Precision Agriculture Applications Research Articles

Monitoring Yield and Quality of Forages and Grassland in the View of Precision Agriculture Applications—A Review

The potential of precision agriculture (PA) in forage and grassland management should be more extensively exploited to meet the increasing global food demand on a sustainable basis. Monitoring biomass yield and quality traits directly impacts the fertilization and irrigation practises and frequency of utilization (cuts) in grasslands. Therefore, the main goal of the review is to examine the techniques for using PA applications to monitor productivity and quality in forage and grasslands. To achieve this, the authors discuss several monitoring technologies for biomass and plant stand characteristics (including quality) that make it possible to adopt digital farming in forages and grassland management. The review provides an overview about mass flow and impact sensors, moisture sensors, remote sensing-based approaches, near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, and mapping field heterogeneity and promotes decision support systems (DSSs) in this field. At a small scale, advanced sensors such as optical, thermal, and radar sensors mountable on drones; LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging); and hyperspectral imaging techniques can be used for assessing plant and soil characteristics. At a larger scale, we discuss coupling of remote sensing with weather data (synergistic grassland yield modelling), Sentinel-2 data with radiative transfer modelling (RTM), Sentinel-1 backscatter, and Catboost–machine learning methods for digital mapping in terms of precision harvesting and site-specific farming decisions. It is known that the delineation of sward heterogeneity is more difficult in mixed grasslands due to spectral similarity among species. Thanks to Diversity-Interactions models, jointly assessing various species interactions under mixed grasslands is allowed. Further, understanding such complex sward heterogeneity might be feasible by integrating spectral un-mixing techniques such as the super-pixel segmentation technique, multi-level fusion procedure, and combined NIR spectroscopy with neural network models. This review offers a digital option for enhancing yield monitoring systems and implementing PA applications in forages and grassland management. The authors recommend a future research direction for the inclusion of costs and economic returns of digital technologies for precision grasslands and fodder production.

Integrating Physics-Based Models, Mathematical Optimization, and Statistical Analytics for Advancing Precision Agriculture and Sustainable Farming Practices

The application of physics-based models, mathematical optimization, and statistical analytics is being studied to realize applications in precision agriculture for the sustainable management of affected agroecosystems. Resource efficiency, crop productivity, and environmental sustainability are some targets to improve through multidisciplinary approaches. The datasets on soil moisture, temperature, the health of plants, and daily weather patterns were generated through real-time sensor-based data acquisition, satellite data collection, and historical records. Physically based models were developed to represent soil-water dynamics and plant growth responses under different environmental scenarios. Later, mathematical optimization methods were developed, focusing on resource-efficient strategies for irrigation, fertilization, and pest management, where statistical analyses such as regressions, geostatistics, and time-series analyses were applied to models to predict crop yields and resource needs accurately. The developed models became an input to the decision support system for real-time decision-making according to the recommended resource allocation for better farming scenarios. Pilots have reported a 15% crop yield increase with considerable reductions in water and fertilizer use, contributing to cost savings and environmental conservation. The results prove that these methods, when combined, deliver increased productivity and reduced resource consumption while minimizing the environmental footprint, providing a sustainable approach to modern agriculture. This technique has good prospects for profitability in farming operations and enhancing sustainability in agriculture in the long term, especially as it relates to climate change and resource depletion.

Enhancing Agricultural Disease Detection: A Multi‐Model Deep Learning Novel Approach

ABSTRACTArtificial intelligence, especially deep learning, has attracted significant interest in bioinformatics, with prominent applications in precision agriculture. A significant threat to the agricultural sector is the rapid propagation of diseases from affected to healthy plants, which, if undetected, may culminate in significant crop losses. This research focusses on employing multi‐model deep‐learning techniques to identify diseases in the leaves of economically significant crops that are potatoes, tomatoes, grapes, apples, and peaches. These crops are widely grown and crucial for food security, with disease outbreaks threatening yield and quality. This study evaluates the performance of deep learning models, including VGG16, MobileNetV2, Xception, and ResNet, using four metrics, that is, Accuracy, Precision, Recall, and F1‐Score. Furthermore, consumer research was undertaken to evaluate user trust in AI‐driven multi‐model systems, collecting feedback from farmers to inform future research directions. The results demonstrate that the VGG16 model outperformed all others in every evaluation criterion. Experimental simulations were performed in Jupyter Notebook utilizing Anaconda and Python. The findings indicate that the proposed multi‐model approach allows a scalable, non‐invasive, and contactless machine vision solution for the early detection of diseases in plant leaves, achieving an efficiency of 99% via multimodal classification techniques that incorporate statistical variables including mean, median, mode, skewness, and kurtosis.

