An Improved Farmland Fertility Algorithm with Hyper-Heuristic Approach for Solving Travelling Salesman Problem

Travelling Salesman Problem(TSP)is a discrete hybrid optimization problem considered NP-hard.TSP aims to discover the shortest Hamilton route that visits each city precisely once and then returns to the starting point,making it the shortest route feasible.This paper employed a Farmland Fertility Algorithm(FFA)inspired by agricultural land fertility and a hyper-heuristic technique based on the Modified Choice Function(MCF).The neighborhood search operator can use this strategy to automatically select the best heuristic method formaking the best decision.Lin-Kernighan(LK)local search has been incorporated to increase the efficiency and performance of this suggested approach.71 TSPLIB datasets have been compared with different algorithms to prove the proposed algorithm’s performance and efficiency.Simulation results indicated that the proposed algorithm outperforms comparable methods of average mean computation time,average percentage deviation(PDav),and tour length.

CQFFA:A Chaotic Quasi-oppositional Farmland Fertility Algorithm for Solving Engineering Optimization Problems

Farmland Fertility Algorithm(FFA)is a recent nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithm for solving optimization problems.Nevertheless,FFA has some drawbacks:slow convergence and imbalance of diversification(exploration)and intensification(exploitation).An adaptive mechanism in every algorithm can achieve a proper balance between exploration and exploitation.The literature shows that chaotic maps are incorporated into metaheuristic algorithms to eliminate these drawbacks.Therefore,in this paper,twelve chaotic maps have been embedded into FFA to find the best numbers of prospectors to increase the exploitation of the best promising solutions.Furthermore,the Quasi-Oppositional-Based Learning(QOBL)mechanism enhances the exploration speed and convergence rate;we name a CQFFA algorithm.The improvements have been made in line with the weaknesses of the FFA algorithm because the FFA algorithm has fallen into the optimal local trap in solving some complex problems or does not have sufficient ability in the intensification component.The results obtained show that the proposed CQFFA model has been significantly improved.It is applied to twenty-three widely-used test functions and compared with similar state-of-the-art algorithms statistically and visually.Also,the CQFFA algorithm has evaluated six real-world engineering problems.The experimental results showed that the CQFFA algorithm outperforms other competitor algorithms.

Effect of chemical and organic fertilization on soil carbon and nitrogen accumulation in a newly cultivated farmland

Increased food demand from the rapidly growing human population has caused intensive land transition from desert to farmland in arid regions of northwest China. In this developing ecosystem, the optimized fertilization strategies are becoming an urgent need for sustainable crop productivity, efficient resources use, together with the delivery of ecosystems services including soil carbon（C） and nitrogen（N） accumulation. Through a 7-year field experiment with 9 fertilization treatments in a newly cultivated farmland, we tested whether different fertilizations had significant influences on soil C and N accumulation in this developing ecosystem, and also investigated possible mechanisms for this influence. The results showed that applying organic manure in cultivated farmland significantly increased the soil C and N accumulation rates; this influence was greater when it was combined with chemical fertilizer, accumulating 2.01 t C and 0.11 t N ha^（–1） yr^（–1） in the most successful fertilization treatment. These high rates of C and N accumulation were found associated with increased input of C and N, although the relationship between the N accumulation rate and N input was not significant. The improved soil physical properties was observed under only organic manure and integrated fertilization treatments, and the significant relationship between soil C or N and soil physical properties were also found in this study. The results suggest that in newly cultivated farmland, long term organic manure and integrated fertilization can yield significant benefits for soil C and N accumulation, and deliver additional influence on physical properties.