 00002 //same as the object1

One object is an internodes, every (x, y, z) is measured with polhemus fastrak.

In order to simulate the light interception of the apple tree (2005, D. A. King), we calculate the statistical parameters based on the data measured with polhemus fastrak (2005, C. Bassette). The stem length, the probability of the branch and the leaf, the average of the radius of the stem and the branches, etc…we model a virtual apple tree using the statistic parameters (2002, D. A. Pouliot), and the demonstration picture as the figure4 and figure 5.

In the POV-ray scene, we simulate a fisheye lens to take pictures of the apple tree's crown while we are altering the apple tree parameters (Gilles Tran), shown as the figure. 6. The picture after segmentation is as figure 7.

The proportion of the apple tree in the image stands for the sunlight interception, and the increment of the apple tree in the diameter for the apple tree mass increase. We develop a simulate model which present the relationship between the sunlight interception and the apple structure.

Test Results

In this test, two factors, the branch angle and the branch radius, was tested, the branch angle was tested at level 15, 30, 45, 60 and 90 degree, and the branch radius was at 0.7 cm, 1,7 cm, 2.7 cm. the test result is as the table 2.

The "Area/box" shows the ratio of the leaves in the whole area of the picture, and the sum means the total numbers of the pixel of the apple tree leaves.

The figure 8 shows the relationship between the interception and the branch angles, the horizontal axis shows the branch angles, and the vertical axis shows the numbers of the pixels the leaves occupied.

Fig. 8. The relationship between the branch angle and the light interception

The formula of the angle and the light interception is a logarithmic line, and R is near 1. The relationship shows as the equation 1.

Light_interception=670.09*ln(angle)-1713.8

(1)

The branch angle is the most important factor (1995, C. Jourdan) which affects the apple tree light interception. The result shows that the relationship between the branch angel and the light interception is a logarithmic line.

The relationship between the branch radius and the light interception cannot be described incorrectly, because when the radius of the stem increases, it will cover a big block of the branches and leaves, as shown in figure 7. From table 2, there is an inverse ratio between the two factors. Obviously, it is contrary to the general knowledge. In future, we will find a more reasonable and fitness methods to solve this problem.

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. The form key points

Fig. 4 .Fig. 5 .Fig. 6 .Fig. 7 .

 4567 Fig. 4. Apple tree with shadow

Table 1 .

 1 the

			description of a point
	type	func	Pre	Next	orient
	fruit	Func			(x,y,z,r)
	Leaf	form
	Bud
	branch

Table 2 . The statics data of the segmented picture.

 2

	No.	Branch angel	Branch radius	Area/box	sum	stdev
	1	15	0.7	0.93	142	0.16
	2	15	1.7	0.94	143.04	0.15
	3	15	2.7	0.91	123	0.18
	4	30	0.7	0.91	544	0.19
	5	30	1.7	0.91	501.46	0.2
	6	30	2.7	0.9	456.06	0.2
	7	45	0.7	0.9	941.05	0.21
	8	45	1.7	0.88	823	0.22
	9	45	2.7	0.86	754.38	0.23
	10	60	0.7	0.9	1234.62	0.21
	11	60	1.7	0.88	1056.71	0.22
	12	60	2.7	0.85	846.27	0.23
	13	90	0.7	0.9	1504	0.21
	14	90	1.7	0.89	1327.17	0.22
	15	90	2.7	0.89	1106.68	0.22


Zhigang Wu

Yichuan Bai

Han Huang

Wenxin Li

Zhimei Li

Zhihong Li

TPPADS: an expert system based on multi-branch structure for Tianjin planting pest assistant diagnosis

Keywords: green plant, expert system, multi-branch structure, pest diagnosis

At present, green plants exist in all aspects of our lives. And statistics shows that the pest species of green plants is very large. Thus accurate and rapid diagnosis is regarded as an essential component of green plant protection. Moreover, we couldn't find relevant information easily. That is why pest diagnosis is difficult and inefficient for technicians and farmers. In view of the above, the expert systems have been widely used in pest identification. However, most of traditional expert systems for assistant diagnosis of green plant pests are based on dichotomous structure. They are not flexible enough and only equal the electronic dichotomous keys. Compared with dichotomous structure, the system based on multi-branch structure has more advantages for accurate and rapid diagnosis. This paper describes the design and development of a web-based green plant pest expert system as part of Tianjin science and technology cooperation project. Based on user needs, Tianjin Planting Pest Assistant Diagnosis System (TPPADS) was developed with ASP.NET, C# and Microsoft SQL server 2008 database.

