Precision Agric DOI 10.

1007/s11119-011-9223-8

Geostatistical analysis of fruit yield and detachment force in coffee

bio Moreira da Silva jo e Silva Ferraz Fa Gabriel Arau Marcelo de Carvalho Alves Rafael de Lima Bueno Pedro Augusto Negrini da Costa

Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Abstract The aim of this study was to use geostatistical analysis to evaluate the spatial variation in the detachment force of coffee fruit and coffee yield by variograms and kriging s Pontas, Minas o farm, Tre for precision agriculture. This study was conducted at Breja Gerais, Brazil. The detachment force of green and mature coffee fruit was measured with a prototype dynamometer and georeferenced. The yield data were obtained from manual harvesting and were georeferenced. The data were evaluated by variograms estimated by residual maximum likelihood (REML), which provided a satisfactory approach for modeling all the variables with a small sample size. Spherical and exponential models were tted, the rst provided the better t to mature fruit detachment force and the latter provided the better t to coffee yield and green fruit detachment force. They were used to describe the structure and magnitude of spatial variation in the variables studied. Kriged estimates were obtained with the best tting variogram models and mapped. The statistical and geostatistical analyses enabled us to characterize the spatial variation of the detachment force of green and mature coffee fruit and coffee yield and to visualize the spatial relations among these variables. The precision agriculture techniques used in this paper to collect, map and analyze the variables studied will help coffee farmers to manage their
jo e Silva Ferraz F. M. da Silva R. de Lima Bueno P. A. N. da Costa G. Arau Department of Engineering, Federal University of Lavras (UFLA), PO Box 3037, Lavras, MG 37200-000, Brazil e-mail: gaferraz1@yahoo.com.br F. M. da Silva e-mail: famsilva@ua.br R. de Lima Bueno e-mail: rafaeldelimabueno@hotmail.com P. A. N. da Costa e-mail: pedro.negrini1@gmail.com M. de Carvalho Alves (&) Department of Soil and Rural Engineering (DSER), Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine (FAMEV), Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT), Av. Fernando Correa da Costa 2367, , MT 78060-900, Brazil Boa Esperanc a, Cuiaba e-mail: mdecalves@ufmt.br; marcelocarvalhoalves@gmail.com

123

Precision Agric

elds. Maps of coffee yield will enable farmers to apply nutrients site-specically and manage harvesting either manually or mechanically. In addition, maps of detachment force of coffee fruit can enable farmers to harvest coffee selectively by choosing the appropriate places and the right time to start. This will improve the quality of the nal product and also increase prots. Keywords Precision agriculture Geostatistics Yield Detachment force Coffee

Introduction Coffee is one of the most important crops of the Brazilian economy. According to MAPA (2009), Brazil is the major coffee producer of the world and accounts for 35.7% of the world production, whereas the second most important, Vietnam, accounts for only 12.4%. As coffee is such an important crop in Brazil, it is necessary to study all factors involved in its production to decrease costs and increase yield. According to Carvalho et al. (2004), coffee yield is affected by climate, the occurrence of pests (Chalfoun et al. 1978), plant physiology (Rena et al. 1996), tillage system, plant density and population (Toledo and Barros 1999), slope and topography (Souza et al. 2004) and other factors (Carvalho et al. 2006). As a result of the diversity of factors that affect coffee yield, uniform eld management based on assumed homogeneity of the total area can decrease farmers prots. Spatial analysis can maximize the economic returns by making farm management more efcient (Alves et al. 2011). With maps of the spatial variation of yield, for example, farmers can identify areas within elds where crop yield may be improved or where adjustments to inputs are needed to optimize farm protability and environmental quality (Pierce et al. 1997). The coffee harvest is more difcult to study than crops such as cereals because of features such as plant shape, non-uniform maturation of the fruit and high humidity of fruits. Coffee is a perennial bush and each plant can have a different shape with differences in plant height, length and width, even with plants that are close together within a eld. This feature makes harvesting and the design of coffee harvesters difcult because they involve removing the fruit by vibration. In addition, the shape of the coffee plants complicates manual harvesting because it is often necessary to use ladders to reach the fruit. The value of the coffee crop depends on the quality of the harvested fruit. According to n (2008), coffee fruit humidity is the most critical quality because it controls the Bore fermentation process and the potential for fungi to develop during storage and transportation, which can result in poor avor and aroma from the produced toxins. Maturation of coffee is directly related to the humidity. Coffee fruits are harvested when the humidity ranges from 30 to 65%; humidity of mature fruit ranges from 50 to 65% and n 2008). Therefore, there is a need to avoid harvesting of green fruit from 66 to 70% (Bore green fruit. The objective of selective harvesting is to harvest more mature fruit and fewer green fruit. However, maturation is not uniform within the eld or within the plant, and it is necessary to establish some index to harvest coffee fruit mechanically in a selective way. The process of harvesting coffee can be classied as manual, semi-mechanized and mechanized (Silva 2004). Harvesting by hand requires many people for the operation. This method can be selective by taking only the mature fruit. It is economically viable when many workers are available, the variation in maturation is large, or when the quality of the product is the focus of production such as in special coffees. A manual harvest could also involve harvesting all the fruits on a coffee plant, which is the most common type of

