Assessing the advancement of artificial intelligence and drones’ integration in agriculture through a bibliometric study

Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) with drones has emerged as a promising paradigm for advancing agriculture. This bibliometric analysis investigates the current state of research in this transformative domain by comprehensively reviewing 234 pertinent articles from Scopus and Web of Science databases. The problem involves harnessing AI-driven drones' potential to address agricultural challenges effectively. To address this, we conducted a bibliometric review, looking at critical components, such as prominent journals, co-authorship patterns across countries, highly cited articles, and the co-citation network of keywords. Our findings underscore a growing interest in using AI-integrated drones to revolutionize various agricultural practices. Noteworthy applications include crop monitoring, precision agriculture, and environmental sensing, indicative of the field’s transformative capacity. This pioneering bibliometric study presents a comprehensive synthesis of the dynamic research landscape, signifying the first extensive exploration of AI and drones in agriculture. The identified knowledge gaps point to future research opportunities, fostering the adoption and implementation of these technologies for sustainable farming practices and resource optimization. Our analysis provides essential insights for researchers and practitioners, laying the groundwork for steering agricultural advancements toward an enhanced efficiency and innovation era

Remote Sensing Energy Balance Model for the Assessment of Crop Evapotranspiration and Water Status in an Almond Rootstock Collection

One of the objectives of many studies conducted by breeding programs is to characterize and select rootstocks well-adapted to drought conditions. In recent years, field high-throughput phenotyping methods have been developed to characterize plant traits and to identify the most water use efficient varieties and rootstocks. However, none of these studies have been able to quantify the behavior of crop evapotranspiration in almond rootstocks under different water regimes. In this study, remote sensing phenotyping methods were used to assess the evapotranspiration of almond cv. “Marinada” grafted onto a rootstock collection. In particular, the two-source energy balance and Shuttleworth and Wallace models were used to, respectively, estimate the actual and potential evapotranspiration of almonds grafted onto 10 rootstock under three different irrigation treatments. For this purpose, three flights were conducted during the 2018 and 2019 growing seasons with an aircraft equipped with a thermal and multispectral camera. Stem water potential (Ψstem) was also measured concomitant to image acquisition. Biophysical traits of the vegetation were firstly assessed through photogrammetry techniques, spectral vegetation indices and the radiative transfer model PROSAIL. The estimates of canopy height, leaf area index and daily fraction of intercepted radiation had root mean square errors of 0.57 m, 0.24 m m–1 and 0.07%, respectively. Findings of this study showed significant differences between rootstocks in all of the evaluated parameters. Cadaman® and Garnem® had the highest canopy vigor traits, evapotranspiration, Ψstem and kernel yield. In contrast, Rootpac® 20 and Rootpac® R had the lowest values of the same parameters, suggesting that this was due to an incompatibility between plum-almond species or to a lower water absorption capability of the rooting system. Among the rootstocks with medium canopy vigor, Adesoto and IRTA 1 had a lower evapotranspiration than Rootpac® 40 and Ishtara®. Water productivity (WP) (kg kernel/mm water evapotranspired) tended to decrease with Ψstem, mainly in 2018. Cadaman® and Garnem® had the highest WP, followed by INRA GF-677, IRTA 1, IRTA 2, and Rootpac® 40. Despite the low Ψstem of Rootpac® R, the WP of this rootstock was also high.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Yield sensing technologies for perennial and annual horticultural crops: a review