It can show many features simultaneously. Meanwhile, data maintaining is also very easy and simple as same as the Microsoft Windows Explorer. The system included about more than 300 species of green plant pests. Diagnosis knowledge was obtained from Tianjin Institute of Plant Protection. TPPADS can be used as a diagnosis tool and information database both for plant protection professionals and farmers. We believe its application prospect should be well.

INTRODUCTION

At present, green plants exist in all aspects of our lives. And statistics shows that the pest species of green plants is very large. There are about 500 kinds of pests, who can harm green plants in Tianjin, which is one of the supper cities in China. Identification of pests is very difficult for farmers and technicians. Not only pests' information is not enough to meet the needs of farmers and technicians, but also the expert resources of green plant pest are very scarce. Usually, human experts are needed to provide the diagnostic knowledge, however, in some areas, pest management experts are not readily available to carry out disease diagnosis or insect identification [START_REF] Weeks | Automating the identification of insects: a new solution to an old problem[END_REF]. Meanwhile, Lack of database or expert system is one of the reasons for this situation. They find information difficulty, such as biological characteristics, control method, pest images, etc.

Expert systems (ES) are a branch of applied artificial intelligence (AI), and were developed by the AI community in the mid-1960s. The basic idea behind ES is simply that expertise, which is the vast body of task-specific knowledge, is transferred from a human to a computer [START_REF] Liao | Expert system methodologies and applications-a decade review from 1995 to 2004[END_REF]. The essence of an expert system is to mimic expertise and distribute expert knowledge into non-experts' hands. This can be enhanced significantly by using the Internet. ES solutions are based on reasoning by using problem domain knowledge and heuristics. Hence, ES approach is the most suitable methodology for simulating human experts. Most of the ESs for ship design is aimed at development of assistance to deal with the complex characteristics of design problem [START_REF] Helvacioglu | Expert system applications in marine technologies[END_REF].