123

Precision Agric

harvesting in the Brazilian coffee agrosystem. A semi-mechanized harvest uses portable machines that harvest all the coffee fruits on a plant. For both manual and semi-mechanized harvesting, the harvested coffee fruits are separated from leaves, sticks and stones manually. The mechanized coffee harvest is based on vibration by canes placed on one or two vertical oscillating cylinders on the coffee harvester. A harvester with one cylinder passes the coffee plants on one side at a time, whereas the row of plants goes inside harvesters with two cylinders. The vibration can be considered a selective process because the farmer adjusts the vibration and operational speed of the harvester in such a way as to harvest mature fruits only and leaving green fruit on the plant (Silva et al. 2002). For a selective mechanical harvest, it is necessary to use the harvester more than once in the eld. At the rst pass in the eld, the harvester will collect many mature fruits and only a few green ones and will leave many green fruit and a few mature ones on the plant to be harvested later. The harvester also separates the coffee from leaves, sticks and stones. The difculties of mechanized harvest are to determine the right time at which to start harvesting, the degree of vibration necessary and operational speed of the vehicle to increase performance. Silva et al. (2010a) observed that the force required to detach green coffee fruit was greater than that to detach mature fruit. This can be important for the selection of ripe coffee fruits with a mechanized harvest. Therefore, knowing the spatial distribution of the detachment force could help farmers to select the best parts of their elds to harvest mechanically and so increase the quality of the coffee yield. Geostatistics is an important tool to analyze data spatially and to generate information and knowledge that can be used for precision agriculture. It can be used to plan sampling and to map the spatial variation in crop yield and soil attributes by kriging (Valencia et al. 2004). According to Vieira (2000), geostatistics is applied to precision agriculture to characterize the spatial variation in soil and plant attributes, and to identify temporal and spatial relations among attributes to improve the management of the soil and crops with fertilizer, water and pesticides. Geostatistical analyses have been used in coffee elds to study the spatial distribution of pest infestation, such as berry borer and leaf miner (Alves et al. 2011), disease infections, such as rust and brown eye spot (Alves et al. 2008), coffee yield (Silva et al. 2007, 2008, 2010b), coffee plant defoliation during harvest (Silva et al. 2010b) and crop nutrients in the soil (Silva et al. 2007, 2008). Thus, the aim of this study was to use the geostatistical methods of variography and kriging to evaluate the spatial variation in the force required to detach coffee fruit and also coffee yield for precision agriculture management.

Materials and methods s Pontas, south of Minas Gerais state, o Farm, Tre The experiment was developed at Breja Brazil. The experiment was conducted in a eld cultivated with 22 ha of Coffea arabica L., Topazio cultivar. The crop was 3.5 years old, planted with a spacing of 3.8 m between rows and 0.8 m between plants, totaling 3289 plants ha-1. The geographic coordinates of the center of the area are 21250 5800 latitude S and 45240 5100 longitude W of Greenwich. The limits of the study area were obtained by differential GPS. An irregular grid with 48 georeferenced sampling points was created for the experiment. On this grid, the minimum distance between sampling points was 24.12 m. Each point corresponded to 4 coffee plants, where 2 plants were in a row and 2 were in each lateral row (Fig. 1). The GPS receiver recorded the positions of the sampling points.

123

Precision Agric

Fig. 1 Georeferenced points and sampling scheme

There is no yield monitor on the commercial coffee harvester for recording coffee yield, so some studies have used manual harvesting to create yield maps (Silva et al. 2007, 2008, 2010b). In this study, the coffee yield (L plant-1) was obtained by manually harvesting all fruits of 4 coffee plants around the sampling point, and the volume of coffee fruits from each plant was measured by a graduated vessel. The average yield from these 4 plants was used to represent the coffee yield at the georeferenced sampling point. The force needed to detach the coffee fruit (N) was obtained by collecting fruit using a portable dynamometer (Fig. 2). It was built and calibrated at the Prototype Laboratory of Engineering department of Federal University of Lavras (Silva et al. 2010a). The dynamometer operates on the basis on Hookes law Eq. 1.

