Muhammad Irfan Mughal
Agricultural practices have fed humans for tens of thousands of years and various crops have been cultivated but the ever increasing world population demands more crop yields. Precision agriculture has given a new meaning to cultivating crops and livestock in farming. Site-specific crop management is a precision agriculture method, which utilizes differential management approach by monitoring and recording variability in crop fields. This approach is basically about applying the right farm input in right amount to right site at the right time. Sensors, Geo-spatial technologies and variable rate applications are the common static digital technologies employed in site-specific crop management, which are termed as traditional technologies in this work. Traditional technologies have enabled automation in crop management. In recent decades, smart technologies like artificial intelligence, internet of things and other smart technologies are greatly researched and employed in crop management for making it autonomous and intelligent. In this review, a study of traditional technologies’ existing trends and practices in site-specific crop management is conducted. Different experimental setups, trends, advantages and drawbacks of emerging smart technologies are investigated. It was observed that AI and IoT are the leading smart technologies in site-specific crop management. Furthermore, challenges in adopting smart technologies are discussed. It was concluded that emerging smart technologies rely on smart data and specific frameworks are needed for smart data collection and sharing with other stakeholders of the agro value chain for improving food production and security.
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