Application of artificial intelligence in agriculture including horticulture

Abstract

The agriculture industry in India is primarily based on conventional farming methods and age old work fundamentals,beliefs and practices. It is emerging as more vulnerable section among all the productive professions in terms of its modernization strategies to stand viable in spite of climatic adversities and other challenges. In present context, Indian agriculture sector is facing number of problems such as low productivity with poor quality production and inadequate marketing for better profitability.The digital technologies are the modern format of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that offer many important applications in agriculture to increase productivity and profitability. The digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), Internet of Things (IoT), Virtual Reality (VR), Extended Reality (ER), Mixed Reality (MR), Multispectral and Hyperspectral Imaging, Drones, Robotics, Block Chain technology etc.find extensive scope of application in agriculture sector. The deployment of sensors on crop field and the management of sensor data with the help of Cloud based Artificial Intelligence algorithms and Big Data Analytics, has made Smart Farming grow exponentially as data have become the key element to help farmers in critical decision-making and to increase the crop productivity and its quality with optimum resource utilization, thus reducing overall expenditures and increasing the income of the farmers. The present article highlights some of the major applications of artificial intelligence based techniquesin agriculture.