Expert systems have been applied in agriculture from 1980s [START_REF] Blancard | TOM, un système expert en maladies des tomates[END_REF][START_REF] Coulson | Computer-assisted decision-making as applied to entomology[END_REF][START_REF] Jones | Agricultural applications of expert systems concepts[END_REF][START_REF] Travis | Development, implementation, and adoption of expert systems in plantpathology[END_REF][START_REF] Goodenough | Basics of Insects Modelling[END_REF][START_REF] Edwards Jones | Knowledge-based systems for pest management: an application-based review[END_REF][START_REF] Carrascal | A survey of expert systems in agriculture and food processing[END_REF][START_REF] Edwards Jones | Knowledge-based systems for crop protection: theory and practice[END_REF][START_REF] Ramon | An expert advisory system for wheat disease management[END_REF][START_REF] Yialouris | An expert system for tomato diseases[END_REF][START_REF] Gonzalez Andújar | Cereal aphids expert system (CAES): identification and decision making[END_REF][START_REF] Gallagher | Proceedings of the Inaugural Meeting of the BioNET International Group for Computer Aided Taxonomy (BIGCAT)[END_REF][START_REF] Kramers | EXSYS, an Expert System for Diagnosing Flower bulb Diseases, Pests and Non-parasitic Disorders[END_REF][START_REF] Ellison | An expert system for the management of botrytris cinerea in Australian vineyards[END_REF][START_REF] Shipp | Decision tools for integrated pest management[END_REF][START_REF] Clarke | Development of the Harrow Greenhouse Manager: a decision-support system for greenhouse cucumber and tomato[END_REF][START_REF] El-Azhary | Pest control expert system for tomato (PCEST)[END_REF]. Most of them are developed for crop production and pest management [START_REF] Mahaman | A diagnostic expert system for honeybee pests[END_REF][START_REF] Mahaman | DIARES-IPM: a diagnostic advisory rule-based expert system for integrated pest management in Solanaceous crop systems[END_REF][START_REF] Gonzalez Andújar | SIMCE: An expert system for seedling weed identification in cereals[END_REF][START_REF] Prasad | AMRAPALIKA: An expert system for the diagnosis of pests, diseases, and disorders in Indian mango[END_REF][START_REF] Mansingh | CPEST: An expert system for the management of pests and diseases in the Jamaican coffee industry[END_REF][START_REF] López-Morales | JAPIEST: An integral intelligent system for the diagnosis and control of tomatoes diseases and pests in hydroponic greenhouses[END_REF], animal husbandry and aquaculture [START_REF] Li | Fish-Expert: a web-based expert system for fish disease diagnosis[END_REF][START_REF] Fu | Pig-vet: a web-based expert system for pig disease diagnosis[END_REF][START_REF] Xiao | Design and Implementation of Expert System for Cow Disease Diagnose Based on. NET Framework[END_REF][START_REF] Liu | Design and implementation of expert system for prawn disease diagnose and prevention based on .NET platform[END_REF]. At the same time, ESs are also widely used in forestry, medicine, industry etc [START_REF] Kaloudis | Insect identification expert system for forest protection[END_REF][START_REF] Kaminaris | Assessing renewables-to-electricity systems: a fuzzy expert system model[END_REF][START_REF] Matelli | An expert system prototype for designing natural gas cogeneration plants[END_REF]. Some are stand-alone early [START_REF] Yialouris | VEGES-a multilingual expert system for the diagnosis of pests, diseases and nutritional disorders of six greenhouse vegetables[END_REF][START_REF] Gao | Design and development of Taxokeys, a dichotomous-reasoning-based multimedia expert system assisting insect identification and taxonomic study(in Chinese)[END_REF][START_REF] Li | The development of Quarantine Pests Information and Identification System in China (in Chinese)[END_REF][START_REF] Andújar | Expert system for pests, diseases and weeds identification in olive crops[END_REF], many of them are web-based at present [START_REF] Shao | Study on vegetable pests remote diagnosis expert system (VPRDES) (in Chinese)[END_REF][START_REF] Liu | An Artificial Neural Network-based Expert System for Fruit Tree Disease and Insect Pest Diagnosis[END_REF][START_REF] Peng | A Study on Rice Pest Insect and Disease Diagnosis Expert System Based on B/S Mode (in Chinese)[END_REF][START_REF] Han | Qpais: A Web-Based Expert System for Assistedidentification of Quarantine Stored Insect Pests[END_REF]. Some ESs also began to integrate mobile communication systems, GIS technology etc [START_REF] Yu | Research on Mobile Expert System of Tomato Pest Diagnose Based on Microsoft .Net and Web Service[END_REF][START_REF] Wang | Study of Web -Based Expert System for Control of Diseases and Insects in Forest[END_REF][START_REF] Xiao | Remote Diagnosis and Control Expert System for Citrus Agricultural Diseases and Insect Pests Based on BP Neural Network and WebGIS[END_REF]. This paper discusses our experience in developing and evaluating a web-based expert system for identification of green plant pests, named as TPPADS (Tianjin Planting Pest Assistant Diagnosis System). The system included about more than 300 species of green plant pests. It has been developed by China Agricultural University and Tianjin Institute of Plant Protection. TPPADS could be used as a diagnosis tool and information database both for plant protection technicians and farmers.

USERS' NEEDS and KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION

Users' needs

Efficient identification work is a vital to help to make a decision about the pest control measures. When applying an expert system for technicians and farmers, it is necessary to investigate both their attitudes toward that the system. Essentially, understanding their perceptions toward the tool is a crucial issue for enhancing effect of green plant protection. In order to meet the requirements of Tianjin Institute of Plant Protection work, we had several meetings to discuss the system requirements, and careful analysis. The needs analysis report shows that: Need of basic information in a large number of pests. Technicians and farmers couldn't find relevant information easily.

