Abstract:
Abstract: Since 1978, great progress has been achieved in Chinese agriculture. However, the problems still exist in the development process, such as low labor productivity, high production cost, low land productivity, low yield, low rate of resource utilization and lacking international competitiveness of agricultural products. One important reason for these problems lies in the low agricultural mechanization level in China. The informationization of agricultural machinery is a fundamental way to enhance agricultural mechanization level. In order to keep the sustained growth of agricultural mechanization level and accomplish the agricultural sustainable development in China, it is critical to take full advantages of advanced information technology to improve the design, manufacturing, operation and management of agricultural machinery, and then to enhance the level of agricultural mechanization. This paper mainly introduced: 1) The key information technologies for agricultural machinery design: parametric design, agricultural machinery product design based on knowledge engineering, and concurrent and collaborative design based on product data management; 2) The key information technologies for agricultural machinery manufacturing: flexible manufacturing, computer integrated manufacturing, and virtual and network manufacturing; 3) The key information technologies for agricultural machinery operation: agricultural information acquisition, agricultural machinery navigation, and field management; 4) The key information technologies for agricultural machinery management: agricultural machinery management, and agricultural machinery scheduling. The deficiencies of current information technologies were analyzed, the development trend was summarized for the countries all over the world, and the core issues of enhancing the agricultural mechanization level in China for present information technologies were proposed. In order to further enhance the level of agricultural mechanization by using information technology, some suggestions are proposed in this paper: 1) To make the breakthrough in key technologies of digital design of intelligent equipment, coordinated control of auto-navigation and fieldbus technology of agricultural equipment; 2) To strengthen the innovation of major precision production equipment, such as precision production equipment for field operation and facilities agriculture, orchard production and livestock, and poultry and aquaculture production; 3) To construct the precision operating system for modern agricultural machinery, and to research and develop a series of major technical products, such as precision operating system of water, fertilizer and pesticide, automatic feeding system and automated processing production line of livestock, poultry and aquaculture.