Optimizing Chilli Crop Disease Classification Models through Hybrid Differential Evolution and Simulated Annealing

Crop diseases caused by chillies are a serious threat to food security and agricultural production. Timely intervention and mitigation efforts are contingent upon an accurate categorization of these disorders. Here, we provide a new method that combines the methods of Simulated Annealing (SA) and Differential Evolution (DE) to improve classification models for illnesses affecting chilli crops. Our hybrid strategy seeks to improve illness classification models' performance and efficiency by using the advantages of both optimization methods. We conducted experiments on a comprehensive dataset comprising diverse chilli crop disease instances. Results show that replacement of either optimization demonstrates greater accuracy and robustness of classification models than either method individually. Additionally, our approach is promising for applications in precision agriculture, giving farmers useful information for proactive disease management and crop protection in the real world. This research progresses the field of agricultural decision support systems by establishing a sound framework for optimizing chilli crop disease classification models with reliability, ensuring sustainable farming practices, and food security globally.

From Reality to Virtuality: Revolutionizing Livestock Farming Through Digital Twins

The impacts of climate change on agricultural production are becoming more severe, leading to increased food insecurity. Adopting more progressive methodologies, like smart farming instead of conventional methods, is essential for enhancing production. Consequently, livestock production is swiftly evolving towards smart farming systems, propelled by rapid advancements in technology such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things, big data, machine learning, augmented reality, and robotics. A Digital Twin (DT), an aspect of cutting-edge digital agriculture technology, represents a virtual replica or model of any physical entity (physical twin) linked through real-time data exchange. A DT conceptually mirrors the state of its physical counterpart in real time and vice versa. DT adoption in the livestock sector remains in its early stages, revealing a knowledge gap in fully implementing DTs within livestock systems. DTs in livestock hold considerable promise for improving animal health, welfare, and productivity. This research provides an overview of the current landscape of digital transformation in the livestock sector, emphasizing applications in animal monitoring, environmental management, precision agriculture, and supply chain optimization. Our findings highlight the need for high-quality data, comprehensive data privacy measures, and integration across varied data sources to ensure accurate and effective DT implementation. Similarly, the study outlines their possible applications and effects on livestock and the challenges and limitations, including concerns about data privacy, the necessity for high-quality data to ensure accurate simulations and predictions, and the intricacies involved in integrating various data sources. Finally, the paper delves into the possibilities of digital twins in livestock, emphasizing potential paths for future research and progress.

Integrating Remote Sensing and GIS for Precision Agriculture: Leveraging Google Earth Engine for Enhanced Agricultural Management

Abstract This study aims to develop a plant health monitoring platform using Google Earth Engine and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery. This platform enables real-time and accurate monitoring of plant conditions in Ponorogo Regency, supporting better decision-making in agricultural management. The platform utilizes high-resolution multispectral data such as the NDVI, Chlorophyll Vegetation Index, and Normalized Difference Built-up Index to generate vegetation indices, providing comprehensive information about plant structure and condition. The Google Earth Engine platform offers a robust platform for monitoring and analysis functions within the platform, providing valuable insights for precision agriculture applications

Hybrid RBFN-GWO Approach for Energy-Efficient and Secure Routing in Intelligent IoT Networks for Precision Farming

This paper introduces a hybrid approach combining Radial Basis Function Networks (RBFN) and Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) to address the challenges of energy efficiency and security in Intelligent IoT networks for precision farming. Our proposed method utilizes RBFN for feature extraction and classification of network states, while GWO optimizes the routing parameters to achieve an optimal balance between energy conservation and security. The hybrid RBFN-GWO algorithm adapts to dynamic network conditions and evolving security threats in real-time. Extensive simulations using real-world precision farming data demonstrate that our approach outperforms existing protocols, achieving a 20% increase in network lifetime and a 15% improvement in intrusion detection accuracy. This research contributes to the development of more efficient and secure IoT infrastructures for precision agriculture applications.