Need of assistant diagnosis system. Accurate and rapid diagnosis is regarded as an essential component of green plant protection. That is why pest diagnosis is difficult and inefficient for technicians and farmers.

Friendly interface and easy operation. One of the most important design considerations behind the system was that a system should be as user friendly as possible. Understanding of the user's cognitive structure and the users' task is a critical component in the development of user-centered interface design. A good interface will enhance user/expert system interaction and task performance [START_REF] Su | A developed model of expert system interface (DMESI)[END_REF]. Simple operation allows users to easily use the system.

Interactive Consulting. Users can get experts' answer about some problems through interactive consulting on-line.

Knowledge acquisition and information collection

Knowledge acquisition (KA) is the process of transferring knowledge from the knowledge source to knowledge engineer (or expert system builder). To acquire the required knowledge, we followed the KA procedure discussed in Morpurgo [START_REF] Morpurgo | I-DSS: an Intelligent Diagnostic Support System[END_REF] ( [START_REF] Morpurgo | I-DSS: an Intelligent Diagnostic Support System[END_REF]) and Wada etc [START_REF] Wada | Knowledge acquisition from both human expert and data[END_REF].The knowledge, symptom descriptions and the rules from domain experts, i.e. entomologist and psychopathologists.

Pest information (e.g. species' morphological characteristics, biology, geographic distribution, etc.) were acquired from experts interviews and literature such as textbooks, primary and secondary literature, papers, etc. We also collected a large number of pictures by photographing. it's about 300 species of green plant pests in Tianjin.

System DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

Software and Database

TPPADS was designed to run on the internet. Its development was based on the use of internet techniques and SQL programming languages. It was developed with ASP.NET and C#. The server database played a very important role in developing TPPADS. It was used to sort all the information and knowledge which was needed to actualize every function of the expert system. In TPPADS, there are 5 databases including a user information database, basic information database and identification knowledge database etc. They were all designed using MS SQL Server 2008 Database.

Inference process

Amongst the different methods for representing the knowledge [START_REF] Plant | Knowledge-based Systems in Agriculture[END_REF], production rules are the most frequently used for diagnostic expert systems [START_REF] Gonzalez Andújar | Cereal aphids expert system (CAES): identification and decision making[END_REF][START_REF] Ellison | An expert system for the management of botrytris cinerea in Australian vineyards[END_REF]. A rule is composed of a list of IF conditions and a list of THEN and ELSE statements about the appropriate solution to the problem. A disadvantage of a rule-based system is that the knowledge is not organized in a real structure [START_REF] Chandrasekaran | Generic tasks in knowledge-based reasoning: high-level building blocks for expert system design[END_REF]. Most of traditional expert systems for assistant diagnosis of green plant pests are based on dichotomous structure which is rule-based.

They are not flexible enough and only equal the electronic dichotomous keys. However, hierarchical structure provides a natural structure for the knowledge and allows the building of expert systems that can be easily modified and adapted. In hierarchical structure, knowledge is organized in a decision tree, with nodes at different levels. The knowledge is distributed among many nodes [START_REF] Schulthess | NEPER-weed: a picture-based expert system for weed identification[END_REF]. Compared with dichotomous structure, TPPADS based on multi-branch structure or is another form of hierarchical structure has more advantages for accurate and rapid diagnosis (Fig. 1).

Users interface

User interface is the direct media between users and computers. To best meet the different users' need, designers should insist on friendly principle. In another word, they should consider all users' knowledge level and ensure the interface complete, compact and easy (Fig. 2). Meanwhile, data maintaining is also very easy and simple as same as the Microsoft Windows Explorer.

Discussion

Although ESs may respond faster and be more available than a human expert, are steady, unemotional, and give complete response at all times, they also do have the following disadvantages [START_REF] Helvacioglu | Utilization of expert systems in container ship design: accommodation layout design expert system (ALDES)[END_REF]: Some applications are difficult to use by another person who has not generated the knowledge-base.

Some systems are very slow when compared to the human expert.

The knowledge systems' ability tends to end abruptly.

Sometimes, it is difficult to extract knowledge from an expert and to put it into a format that the ES can deal with and the size of the ES domain must be limited.