Fig. 2 Portable dynamometer in use

123

Precision Agric

F k D l;

where F is the force (N), k is the spring elastic constant (N cm-1) and Dl is the spring deformation (cm). Twenty fruit per plant were collected with the dynamometer; there were 10 mature fruit and 10 green fruit for each georeferenced sampling point. The average force required to detach both the mature and green fruits collected was determined. The spatial dependence of yield and fruit detachment force was determined by computing and modeling the variogram. The classical variogram estimator (i.e. Matherons (1965) method of moments) is given by ^ ch 1 X zsi zsi h2 ; 2N h i1
N h

where ^ ch is the semivariance, N(h) is the number of experimental pairs of observations z(si) and z(si ? h) at locations si and si ? h separated by the lag distance h (Cressie 1993) Webster and Oliver (2007b) showed that when there are fewer than 100 sampling points in a data set, the method of moments estimator will result in a poor estimate of the variogram. For small data sets, it has been suggested that the residual maximum likelihood (REML) estimator should be used. Diggle and Ribeiro Jr. (2007) and Kerry and Oliver (2007) showed that the residual maximum likelihood (REML) variogram estimator leads, in general, to less biased estimators of the variance parameters for small samples. The REML method developed by Patterson and Thompson (1971) uses linear combinations of the data instead of working with the original data, and according to Marchant and Lark (2007) it estimates the random and deterministic components of the variation simultaneously, leading to minimum bias. The t of both spherical and exponential models was evaluated. The form of the variogram can be quite revealing about the kind of spatial variation present in an area and can help to decide how to proceed further (Burrough and McDonnell 1998). The spherical model is one of the most frequently used in geostatistics (Webster and Oliver 2007a), and is the most used model in geosciences (Andriotti 2003) and coffee crop studies. The exponential model is also widely used in geostatistics. This function approaches its sill asymptotically and so it does not have a nite range. Nevertheless, for practical purposes, it is convenient to assign an effective range and this is usually taken as the distance at which the semivariance equals 95% of the sill variance, approximately 3 times the distance parameter of the function (Webster and Oliver 2007a). The spatial dependence index proposed by Cambardella et al. (1994) was used in this study to determine the degree of spatial dependence of the variables. The index indicates strong spatial dependence when the nugget effect is B25% of the sill, moderate when it is between 25 and 75% of the sill and weak when the nugget effect is C75% of the sill. Kriging is the method of interpolation used in geostatistics to predict a variable at unsampled places in a eld using information from the sample data and the spatial dependence expressed by the variogram between neighboring samples. Kriging estimates values with no bias and with minimum variance. Ordinary kriging is the most common type of kriging in practice and can be punctual or over a block. In this study ordinary punctual kriging was used. A kriged estimate is a weighted mean of the data, z(s1), z(s2),, z(si) within a neighbourhood (Burrough and McDonnell 1998),

123

Precision Agric
N X i 1

^s0 Z

ki zsi ;

where N is the number of neighbors, z(si), involved in the estimation and ki are the kriging weights. In ordinary kriging, the weights that minimize the estimation variance are computed subject to the constraint that they sum to 1 and the expected error is ^s0 zs0 0. The estimation variance is E Z h i ^s0 E Z ^s0 zs0 2 var Z 4 2
N X i 1

ki csi ; s0

N X N X i 1 j 1

ki kj c si ; sj :

Ordinary kriged predictions were compared to the observed values by cross-validation to assess how well the model performed (Cressie 1993; Goovaerts 1997). The sample value at z(si), is discarded temporarily from the data and the value at that point is predicted by kriging with the remaining sample values in the neighborhood. The smaller the difference, the better is the estimate. According to Andriotti (2003), the estimate will be unbiased when the average error is zero. Cross-validation can be used to choose the best variogram model for prediction. Cressie (1993) and McBratney and Webster (1986) stated that the criteria for the crossvalidation include the mean error (ME), the standardized error (SE), the standard deviation of the mean error (SDME) and the standard deviation of the standardized error (SDSE). If the ME and SE are close to zero, the SDME is as small as possible and the SDSE is close to one, the estimate is unbiased and the model is good for prediction. The mean error (ME) is given by: ME
N 1X ^si zsi ; Z N i 1

^si is the value where N is the number of data, z(si) is the observed value at the point si, Z predicted by ordinary kriging at si with z(si) removed (Faraco et al. 2008). The standardized error (SE) is dened by: SE
N ^ Z si zsi 1X ; N i1 rzsi

where rzsi is the estimated kriging error at each location. The standard deviation of the standardized error (SDSE) is obtained from: v  u N  ^si zsi  u 1 X Z t SDSE : N i 1 rzsi

The geostatistical analyses and the descriptive statistics were done with the statistical software of the R Development Core Team (2006) and the library geoR (Ribeiro Jr. and Diggle 2001).