Yield maps provide a detailed account of crop production and potential revenue of a farm. This level of details enables a range of possibilities from improving input management, conducting on-farm experimentation, or generating profitability map, thus creating value for farmers. While this technology is widely available for field crops such as maize, soybean and grain, few yield sensing systems exist for horticultural crops such as berries, field vegetable or orchards. Nevertheless, a wide range of techniques and technologies have been investigated as potential means of sensing crop yield for horticultural crops. This paper reviews yield monitoring approaches that can be divided into proximal, either direct or indirect, and remote measurement principles. It reviews remote sensing as a way to estimate and forecast yield prior to harvest. For each approach, basic principles are explained as well as examples of application in horticultural crops and success rate. The different approaches provide whether a deterministic (direct measurement of weight for instance) or an empirical (capacitance measurements correlated to weight for instance) result, which may impact transferability. The discussion also covers the level of precision required for different tasks and the trend and future perspectives. This review demonstrated the need for more commercial solutions to map yield of horticultural crops. It also showed that several approaches have demonstrated high success rate and that combining technologies may be the best way to provide enough accuracy and robustness for future commercial systems

Continuous Plant-Based and Remote Sensing for Determination of Fruit Tree Water Status

Climate change poses significant challenges to agricultural productivity, making the efficient management of water resources essential for sustainable crop production. The assessment of plant water status is crucial for understanding plant physiological responses to water stress and optimizing water management practices in agriculture. Proximal and remote sensing techniques have emerged as powerful tools for the non-destructive, efficient, and spatially extensive monitoring of plant water status. This review aims to examine the recent advancements in proximal and remote sensing methodologies utilized for assessing the water status, consumption, and irrigation needs of fruit tree crops. Several proximal sensing tools have proved useful in the continuous estimation of tree water status but have strong limitations in terms of spatial variability. On the contrary, remote sensing technologies, although less precise in terms of water status estimates, can easily cover from medium to large areas with drone or satellite images. The integration of proximal and remote sensing would definitely improve plant water status assessment, resulting in higher accuracy by integrating temporal and spatial scales. This paper consists of three parts: the first part covers current plant-based proximal sensing tools, the second part covers remote sensing techniques, and the third part includes an update on the on the combined use of the two methodologies

Development of an effective and sustainable system to monitor fruit tree water status with precision devices

In recent years, sustainable water resource management has become a significant and debated issue in the agro-environmental context. Agriculture, as one of the major water-consuming sectors, plays a crucial role in water resource management. Indeed, global climate change is leading to a general temperature rising, with a consequent increase in drought phenomena. As a result, this leads to an overuse of water resources for irrigation. Therefore, understanding tree crop responses to water availability is becoming increasingly urgent, aiming to increase their water use efficiency.In this regard, one of the primary objectives of scientific research today is to optimize the use of water resources, minimizing inputs without compromising outputs. Water resource savings alone will lead to increased profits. In recent years, deficit irrigation methods, such as regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) and partial rootzone drying (PRD), have allowed farmers to save water while increasing profit by irrigating only during specific phenological stages or with reduced volumes on alternated sides of the rootzone, inducing the plant to activate physiological mechanisms (partial stomatal closure) useful for maximizing water use efficiency. However, real-time knowledge of fruit tree water requirements with consequent automation of precise irrigation applications would allow farmers to further increase water use efficiency. In this regard, last-generation sensors allow continuous data acquisition directly from the plant, greatly increasing the level of information. The combined use of plant-based proximal sensors can provide highly precise information about its water status. Furthermore, remote sensing technologies allow strategic use of proximal sensors, taking into account the spatial variability of the orchard.Based on these premises, the main objective of this dissertation was to develop an effective and sustainable system for monitoring the water status of fruit trees using proximal and remote sensing technologies. Firstly, the use of plant-based proximal and remote sensing technologies, as well as the combination of the two techniques, was reviewed. Subsequently, some techniques for assessing the water status of young olive trees placed in a growth chamber were tested. In the subsequent trial, fruit growth sensors (fruit gauges) were used to study responses of fruit growth from five different species (peach, mango, olive, orange, and loquat) to vapor pressure deficit. In the last trial, the combined use of proximal and remote sensing technologies was tested for estimating the water status of 'Calatina' olive trees under open field conditions

Precision Agriculture using Internet of thing with Artificial intelligence: A Systematic Literature Review