The inability of ESs to exhibit common sense limits the effectiveness of present ES applications.

For expert systems, effective organization of expert knowledge has a great influence on the functions of the expert system. If it use rule-based structure, then adjusting of knowledge base becomes very difficult and the system's adaptive capacity be reduced greatly. TPPADS adopts the multi-branch structure design, which is more suitable for various needs and the flexible adjusting to changing demands.

Thereby, it may save the cost of software development and reduce maintenance difficulty.

Further work includes that increasing of pest species involved, expanding the scope of application. Secondly, we should train technicians and farmers for using of the system. However, conceptually expert systems should not be considered absolutely valid or absolutely invalid, as the overall system evaluation is a continuous process and an ongoing endeavor helping to ensure maximum usage of the developed expert system [START_REF] Mahaman | DIARES-IPM: a diagnostic advisory rule-based expert system for integrated pest management in Solanaceous crop systems[END_REF]. So we must publicize the system as possible as more people can know and use it. The system included about more than 300 species of green plant pests.

Diagnosis knowledge was obtained from Tianjin Institute of Plant Protection.

TPPADS can be used as a diagnosis tool and information database both for plant protection professionals and farmers. We believe its application prospect should be well.

Fig. 1 :

 1 Fig.1: The Inference diagram of multi-branch structure of TPPADS

Fig. 2 :

 2 Fig.2: The diagnosis page of TPPADS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank all technicians of Tianjin Institute of Plant Protection to give help to this study. We also thank other members of Plant Quarantine Lab, China Agricultural University. This study is supported by Cooperation Project of Agricultural Science and Technology of Tianjin (No. 0804100).


Zhigang Li

Yang Gao

Yuan Li

Jinyu Han

Research on Information Sharing Pattern of Agricultural Products Supply Chain Based on E-commerce Technology

Keywords: E-commerce technology, Supply chain, Sharing mode, Tomato

Taking Xinjiang's tomato industry as an example, this paper analyzes the management of agricultural supply chain and the sharing pattern results of supply chain information under the atmosphere of E-commerce both at home and abroad, illustrates problems and solutions of current tomato industry supply chain information sharing in Xinjiang, demonstrates the implementation necessity and feasibility of supply information sharing based on E-commerce technology for Xinjiang's tomato industry, and then constructs effective information sharing pattern which can improve the efficiency of Xinjiang's tomato supply chain.

Introduction

With rapid development of society and economy, particularly after China's accession to WTO, the traditional agriculture is facing severe challenges. Compared with other countries, there is no advantage of many agricultural products in both price and quality in China. Therefore, changing the current backwardness of agricultural 1,2,* Corresponding author: Zhigang Li (1970-), male, PH.D, Associate Professor, The main research areas are Supply Chain Management and Information Management and System. E-mail: lzg_inf@shzu.edu.cn. production methods, improving the quality of agricultural products and reducing the high price of agricultural products have become the urgent need for the development of modern agriculture (Benhai [START_REF] Yu | Based on e-commerce technology and medium-sized enterprises to achieve material supply management system[END_REF]. Meanwhile, with the rapid development of electronic commerce, the development space of traditional supply chain management is widened and its meaning is broadened. Electronic commerce has changed the enterprise operation pattern and evoked the understanding of supply chain management. Development of network communications and information technology in electronic age led to the rapidly and efficiently progress of the storage, analysis, and transfer of the production and market information. To a large extent, information flow in supply chain management is no longer limited by time and space constraints. Customer, retail dealer, distribution merchant, manufacturer and supplier can share information directly. All of these greatly raised the comprehensive profit evaluation of agricultural products (Xin [START_REF] Liu | Electronic Commerce Supply Chain Management in China[END_REF].

Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang for short) is located in northwest of China, which is the largest province and an important agricultural production area in

Existed information sharing pattern of tomato industry supply chain in Xinjiang

Existed foundation and conditions

In recent years, a number of enterprises of Xinjiang's tomato industry realized the role of supply-chain management, absorbed the ideas of supply chains in process of organization and management in enterprises, and had the ability to integrate supply chain management. With the continuous development of information and e-commerce technology, many companies awarded that the enterprise informatization can enhance their competitiveness and increase economic efficiency. Therefore, current Xinjiang's tomato industry has already cumulated many achievements in the information sharing of supply chain management. The continuously improved macro-environment and micro-environment provide effective support to the promote supply chain management and the efficiency in tomato industry (Jian [START_REF] Yu | E-commerce supply chain management[END_REF].