123

Precision Agric

Results and discussion The yield varied from 0.68 to 6.49 L plant-1 with a coefcient of variation of 49.48%, indicating the large degree of variation that exists in the coffee eld (Table 1). The detachment force of green coffee fruits varies from 9.34 to 10.96 N, with an average of 10.19 N and a coefcient of variation of 3.44% (Table 1). The detachment force of the mature coffee fruit varied from 4.92 to 8.36 N, with a coefcient of variation of 13.31%. This analysis indicates the degree of variation in these variables at the coffee site. The results of the geostatistical analyses described below enable us to understand how these variables change spatially. Coefcients of skewness and kurtosis were determined to assess the statistical distribution of the variables (Mapa and Kumaragamage 1996). The skewness coefcients of the detachment force variables were negative and close to zero, whereas for coffee yield the skewness was positive and 0.833 (Table 1). The skewness values of all variables are between -1 and 1. Thus, according to Kerry and Oliver (2007), it is not necessary to transform the data before calculating the variograms. Table 2 gives the model parameters of the variograms estimated by REML for coffee yield and detachment force of green and mature fruit in the eld, and Fig. 3 shows the estimated spherical and exponential functions. The criteria based on cross-validation were applied to all variables (Table 3). For both mature fruit detachment force (MFDF) and green fruit detachment force (GFDF), the cross validation criteria ME, SE and SDSE indicate that the exponential function provided the better t, whereas the SDME indicates that the spherical was better. For coffee yield, all of the cross-validation criteria indicate the exponential function was better. For coffee yield and green fruit detachment force, the exponential model appears to provide the better t to the experimental variograms. Although the cross-validation criteria (ME, SE and SDSE) indicate that the exponential model provided the better t to the variogram of mature fruit detachment force, the sill of the model was unacceptable. According to Webster and Oliver (2007a), the sill variance should be close to the a priori variance of a variable. The sill variance of the exponential model for MFDF was much larger than the variance of the variable, which was 0.854. Thus, the spherical model was the better choice for MFDF.

Table 1 Descriptive analyses of coffee yield (L plant-1) and detachment force of mature and green coffee fruit (N) Minimum 1 Quartile Median Mean 3 Quartile Maximum Kurtosis Skewness Variance Standard deviation Variation coefcient (%)

Yield

Detachment force Mature Green 9.34 9.89 10.19 10.15 10.40 10.96 0.006 -0.229 0.124 0.349 3.44

0.68 1.78 2.45 2.72 3.65 6.49 0.314 0.833 1.849 1.361 50.00

4.91 6.25 6.84 6.86 7.49 8.35 -0.833 -0.075 0.854 0.915 13.32

123

Precision Agric Table 2 Parameters of variogram models of mature fruit detachment force (MFDF), green fruit detachment force (GFDF), and coffee yield estimated by residual maximum likelihood (REML) method and tted by spherical (Sph) and exponential (Exp) models Variable Model Nugget variance (c0) 0.0000 0.0000 0.0402 0.0183 0.1579 0.0000 Spatially dependent component (c) 0.756 1.090 0.099 0.117 1.692 1.940 Sill variance (c0 ? c) Range or distance parameter (a or r/m) 148.58 119.91 160.07 48.25 150.94 75.89 227.35 144.56 359.23 Practical range a0 = 3r/m

MFDF GFDF Yield

Sph Exp Sph Exp Sph Exp

0.756 1.090 0.139 0.135 1.850 1.940

Fig. 3 Variograms estimated by the residual maximum likelihood (REML) and tted by spherical and exponential models for: a mature coffee fruit detachment force, b green coffee fruit detachment force and c coffee yield

The spatial dependence index was 0 for the detachment force of mature coffee fruit and coffee yield while it was 13.54% for green coffee fruit detachment force. The results indicate that these properties are strongly spatially dependent (Table 3) with little or no

