Sensing Technologies For Field And In House Crop Production

This book focuses on state-of-the-art sensing and automation technologies for field crops and in-house product production and provides a lot of innovative knowledge on image processing, AI algorithms and applications in agriculture, and robotics. This book provides undergraduate or graduate students with take-away knowledge for unmanned agricultural production, including but not limited to corn disease detection, wheat head detection and counting, and soil nutrient condition monitoring. The first three chapters focus on reviewing plant phenotyping sensing technology and robotics and soil nutrient monitoring, followed by in-house crop sensing robotics. Then two case studies on corn and the other two case studies on wheat are presented.

Digital agriculture is gaining traction among scientists implementing different new and emerging sensor technologies to monitor complex soil–plant–atmosphere interactions in an accurate, cost-effective and user-friendly manner. This book presents some of the latest advances in this emerging area of research. The diversity of applications in which digital agriculture can make an important difference in day-to-day farming decision making makes this discipline an important focus of research internationally.

This unique book discusses a selection of highly relevant topics in the Social Internet of Things (SIoT), including blockchain, fog computing and data fusion. It also presents numerous SIoT-related applications in fields such as agriculture, health care, education and security, allowing researchers and industry practitioners to gain a better understanding of the Social Internet of Things

Novel technologies are playing an important role in the development of crop and livestock farming and have the potential to be the key drivers of sustainable intensification of agricultural systems. In particular, new sensors are now available with reduced dimensions, reduced costs, and increased performances, which can be implemented and integrated in production systems, providing more data and eventually an increase in information. It is of great importance to support the digital transformation, precision agriculture, and smart farming, and to eventually allow a revolution in the way food is produced. In order to exploit these results, authoritative studies from the research world are still needed to support the development and implementation of new solutions and best practices. This Special Issue is aimed at bringing together recent developments related to novel sensors and their proved or potential applications in agriculture.

Soil and crop sensing is a fundamental component and the first important step in precision agriculture. Unless the level of soil and crop variability is known, appropriate management decisions cannot be made and implemented. In the last few decades, various ground-based sensors have been developed to measure spatial variability in soil properties and nutrients, crop growth and yield, and pest conditions. Remote sensing as an important data collection tool has been increasingly used to map soil and crop growth variability as spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions of image data have improved significantly in recent years. While identifying spatial variability of soil and crop growth within fields is an important first step towards precision management, using that variability to formulate variable rate application plans of farming inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides is another essential step in precision agriculture.The purpose of this book is to present the historical, current and future developments of soil and crop sensing technologies with fundamentals and practical examples. The first chapter gives an overview of soil and crop sensing technologies for precision crop production. The next six chapters provide details on theories, methods, practical applications, as well as challenges and future research needs for all aspects of soil and crop sensing. The last two chapters show how soil and crop sensing technologies can be used for plant phenotyping and precision fertilization. The chapters are written by some of the world’s leading experts who have contributed significantly to the developments of precision agriculture technologies, especially in the area of soil and crop sensing. They use their knowledge, experiences, and successful stories to present informative and up-to-date information on relevant topics. Therefore, this book is an invaluable addition to the literature and can be used as a reference by scientists, engineers, practitioners, and college students for the dissemination and advancement of precision agriculture technologies for practical applications.

Agriculture requires technical solutions for increasing production while lessening environmental impact by reducing the application of agro-chemicals and increasing the use of environmentally friendly management practices. A benefit of this is the reduction of production costs. Sensor technologies produce tools to achieve the abovementioned goals. The explosive technological advances and developments in recent years have enormously facilitated the attainment of these objectives, removing many barriers for their implementation, including the reservations expressed by farmers. Precision agriculture and ‘smart farming’ are emerging areas where sensor-based technologies play an important role. Farmers, researchers, and technical manufacturers are joining their efforts to find efficient solutions, improvements in production, and reductions in costs. This book brings together recent research and developments concerning novel sensors and their applications in agriculture. Sensors in agriculture are based on the requirements of farmers, according to the farming operations that need to be addressed.