(1) IT has been applied in Xinjiang's tomato supply chain management. Bar code technology, electronic data interchange (EDI), application identifiers are being applied, and some large tomato processing enterprises created more advanced enterprise network by using Intranet and Extranet, basically achieved information exchange and data sharing among different parts and enterprises.

(2) Leaders and staffs of tomato business improved the realization of advanced (4) The outside microcosmic environment related to tomato supply chain management was improved. In recent years, the distribution, chain retail industry, retail business, warehouse and transportation business in Xinjiang have certain development. Meanwhile, the commodity logistics distribution center also developed very quickly in Xinjiang's tomato industry, which improved the link of information and kind between logistics supply chain link and terminal logistics in Xinjiang's tomato process industries.

The information sharing problems of Xinjiang's tomato industry supply chain

Because the information sharing model of supply chain in tomato industry development is in its beginning stage, there are still many information sharing problems in the current tomato industry supply chain, as following four areas:

(1) Lack of sharing information, the overall information level is low. Because of lack of unified plan and design of information systems of the tomato market in Xinjiang, current supply chain of tomato industry had many problems: the channel of information transmission is too long, members of nodes were distributed, lost of the unified information network platform, incomplete of primary agricultural information, the development of communication network and information technology between regions is unbalance. So the informationization about the supply chain between nodes has great difference and level of information sharing is low, which leads to the low level of information sharing in whole supply chain [START_REF] Song | E-commerce logistics and e-supply chain management[END_REF].

(2) Seriously bullwhip effect and inefficiencies supply chain. At present, the problems of node enterprises are impeded information flow and isolated information.

Every node enterprise in tomato supply chain arranged to maximize their own profits by respective situation and supply and order information from down-stream enterprises. In this decision mode, the node enterprises could not consider sufficiently about the status quo of tomato supply chain. The decision-making often aggravates the bullwhip effect, increases the stock of tomato products in supply chain, and decreases the overall efficiency of the supply chain system.

(3) Low integrated level inside the supply chain. Information integration means knowledge exchange between supply chain partners. This is a deeper relationship which can reduce opportunistic behavior, weaken the bullwhip effect and improve the efficiency of information. Practice indicates that information integration requires partners' deep trust, but the reduction in opportunistic behavior can enhance the trust between enterprises. In other words, reduction in opportunistic behavior is beneficial to promote the information integration, and information integration can reduce the two-way relations of opportunistic behavior (Hua [START_REF] Song | E-commerce logistics and e-supply chain management[END_REF].

But the problem of information asymmetry in the tomato supply chain has not been solved. Therefore, the possibilities of having opportunism increase, which will impact trust on relationship, reduce the degree of internal integration in the supply chain, and form an expansion vicious circle about opportunistic behavior.

(4) Lack of funds. In order to share information, companies must invest a lot in management information system and hardware equipment, and the related personnel training, process improvement, and the readjustment of product structure will also bring high transfer cost. Moreover, data capture and data elaboration also increase the cost. Generally speaking, the higher the degree of information shares, the higher cost will be. Therefore, they need invest a large of capital in incipient stage of information sharing. It is difficult for most tomato enterprises in Xinjiang to pay such high cost for the present situation of Xinjiang's tomato industry. So the financial matter may be the problem of information sharing, although the value of information sharing is considerable.

Information sharing construction of Xinjiang's tomato industry supply chain based on electronic commerce technology

The principle of pattern construction

(1) The principles of openness and absorption. Firstly, an opening pattern of agricultural information sharing should be constructed. It provides a condition that node enterprises can share information (they are suitable for exchange and sharing) with other enterprises. Secondly, it must continually rich information storage and timely track, absorb and utilize knowledge outside the supply chain.