123

Precision Agric Table 3 Spatial dependence index and the cross-validation parameters: Mean error (ME); standard deviation of the mean error (SDME); standardized error (SE) and standard deviation of the standardized error (SDSE) of the variables mature fruit detachment force (MFDF), green fruit detachment force (GFDF), and coffee yield estimated by residual maximum likelihood (REML) method and tted by spherical (Sph) and exponential (Exp) models Variable MFDF GFDF Yield Model Sph Exp Sph Exp Sph Exp Spatial dependence index 0.00 0.00 28.78 13.54 8.53 0.00 Strong Strong Moderate Strong Strong Strong ME 0.010800 0.005234 0.002252 0.001732 0.02130 0.01607 SDME 0.5951413 0.6468367 0.3275067 0.3411937 1.134700 1.121462 SE 0.009234 0.004515 0.003503 0.002674 0.010820 0.008143 SDSE 0.9180779 0.9603376 1.0140545 1.0108366 1.0366610 1.0211750

nugget effect. The nugget effect is an important parameter of the variogram because it indicates how much of the variation has not been explained at the sampling interval used (McBratney and Webster 1986), i.e. it is variation at distances smaller than the sampling interval and also measurement error. According to Cressie (1993), the range determines the spatial extent over which the variable is correlated. Coffee yield and detachment force of green fruit had practical ranges of 227 m and 145 m, respectively (Table 2). The mature fruit detachment force had a range of 148 m (Table 2). The MFDF and GFDF had similar ranges of spatial correlation, which suggests that the range of coffee fruit detachment force is independent of the degree of fruit maturation. Table 1 gives the values for coffee yield, detachment force of mature and green fruit; they vary from 0.68 to 6.49 (L plant-1), from 4.92 to 8.36 (N) and from 9.34 to 10.96 (N), respectively. Figure 4 shows the kriged maps of the variables; they show that there was considerable spatial variation in all the properties studied. These maps indicate the potential problems that could arise when only the mean is used to manage the eld. The coffee fruits are the main drain on plant energy (Cannell 1970). They compete for the acquisition of photoassimilates. Fruits are also one of the factors responsible for less vegetative growth of the plants (Cannell and Huxley 1970; Amaral et al. 2006). Plants with more fruits (higher yield) use a large part of their energy to make the fruit grow. Therefore, these plants will have little energy to retain their fruits and this is reected in a smaller fruit detachment force. Conversely, lower yielding plants will have more energy to retain their fruit, and the detachment force will be large. Coffee detachment force can also vary as a result of non-uniform owering of the coffee plant. Coffee plants have more than one owering in a crop season which results in fruits with different degrees of maturation, color, density and humidity on the same plant during harvest. The number of owerings depends on climatic conditions, plant mineral nutrition, crop management (including harvesting methods) and other factors. To describe the results, the study area was divided into nine sub-areas: central, North, northeast, northwest, South, southeast, southwest, West and East. The central area had a large yield (Fig. 4c), and low MFDF (Fig. 4a) and GFDF (Fig. 4b), whereas the northern area had average yield, MFDF and GFDF (Fig. 4c, a and b, respectively). The northeast had average yield and large MFDF and GFDF, and the northwest had a small yield and MFDF, and large GFDF. In the South yield, MFDF and GFDF were average (Fig. 4c, a and b, respectively), the southeast had average yield and GFDF and large MFDF, while the

123

Precision Agric

Fig. 4 Spatial distribution of: a mature coffee fruit detachment force (N), b green coffee fruit detachment force (N) and c coffee yield (L plant-1)

southwest had large MFDF and GFDF and average yield (Fig. 4ac). The East sub-area had large MFDF and GFDF and average yield, whereas the western part had average MFDF and GFDF, and small yield. In general, the MFDF corresponds directly with the GFDF, i.e. where MFDF was high so was GFDF, or vice versa. However, these properties did not correspond in the SE and NE. The MFDF was inversely correlated with the coffee yield in six of the nine sub-areas, i.e. where MFDF was high coffee yield was low, or vice versa. These variables were directly related in one of the nine areas. The GFDF was inversely correlated with coffee yield in seven of the nine areas and not directly correlated with coffee yield in any area. The yield map of the area studied (Fig. 4c) represents the second harvest season with an average yield, 2.71 L plant-1 (Table 1), which is larger than that of 1.45 L plant-1 for the rst harvest. Yield tends to increase until the coffee plant has had its fth or sixth harvest season, and then the plant starts its biannual cycle of one year with high yield and the next with low yield. The coffee yield map (Fig. 4c) shows that the central area had the largest yield. Differences in yield might relate to the availability of crop nutrients, such as phosphorus and

