R.PEREZ (June 2024)
This Shiny app allows users to represent intercropping designs through different oil palm-based intercropping systems. Users can select various design patterns, adjusting inter row and intra row distances, intercropping distances, and customize colors and names for visualization. Up to three intercrops can be represented within a given oil palm design. The plot shows the density of each crop based on the selected design.
To run this app, ensure you have installed R and R studio software (https://posit.co/).
Open the PalmPlanner.Rproj with RStudio, and open the 'App_design.R' file in the bottom right window. The code will appear in the RStudio console; click on the "Run App" button in the top right corner of the console window.
The following packages will be automatically installed:
shiny
shinythemes
shinycssloaders
tidyverse
plotly
devtools
Additionally, the colourpicker package is required and will be installed from GitHub. You may need to launch the application several times to install all the packages.
On the left, you'll find 5 tab sets where you can modify the parameters for each crop (Figure 1). The first tab, PALMS contains arguments for designing the oil palm planting pattern. The INTERCROP1, INTERCROP2 and INTERCROP3 are for the intercrops,CROP IN PALM ROW is for crops in rows of palm trees, REPLANTING is for representing an old planting, and REPLACE PALM is for replacing deleted palms in the design with an intercrop.
In the PALMS tab, you can modify the following arguments:
Select design pattern: type of design, quincunx (tresbolio) or square (cuadrado)
Number of lines removed for intercropping: Number of oil palm rows removed from a complete design. 1/ 3 indicates one line removed every three rows. Hence the intercrops will be in located every two rows of oil palms.
Inter palm row distance (m): distance between rows of palms
Intra palm row distance (m): distance within rows of oil palm
Intercropping distance (m): can only be modified when rows of oil palms were removed. Default value is twice the inter row distance
Select point size : size of point in the plot
Select colour : colour of point in the plot.
In each INTERCROP tab, you can modify the following arguments:
Enter the name of the intercrop: Enter the name of the intercrop, that will update names in plot legend.
Select design pattern: type of design, quincunx (tresbolio) or square (cuadrado)
Number of lines: Number of intercrop rows within the intercropping area. Be carefull to adapted the number of lines and the inter row distances to not exceeding the intercrop area.
Inter row distance (m): distance between rows of the intercrop
Intra row distance (m): distance within rows of the intercrop
y offset (m): distance to adapt horizontal alignment between oil palms and intercrops. The value is negative to change intercrops point down in the plot.
Select point size : size of point in the plot
Select colour : colour of point in the plot.
In CROP IN PALM ROW tab, crops will be placed on every rows of palms. Only the distance between crop in rows can be adpated
Intra row distance (m): distance within rows of the intercrop
The REPLACE PALM tab can be used once palms are deleted in the design. The button REPLACE DELETED PALMS will replaced the former deleted palms with the new crop
In the REPLANTING tab, you can modify the following arguments:
visualize old palms: check box for plotting the old palm positions (default is unchecked box)
Select design pattern: type of design, quincunx (tresbolio) or square (cuadrado)
Inter palm row distance (m): distance between rows of palms
Intra palm row distance (m): distance within rows of oil palm
x offset (m): distance to adapt vertical alignment between old oil palms and replanted palms. The value is negative to change intercrops point down in the plot.
y offset (m): distance to adapt horizontal alignment between old oil palms and replanted palms. The value is negative to change intercrops point down in the plot.
Select point size : size of point in the plot
Additional plot arguments include:
plot limits (m): limits of the plot (x and y axis)
origin: set the origin of the plot to the first palm (default)
Visalize the design: button to update the design based on the entered arguments.
DELETED SELECTED POINTS: button to delete the points selected when clicking on the plot, or selected with the lasso/box tool. The selected points are listed in the SELECTION tab. You can remove all the point selected by clicking on the RESET DATA button. It is possible that you need to reset twice for deleting all the point. Also you need to unselect the last points saved by double clicking and/or using the lasso on empty region of the plot.If a mis-click occurs while removing or replacing points, only a reset of the app will restore all the points.
- The density will be updated when you remove plants.
- You can click on legend to remove one species for the visualization. A double-click allows the visualization of one species
- It is easier to remove points at the end when all the oil palm and intercrops have been designed. You can select only the points of a particular species by double-clicking on the legend.