(2) Keep balance between security and sharing. In order to realize the goal that each of chain members can share information based on protection of their core information, core competencies and competitive advantage, members can obtain new information from sharing and intercommunion and enrich their own information database. Members must determine which information needs to be kept secretly and which can be shared, and then share the information with other nodes based on this conduction.

(3) The principle of coordination. In order to maintain the high efficiency of supply chain movement, supplementary ability is requested among various members. In the field of information storage, coordinated ability in the learning capability and creation ability of information is necessary. In the aspect of enterprises' culture and the management idea, the sharing mode should have the uniformity in information sharing and communication.

The constructing of pattern

The tomato industry supply chain is not only the distribution chain, the information chain and the fund chain joint tomato supplier to consumer, but also a supply chain appreciated from processing, packing and transportation. So tomato supply chain is a rising value chain and can bring profit for related enterprise. The tomato supply chain's node enterprises must maintain synchronization, coordination, and information flow unimpeded, all of which are premise of realized rise value. Electronic commerce can realize information sharing about tomato on the whole supply chain, and take the smallest cost to provides the greatest value and the best service for the tomato consumer, which will increase operating efficiency and economic gain about tomato supply chain (Xiaolin [START_REF] Chen | Agricultural supply chain problems of information control[END_REF].

Meanwhile, the advanced information network technology is a powerful detachment to achieve the supply chain information sharing. This technology can enhance the combinative possibility of farmers, suppliers, retails and costumers, and it is an advantage to the track, active control and the entire management about agricultural product distribution, and achieves the goal of resource and information sharing. At present, overseas agricultural product supply had used many advanced information technology. The practice indicated that the production enterprise, the department of government monitors and the third party logistic can issue and inquire related information thought Internet.

In addition, information is the neural elements of the logistics of agricultural products, only in agricultural products before, during, and even to post-storage, transportation, processing and marketing, each link also has a timely and accurate logistics information processing capacity of the premise can accurately respond to market changes. But now, because information network Xinjiang's tomato industry is not perfect, the communication channel is not smooth, and the peasant household are lived disperses, it is difficult to collect and transmit many information which seriously influenced the efficiency of Xinjiang's tomato industry supplied chains. Therefore, tomato supply chain should wildly use information network technology. Constructing management system of logistics information about Xinjiang's tomato industry should combine information technology with acceleration of the system of logistics and using of the electronic commerce. Only in this way can Xinjiang achieve information sharing of tomato supply chain. As shown in Figure 3, this pattern also applied for the EDI pattern of information sharing. The information sharing of the tomato processor and the overseas distributor use the EDI special line connects with each other.

Figure 2. Information Sharing Pattern

As shown in Figure 4, the peasant household and the tomato retail merchant share information with the EDI pattern based on their clear information need, and this pattern is highly accurate and secure. As shown in Figure 5, this EDI pattern is used in information sharing of processor and the retailer. The EDI special line is used in the information sharing of the tomato processor and the retailer.

As shown in Figure 6, establishment and information sharing of the two mainly databases: the oversea distributors establish the database in the information of stock, price about tomato is under the government's help. The overseas retail merchant provides the tomato demand and forecast information. Information sharing between them is the data interface pattern of the point-to-point pattern.

The pattern's merit

The supply chain pattern of the tomato information sharing is based on supply chain E-business information sharing on information network. It takes the elements together including agricultural products production, processing, circulation and consume. Suppliers, farmers, industry and commerce, distributors and retailers come to be an operation of the production, supply and marketing by information sharing. By using of information sharing, growers know the production processing, the market access and quality and safety of tomato. Meanwhile, other node enterprises can promulgate the international and domestic standards about tomato in order to guide actual production [START_REF] Jiang | Constructing logistics' system of agricultural research based on the e-commerce[END_REF]. Customers can inquire quality and safety of tomato, retrospect to grow area through the termination of information platform, in order to guarantee the consumer's rights and interests, and also be propitious to (2) Through coordinate the information flow in supply chain, reduce the transaction cost of agricultural product circulation. Information sharing reduces tomato loss in product circulation, cycle of tomato product production, but raises the efficiency of transaction and reduced the distribution cost.