123

Precision Agric

potassium, topography and insolation. The phosphorus concentration was large in part of the northeast area and nearly homogenous in the rest of the eld. Potassium concentration was high in part of the central, northwestern, northeastern and southwestern areas, and lower in the southeast and northeast, and average for the rest of the eld. The central area was at the highest part of the eld and receives the most insolation, which helps the plants to develop better. Areas in the East and West are at a lower elevation than the central area and had the lowest yields in the eld. The lower yields along the western border could possibly result from shading of the coffee plants by trees for part of the day. Coffee plants in shade tend to produce less fruit than those in areas of good insolation (Soto-Pinto et al. 2000; Campanha et al. 2004; Zambolim 2002). With yield maps, it is possible to establish zones with similar features for coffee farmers so that they can adjust the inputs of recommended nutrients according to the requirements within zones. On small coffee farms the nutrients can be applied manually at variables rates. The equipment for variable-rate applications is not common in coffee production, but it is important to increase the awareness of coffee farmers to the possibilities of this approach. Yield maps of coffee can also make manual coffee harvesting more efcient by sending the appropriate number of workers to the eld and by directing their picking. Workers represent the most expensive item of the manual harvest and so a precise approach to labor management based on accurate maps should reduce costs of production. Yield monitors for commercial coffee harvester are not available, therefore yield maps as created in this study can be useful for managing mechanical harvesting, as well as the manual harvest, and for predicting the amount of coffee that will be harvested. Coffee harvesters have a conveyer belt that goes beneath the plants and row so that the harvested fruit is then dropped into a trailer in the next row. With the yield maps, farmers can program the appropriate discharge of the trailer (or bin) at the end of the row, which can reduce costs, time, and fuel because of reductions in the maneuvering of equipment. In a selective manual harvest, farmers can choose which fruit they want to collect, but with a machine it can be difcult to reach fruit at the optimum stage of maturity. Silva et al. (2010a) stated that the detachment force of coffee fruit, especially the mature fruit, indicates when to start harvesting selectively and mechanically. They also stated that the greater the difference between the detachment force of mature and green fruit, the better the mechanical selective harvest. Therefore, farmers can harvest fruits mechanically and selectively by setting up their harvesters based on the value of fruit detachment force. Maps of fruit detachment force, Fig. 4a and b, can be used by farmers to choose the best time and the right place to start the selective and mechanized harvesting. This is where with the detachment force of the mature fruit is smallest and where there is the greatest difference between the mature and green detachment force. From the detachment force maps (Fig. 4a, b), the best place to start harvesting will be in the central area which has the lowest MFDF, a large difference between MFDF and GFDF, and the highest yield in the eld. The fruit detachment force maps can help farmers to choose the ideal place and the right time to start harvesting the coffee mechanically and selectively, which can improve the nal product quality since the presence of green fruit will be minimized. This will reduce the fermentation and potential for fungi develop during storage and transportation, which can result in poor avor and aroma from the toxins produced. Therefore, a precision agriculture approach should increase the quality of the nal product, which will in turn result in more prot. With further studies of detachment force in relation to the vibration of harvester canes, it might be possible to develop automatic controllers for cane vibration based on

123

Precision Agric

detachment force maps. This would increase the efciency of the selective and mechanical harvesting.

Conclusion Variograms and kriging enabled characterization of the spatial pattern and degree of variation in the detachment force of mature and green coffee fruit and yield in a coffee agroecosystem. The variograms estimated by the residual maximum likelihood provided a satisfactory approach to modeling coffee yield, and the detachment force of mature and green fruit, when the sample size is small. Exponential functions described the structure and magnitude of spatial variation of the green fruit detachment force and coffee yield, and the spherical function described the variation of mature fruit detachment force. The kriged maps showed that, in general, the detachment force of mature and green fruit were directly related. The detachment of mature and green fruit were inversely related to coffee yield in most of the eld. The coffee fruit detachment force and yield maps showed that the central area was the best place to start harvesting mechanically and selectively. Yield maps obtained from manual harvesting of some parts of the eld before harvesting the whole eld, together with maps of detachment force of mature and green fruit can help coffee farmers manage their elds. Yield maps enable farmers to manage nutrient applications site-specically or manually, as well as manage mechanical harvesting. Maps of detachment force enable farmers to choose the best place and the right time at which to start mechanical and selective coffee harvesting, which can also improve the nal quality of the product and prots.
Acknowledgments This research was supported by grants from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento co e Tecnolo gico (CNPq). We would like to acknowledge, the two referees and Professor Margaret Cient Oliver for the precious comments and suggestions.

