In this study, musculoskeletal disorders, energy consumption and input costs of paddy labors have been studied in cultivation, crop protection, and harvesting rice in Northern Iran, Guilan province. The sample size of the study consisted of 74 paddy workers of the study region. The data were collected through Nordic questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The results indicated that the labor input energy of cultivation, crop protection, and harvesting were 674.6, 356.8 and 205.9 MJha-1, respectively. The total labor input costs were determined to be 22,860,000 IRRs ha-1. Lower back, back and knees were the most common areas where paddy workers were feeling pain. There were significant differences among the age, working hours and working years of healthy and relatively healthy poor paddy workers (p<0.01). One-fifth of the selected farmers self-reported that their health was at a very poor level. Overall, considering the relatively high costs and the different types of common musculoskeletal disorders related to rice cultivation in this province and also the side effects of using the painkillers in the working season, it is recommended to invest and accelerate the process of mechanization of rice farming in Guilan Province of Iran. پرونده مقاله

The aim of this study was to determine the probability of working days (PWD) for tillage operation using weather data with Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and Radial Basis Function (RBF) artificial networks. In both models, seven variables were considered as input parameters, namely minimum, average and maximum temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, wind speed, and evaporation on a daily basis. The PWD was considered to be the output of the developed models. Performance criteria were RMSE, MAPE, and R2. Results showed that the R2-valuewas 0.78 and 0.99 for MLR and RBF models, respectively. Both models had acceptable performance, but the RBF model was more accurate than the MLR model. The RMSE and MAPE values for the RBF model were lower than those for the MLR model. Thus, the RBF model was selected as the suitable model for predicting PWD. Moreover, the results of these models were compared to the prior soil moisture model. It was indicated that the results of the studied models had a good agreement with the results of the soil moisture model. However, the RBF model had the highest R2 (99%). In conclusion, the developed RBF model could be used to predict the probability of working days in terms of agricultural management policies. پرونده مقاله

This study aimed to assess the environmental sustainability of wheat harvesting operation in rainfed and irrigated farming systems in three different locations in Iran, including Sari, Mashhad and Parsabad Moghan counties. Four sustainability indices of energy, emergy, exergy, and greenhouse gas emissions were investigated in this research. Results revealed that the energy efficiency of harvesting operation in irrigated systems was higher than that in rainfed systems. The emergy analysis results highlighted that the environmental sustainability indices for rainfed systems in Mashhad, Parsabad Moghan, and Sari were 0.047, 0.035 and 0.034, respectively. The values for the irrigated systems were 0.036, 0.035 and 0.034, respectively. The results of exergy analysis also indicated that the exergy efficiency of harvesting operation in rainfed and irrigated systems in Sari and Parsabad Moghan was higher than that in other areas by 56.07 and 128.72, respectively. Total GHG emissions of harvesting operation in Sari, Parsabad Moghan, and Mashhad in rainfed systems were determined to be lower than that in the irrigated systems (54.88, 47.64 and 36.03 kg CO2eq ha-1 versus 67.52, 66.56 and 59.22 kg CO2eq ha-1, respectively). In conclusion, the wheat harvesting system was environmentally more sustainable in Sari and Parsabad Moghan counties in rainfed and irrigated farming systems, respectively. پرونده مقاله