(3) Growers, processor and distributors can obtain more profit. Consumers can eat secure tomato product, and it is the material base for the development of "the order form agriculture".

Conclusions

The application of Xinjiang's tomato industry supply chain information sharing based on the electronic commerce technology solved the limit in time and space of tradition supply chain management, dovetailed the information systems about farmers, processor of tomato products and distributor, enhance the flexibility of the chain management, reduced the cost and the risk of logistics management, avoided the high transaction cost in the agricultural product circulating, and raised the efficiency of transaction.

It strengthened the close cooperation among the inside departments in enterprise, the enterprise and supplier, accelerated turnover rate of materials, reduced stock, lessened the fund of stock, and raised the economic effectiveness of the agricultural product enterprise.

  China. But affected by the reason of location and economic development, its supply chain management is still defective. The great change affected by the development of e-commerce technology has resulted in the substitution of electronic commerce for traditional business activities and changed the traditional pattern of agricultural products supply chain. How to effectively and efficiently improve supply chain and how to get competitive advantages in the competitive environment of e-commerce for agricultural enterprises in e-commerce and supply chain management becomes a problem that agricultural production enterprises have to face. Taking Xinjiang's tomato industry as an example, this paper studies how to promote the optimization of supply chain management based on e-commerce technology and supply chain management, and how to promote the information sharing of Xinjiang's agricultural supply chain.

( 3 )

 3 technology and improving enterprises by advanced technology. And leaders improved the cognition about staff training and the action principle of motivating mechanism. Development of supply chain management and changing of policy environment improved the conditions to develop e-commerce for Xinjiang's tomato enterprise. These years, Chinese government strongly supported the implementation of supply chain management for company and established a series of support policies. Since 1997, e-commerce has gradually become a hot topic in Chinese social and economic activities, and the e-commerce technology and applications changed greatly as well. It creates a favorable condition to implement supply chain management based on Electronic Commerce.

  According to the present development situation, the supply chain condition, the supply chain information sharing condition and the factors of influence supply chain information sharing of Xinjiang's tomato industry, we can construct the pattern of the information sharing about supply chain in Xinjiang's tomato industry. Main patterns are shown in Figure1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.As shown in Figure1, establishment and information sharing of the two mainly databases: under governmental help, peasant household established the information database of tomato stock, origin and price. Tomato processing industry established the information database of tomato processing, demand, and quality specification. The information sharing is the data interface pattern of the point-to-point pattern between them. The peasant household and processing industry collect and transmit information from the interior and exterior of enterprise based on the Internet technology, and they use the service system visit each other's internal database, control the pattern of supply, produce and sell.

Figure 1 .

 1 Figure 1. Information Sharing Pattern

Figure 3

 3 Figure 3. Information Sharing Pattern

Figure 5 Figure 6 .

 56 Figure 5. Information Sharing Pattern

( 1 )

 1 foundation and the protection of the brand about tomato. Tomato processors can share information provided by distributor and retailer through the information sharing. The processors can also transmit information about product for upstream enterprises and purchase tomatoes through order sheet. It can reduce blindness of peasant produces and guarantee tomato sale, not only reduce the distribution cost of tomato products and tomato loss, but also advantage to the agricultural industrial production. chain can realize the advanced trading mode of on-line auction through the information platform. It also realizes on-line payment if it connects to customs and bank. There are lots of merits that information sharing pattern about tomato supply based on the environment of electronic commerce. The full supply chain information sharing, visibility throughout the supply chain The dovetail of the information systems about farmers, processor of tomato products and distributor, enhanced the flexibility of the chain management, reduced the cost and the risk of logistics management, promoted the need information about the tomato marketing arriving to node enterprise accurately and timely. In this way, agricultural production is scheduled, reduces farmer's market risk, and enhances the farmers' income.

( 4 )

 4 It improves the service quality and customer relationship. The tomato supply chain has completely collaborative management according to the consumer-customer demand. The chain uses commercial intelligence technology include DW, DDM to develop customers' knowledge, strengthen effect of marketing, optimize the service flow, improve the efficiency of working, promote customers' degree of satisfaction and loyalty, establish the long-term customer relationships and enhance the enterprises' brand.