References
Alves, M. C., Silva, F. M., Moraes, J. C., Pozza, E. A., Oliveira, M. S., Souza, J. C. S., et al. (2011). Geostatistical analysis of the spatial variation of the berry borer and leaf miner in a coffee agroecosystem. Precision Agriculture, 12, 1831. Alves, M. C., Silva, F. M., Pozza, E. A., & Oliveira, M. S. (2008). Modeling spatial variability and pattern of rust and brown eye spot in coffee agroecosystem. Journal of Pest Science, 82, 137148. Amaral, J. A. T., Rena, A. B., & Amaral, J. F. T. (2006). Crescimento vegetativo sazonal do cafeeiro e sua odo, fruticac ncia estoma tica e fotoss ntese. Pesquisa Agropecua ria o com fotoper o, resiste relac a a Brasileira, 41, 377384. o Leopoldo, RS: Universidade do Andriotti, J. L. S. (2003). Fundamentos de Estatstica e Geoestatstica. Sa Vale do Rio dos Sinos. n, F. M. (2008). A a gua nos frutos e nos gra . In F. M. Bore n (Ed.), Po s-colheita do cafe os de cafe Bore (pp. 127158). Lavras: Universidade Federal de Lavras. Burrough, P. A., & McDonnell, R. A. (1998). Principles of geographical information systems. New York: Oxford University Press. Cambardella, C. A., Moorman, T. B., Novak, J. M., Parkin, T. B., Karlen, D. L., Turco, R. F., et al. (1994). Field scale variability of soil properties in Central Iowa soils. Soil Science Society of America Journal, 58, 15011511. a, S. L. R., & Finger, F. L. Campanha, M. M., Santos, R. H. S., Freitas, G. B., Martinez, H. E. P., Garc (2004). Growth and yield of coffee plants in agroforestry and monoculture systems in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Agroforestry Systems, 63, 7582.

123

Precision Agric Cannell, M. G. R. (1970). Contribution of carbohydrates from vegetative laterals of the growth of fruits on the bearing branches of Coffea arabica. Turrialba, 20, 1519. Cannell, M. G. R., & Huxley, P. A. (1970). Seasonal patterns of growing and development of Arabica coffee in Kenya. Kenya Coffee, 35, 139143. . M., & Amaral, M. A. (2006). Avaliac o de Carvalho, G. R., Mendes, A. N. G., Bartholo, G. F., Nogueira, A a nies de cafeeiro em dois sistemas de plantio. Cie ncia e Agrotecnologia, 30, produtividade de proge 838843. Carvalho, L. G., Sediyama, G. C., Cecon, P. R., & Alves, H. M. R. (2004). A regression model to predict coffee productivity in Southern Minas Gerais, Brazil. Revista Brasileira de Engenharia Agrcola e Ambiental, 8, 204211. veis de o entre diferentes n Chalfoun, S. M., Silva, C. M., Pereira, A. A., & Paiva, F. A. (1978). Relac a o de ferrugem (Hemileia vastatrix Berk. & Br.) e produc o dos cafeeiros (Coffea arabica L.) em infecc a a algumas localidades de Minas Gerais. In J. B. Matiello (Ed.), Proceedings of the Congresso Brasileiro de Pesquisas Cafeeiras (pp. 392394). Rio de Janeiro: IBC. Cressie, N. (1993). Statistics for spatial data. New York: Wiley. Diggle, P. J., & Ribeiro, P. J., Jr. (2007). Model based geostatistics. New York: Springer. o de modelos Faraco, M. A., Uribe-Opazo, M. A., Silva, A. A., Johann, J. A., & Borssoi, J. A. (2008). Selec a ticos de atributos f sicos do solo e produti o de mapas tema de variabilidade espacial para elaborac a ncias do Solo, 32, 463476. vidade da soja. Revista Brasileira de Cie Goovaerts, P. (1997). Geostatistics for natural resources evaluation. New York: Oxford University Press. Kerry, R., & Oliver, M. A. (2007). Sampling requirements for variograms of soil properties computed by the method of moments and residual maximum likelihood. Geoderma, 140, 383396. Mapa, R. B., & Kumaragamage, D. (1996). Variability of soil properties in a tropical Alsol used for shifting cultivation. Soil Technology, 9, 187197. Marchant, B. P., & Lark, R. M. (2007). Robust estimation of the variogram by residual maximum likelihood. Geoderma, 140, 6272. es et leur estimation. Paris: Masson. Matheron, G. (1965). Les variables regionalise McBratney, A. B., & Webster, R. (1986). Choosing functions for semi-variograms of soil properties and tting them to sampling estimates. Journal Soil Science, 37, 617639. rio da Agricultura e Pecua ria (MAPA). (2009). Brasil: Produc o de Gra os. http://www. Ministe a agricultura.gov.br/. Accessed 29 November 2009. Patterson, H. D., & Thompson, R. (1971). Recovery of inter-block information when block sizes are unequal. Biometrika, 58, 545554. Pierce, F. J., Anderson, N. W., Colvin, T. S., Schueller, J. K., Humburg, D. S., & McLaughlin, N. B. (1997). Yield mapping. In F. J. Pierce & E. J. Sadler (Eds.), The state of site specic management for agriculture (pp. 211243). Madison: ASA, CSSA, SSSA. R Development Core Team. (2006). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. www.r-project.org. Version 2.3.1. Rena, A. B., Nacif, A. P., Gontijo, P. T., & Pereira, A. A. (1996). Fisiologia do cafeeiro em plantios adensados. In P. H. Caramori, A. Androcioli Filho, J. C. D. Chaves, & R. G. Carneiro (Eds.), Prosio Internacional sobre Cafe Adensado (pp. 7385). Londrina: Instituto ceedings of the Simpo mico do Parana . Agrono Ribeiro, P. J., Jr., & Diggle, P. J. (2001). geoR: A package for geostatistical analysis. R-NEWS, 1, ISSN 1609-3631. , cafeicultura empresarial, produtividade e Silva, F. M. (2004). Colheita mecanizada e seletiva do cafe qualidade. Lavras: Universidade Federal de Lavras. Silva, F. M., Alves, M. C., Souza, J. C. S., & Oliveira, M. S. (2010a). Efeitos da colheita manual na ncia e Agrotecnologia, 34, 625632. bienalidade do cafeeiro. Cie , T. G., San Ruan, R., & Tourino, E. S. (2002). Avaliac o da colheita mecanizada do cafe Silva, F. M., Arre a gico Ethrel. In J. B. Matiello (Ed.), Proceedings of the Congresso com uso do maturador siolo Brasileiro de Pesquisas Cafeeira, 28 (pp. 148150). Caxambu: SDR/PROCAFE/PNFC. Silva, F. C., Silva, F. M., Alves, M. C., Barros, M. M., & Sales, R. S. (2010b). Comportamento da forc a de odo da colheita. Cie ncia e Agrotecnologia, 34, desprendimento dos frutos do cafeeiro ao longo do per 468474. Silva, F. M., Souza, Z. M., Figueiredo, C. A. P., Marques, J. J., & Machado, R. V. (2007). Variabilidade micos e de produtividade na cultura do cafe . Cie ncia Rural, 37, 401407. espacial de atributos qu Silva, F. M., Souza, Z. M., Figueiredo, C. A. P., Vieira, L. H. S., & Oliveira, E. (2008). Variabilidade micos e produtividade da cultura do cafe em duas safras agr colas. Cie ncia e espacial de atributos qu Agrotecnologia, 32, 231241.