Machine learning with its high precision algorithms, Precision agriculture (PA) is a new emerging concept nowadays. Many researchers have worked on the quality and quantity of PA by using sensors, networking, machine learning (ML) techniques, and big data. However, there has been no attempt to work on trends of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, dataset and crop type on precision agriculture using internet of things (IoT). This research aims to systematically analyze the domains of AI techniques and datasets that have been used in IoT based prediction in the area of PA. A systematic literature review is performed on AI based techniques and datasets for crop management, weather, irrigation, plant, soil and pest prediction. We took the papers on precision agriculture published in the last six years (2013-2019). We considered 42 primary studies related to the research objectives. After critical analysis of the studies, we found that crop management; soil and temperature areas of PA have been commonly used with the help of IoT devices and AI techniques. Moreover, different artificial intelligence techniques like ANN, CNN, SVM, Decision Tree, RF, etc. have been utilized in different fields of Precision agriculture. Image processing with supervised and unsupervised learning practice for prediction and monitoring the PA are also used. In addition, most of the studies are forfaiting sensory dataset to measure different properties of soil, weather, irrigation and crop. To this end, at the end, we provide future directions for researchers and guidelines for practitioners based on the findings of this revie

Artificial Neural Networks in Agriculture

Modern agriculture needs to have high production efficiency combined with a high quality of obtained products. This applies to both crop and livestock production. To meet these requirements, advanced methods of data analysis are more and more frequently used, including those derived from artificial intelligence methods. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are one of the most popular tools of this kind. They are widely used in solving various classification and prediction tasks, for some time also in the broadly defined field of agriculture. They can form part of precision farming and decision support systems. Artificial neural networks can replace the classical methods of modelling many issues, and are one of the main alternatives to classical mathematical models. The spectrum of applications of artificial neural networks is very wide. For a long time now, researchers from all over the world have been using these tools to support agricultural production, making it more efficient and providing the highest-quality products possible

In-situ fruit analysis by means of LiDAR 3D point cloud of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)

A feasible method to analyse fruit at the tree is requested in precise production management. The employment of light detection and ranging (LiDAR) was approached aimed at measuring the number of fruit, quality-related size, and ripeness-related chlorophyll of fruit skin. During fruit development (65 – 130 day after full bloom, DAFB), apples were harvested and analysed in the laboratory (n = 225) with two LiDAR laser scanners measuring at 660 and 905 nm. From these two 3D point clouds, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVILiDAR) was calculated. The correlation analysis of NDVILiDAR and chemically analysed fruit chlorophyll content showed R2 = 0.81 and RMSE = 3.63 % on the last measuring date, when fruit size reached 76 mm. The method was tested on 3D point clouds of 12 fruit trees measured directly in the orchard, during fruit growth on five measuring dates, and validated with manual fruit analysis in the orchard (n = 4632). Point clouds of individual apples were segmented from 3D point clouds of trees and fruit NDVILiDAR were calculated. The non-invasively obtained field data showed good calibration performance capturing number of fruit, fruit size, fruit NDVILiDAR, and chemically analysed chlorophyll content of R2 = 0.99, R2 = 0.98 with RMSE = 3.02 %, R2 = 0.65 with RMSE = 0.65 %, R2 = 0.78 with RMSE = 1.31 %, respectively, considering the related reference data at last measuring date 130 DAFB. The new approach of non-invasive laser scanning provided physiologically and agronomically valuable time series data on differences in fruit chlorophyll affected by the leaf area to number of fruit and leaf area to fruit fresh mass ratios. Concluding, the method provides a tool for gaining production-relevant plant data for, e.g., crop load management and selective harvesting by harvest robots

Integrated nematode management

This book outlines the economic importance of specific plant parasitic nematode problems on the major food and industrial crops and presents the state-of-the-art management strategies that have been developed to reduce specific nematode impacts and outlines their limitations. Case studies to illustrate nematode impact in the field are presented and future changes in nematode disease pressure that might develop as a result of climate change and new cropping systems are discussed.illustrato