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This work reviews the current state of the art for pineapple production in Malaysia from the perspective of mechanization and automation. It examines the issues and challenges facing this industry. The review has led us to the conclusion that pineapple production still relies heavily on manual labour. The problems facing this industry is no different than other food crops in that low yield labour and high cost are the primary issues that need to be tackled. Although numerous engineering research work to overcome production issues has been done for crops such as rice and maize, engineering research for pineapples has been scarce. The lack of engineering research literature on this crop presents an opportunity for the scientific community to invest effort in this relatively untapped industry. This work further proposes areas where the use of Industry 4.0 technologies can be exploited in order to increase productivity and reduce input costs. Cyber-physical systems that could address issues in planting, crop maintenance and harvesting are put forth as a possible solution.

Burning rates of the biodiesel B7 and blended with 10 %vol. and 15 %vol ethanol in 50 mm diameter of pan were investigated. Angle of the pan wall was set to 0 deg. and 60 deg. and 1 m/s to 3.5 m/s of longitudinal air, flows across the pan. Results show that, as increase in the longitudinal airflow speed, the burning rates of biodiesel B7+15 %vol ethanol increased, but it decreased for the biodiesel B7 and biodiesel B7+10 %vol. ethanol. Moreover, burning rate of 0 deg. is higher than that 60 deg. for all cases. It is concluded that for the case of biodiesel B7+15 %vol ethanol, incoming air helps in increasing the burning rate. But for biodiesel B7 and biodiesel B7+10 %vol. ethanol, the incoming air reduces the pan temperature and leads to low burning rate. Furthermore, 0 deg. case gives a higher burning rate for all fuels because flame tilt significantly and increased the rate of heat transfer by conduction and radiation from the flame to the fuel. The 60 deg. case showed that flame is less tilted thus leads to less burning rate.

The current soil nutrient estimation method is laborious, repetitive, time-consuming and costly, making it less efficient for large-scale soil fertility assessment in precision agriculture practice. This paper discussed the feasibility of visible and near-infrared (Vis-NIR) spectroscopy as an alternative method for rapid measurement of total nitrogen in the soil, which is more efficient for a huge paddy field area. For this purpose, Vis-NIR reflectance spectra (350 – 1750 nm) were acquired on 200 soil samples using spectrometers. Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) with full (leave-one-out) cross-validation was used to develop the calibration model between the Vis-NIR soil spectra and the total nitrogen obtained by chemical analysis in laboratory. The coefficient of determination (R2val) and residual prediction deviation (RPD) of the developed calibration model for total nitrogen (Ntot) was 0.78 and 1.86, respectively. The predicted total nitrogen map generated based on the Vis-NIR spectroscopy was comparable with the laboratory analysis’s measured map. This result indicates that the Vis-NIR infrared spectroscopy is the potential to be used for total nitrogen estimation in soil.