123

Precision Agric Soto-Pinto, L., Perfecto, I., Castillo-Hernandez, J., & Caballero-Nieto, J. (2000). Shade effect on coffee xico. Agriculture, Ecosystems & production at the northern Tzeltal zone of the state of Chiapas, Me Environment, 80, 6169. Souza, Z. M., Junior, J. M., Pereira, G. J., & Moreira, L. F. (2004). Variabilidade espacial do pH, Ca, Mg e car. Cie ncia Rural, 34, V% do solo em diferentes formas do relevo sob cultivo de cana-de-ac u 17631771. ncia da densidade de plantio e sistema de podas na produc o de Toledo, S. V., & Barros, I. (1999). Inue a . Pesquisa Agropecua ria Brasileira, 34, 13791384. cafe stica aplicada a ` Agricultura de Valencia, L. I. O., Meirelles, M. S. P., & Bettini, C. (2004). Geoestat o. In P. L. O. A. Machado, A. C. C. Bernardi, & C. A. Silva (Eds.), Agricultura de Precisa o Precisa para o Manejo da Fertilidade do Solo em Sistema Plantio Direto (pp. 3756). Rio de Janeiro: Embrapa Solos. stica em estudos de variabilidade espacial do solo. In R. F. Novais, Vieira, S. R. (2000). Geoestat picos em Cie ncia do Solo (pp. 154). Vic V. H. Alvarez, & C. E. G. R. Schaefer (Eds.), To osa: ncia do Solo. Sociedade Brasileira de Cie Webster, R., & Oliver, M. (2007a). Geostatistics for Environmental Scientists. Chichester: Wiley. Webster, R., & Oliver, M. (2007b). Sample adequately to estimate variograms of soil properties. Journal of Soil Science, 43, 177192. ca e . Vic o de cafe Zambolim, L. (2002). O estado da arte de tecnologias na produc a osa: Suprema Gra Editora Ltda.

123