Dried figs are one of the horticultural products that require sorting in the postharvest stage in order to be presented to the market. In Iran, figs are graded manually by professional workers or automatically by mechanical machines. This paper presents a new algorithm based on machine vision technology applicable to be installed in the fig sorting machines. In the presented methodology, image texture properties of figs are extracted by an image processing algorithm. Some features selected by stepwise linear discriminant analysis were introduced as the superior ones for discriminating different classes of dried figs. Among the ten features, discriminant analysis selected six. The selected texture features were fed to artificial neural networks in order to implement the classification process. The image processing assisted neural networks methodology showed promising result as the total sorting accuracy was 100%.

Physical properties of chosen vegetables during and after refrigeration treatment by conventional methods and by impingement fluidization were investigated. Vegetables were frozen in the impingement fluidization apparatus and chest freezer and after that were thawed in a water bath under free and forced convection as well as in air under free convection and by impingement fluidization. It was found that freezing proceeded most quickly in impingement fluidization, despite the highest ambient temperature. Freezing of vegetables by this method caused greater weight loss. The thawing time and the environment characteristics in which the process is carried out affect the mass loss of raw materials and significantly affect the test cut results.

The object of the study was production technology and technological solutions used in ice cream production process. Following stages of manufacturing process have been evaluated such as designing of ingredients base, balanced mixture, pasteurization, homogenization, cooling, ageing, freezing and hardening. Further analysis were taken according to factors which have a bearing on various ice cream properties, e.g: consistency, taste, viscosity, durability, the slowdown of melting process as well as production lines and machinery used in ice cream manufacturing. Moreover machinery and ice cream production lines were evaluated. The purpose of the present study was to prove that the optimization of ice cream production process and extensive knowledge about technological determinants can strongly affect the quality of products. The research which has been so far conducted in the field of ice cream production are mainly about expediting process, designing modern production lines and lunching sophisticated products.

The aim of the study was to determine operational quality of agricultural sprayers on the basis of the liquid outflow intensity. On the device, of the ITEQ company, 4 types of agricultural sprayers were studied, including MM RS 110/02 and HYPRO VP 110/04 (new) and TEE JET 110/02 and TDD JET 110/04 (used). The study was conducted at a pressure of 0.1–0.5 at 0.1 MPa variable. It was found that there is a difference between the flow rate of new and used nozzles, in the case of used TEE JET 110/02 nozzles the tolerance limit has been considerably exceeded.

This paper presents results of research on the actions occurring in plant protection treatments that can affect the quality of treatments. These actions include: – storage of plant protection products – the choice of the operating parameters of the sprayer, – preparation of working liquid – a process execution spray – proceeding with the remainder of the liquid solution or pesticide residues. Attention was drawn to precision of execution actions and determined the overall suitability index (Cp), which defines the process of treatment plant protection products as unsuitable for the presently accepted quality requirements and construction currently used agricultural nozzle.