Integrating deep learning for visual question answering in Agricultural Disease Diagnostics: Case Study of Wheat Rust

This paper presents a novel approach to agricultural disease diagnostics through the integration of Deep Learning (DL) techniques with Visual Question Answering (VQA) systems, specifically targeting the detection of wheat rust. Wheat rust is a pervasive and destructive disease that significantly impacts wheat production worldwide. Traditional diagnostic methods often require expert knowledge and time-consuming processes, making rapid and accurate detection challenging. We drafted a new, WheatRustDL2024 dataset (7998 images of healthy and infected leaves) specifically designed for VQA in the context of wheat rust detection and utilized it to retrieve the initial weights on the federated learning server. This dataset comprises high-resolution images of wheat plants, annotated with detailed questions and answers pertaining to the presence, type, and severity of rust infections. Our dataset also contains images collected from various sources and successfully highlights a wide range of conditions (different lighting, obstructions in the image, etc.) in which a wheat image may be taken, therefore making a generalized universally applicable model. The trained model was federated using Flower. Following extensive analysis, the chosen central model was ResNet. Our fine-tuned ResNet achieved an accuracy of 97.69% on the existing data. We also implemented the BLIP (Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training) methods that enable the model to understand complex visual and textual inputs, thereby improving the accuracy and relevance of the generated answers. The dual attention mechanism, combined with BLIP techniques, allows the model to simultaneously focus on relevant image regions and pertinent parts of the questions. We also created a custom dataset (WheatRustVQA) with our augmented dataset containing 1800 augmented images and their associated question-answer pairs. The model fetches an answer with an average BLEU score of 0.6235 on our testing partition of the dataset. This federated model is lightweight and can be seamlessly integrated into mobile phones, drones, etc. without any hardware requirement. Our results indicate that integrating deep learning with VQA for agricultural disease diagnostics not only accelerates the detection process but also reduces dependency on human experts, making it a valuable tool for farmers and agricultural professionals. This approach holds promise for broader applications in plant pathology and precision agriculture and can consequently address food security issues.

Mamba-UAV-SegNet: A Multi-Scale Adaptive Feature Fusion Network for Real-Time Semantic Segmentation of UAV Aerial Imagery

Accurate semantic segmentation of high-resolution images captured by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is crucial for applications in environmental monitoring, urban planning, and precision agriculture. However, challenges such as class imbalance, small-object detection, and intricate boundary details complicate the analysis of UAV imagery. To address these issues, we propose Mamba-UAV-SegNet, a novel real-time semantic segmentation network specifically designed for UAV images. The network integrates a Multi-Head Mamba Block (MH-Mamba Block) for enhanced multi-scale feature representation, an Adaptive Boundary Enhancement Fusion Module (ABEFM) for improved boundary-aware feature fusion, and an edge-detail auxiliary training branch to capture fine-grained details. The practical utility of our method is demonstrated through its application to farmland segmentation. Extensive experiments on the UAV-City, VDD, and UAVid datasets show that our model outperforms state-of-the-art methods, achieving mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) scores of 71.2%, 77.5%, and 69.3%, respectively. Ablation studies confirm the effectiveness of each component and their combined contributions to overall performance. The proposed method balances segmentation accuracy and computational efficiency, maintaining real-time inference speeds suitable for practical UAV applications.

Enhancing sustainable Chinese cabbage production: a comparative analysis of multispectral image instance segmentation techniques

Accurate instance segmentation of individual crops is crucial for field management and crop monitoring in smart agriculture. To address the limitations of traditional remote sensing methods in individual crop analysis, this study proposes a novel instance segmentation approach combining UAVs with the YOLOv8-Seg model. The YOLOv8-Seg model supports independent segmentation masks and detection at different scales, utilizing Path Aggregation Feature Pyramid Networks (PAFPN) for multi-scale feature integration and optimizing sample matching through the Task-Aligned Assigner. We collected multispectral data of Chinese cabbage using UAVs and constructed a high-quality dataset via semi-automatic annotation with the Segment Anything Model (SAM). Using mAP as the evaluation metric, we compared YOLO series algorithms with other mainstream instance segmentation methods and analyzed model performance under different spectral band combinations and spatial resolutions. The results show that YOLOv8-Seg achieved 86.3% mAP under the RGB band and maintained high segmentation accuracy at lower spatial resolutions (1.33 ~ 1.14 cm/pixel), successfully extracting key metrics such as cabbage count and average leaf area. These findings highlight the potential of integrating UAV technology with advanced segmentation models for individual crop monitoring, supporting precision agriculture applications.

Enhancing crop yield estimation from remote sensing data: a comparative study of the Quartile Clean Image method and vision transformer

The use of high-altitude remote sensing (RS) data from aerial and satellite platforms presents considerable challenges for agricultural monitoring and crop yield estimation due to the presence of noise caused by atmospheric interference, sensor anomalies, and outlier pixel values. This paper introduces a "Quartile Clean Image" pre-processing technique to address these data issues by analyzing quartile pixel values in local neighborhoods to identify and adjust outliers. Applying this technique to 20,946 Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images from 2002 to 2015, improved the mean peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) to 40.91 dB. Integrating Quartile Clean data with Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) models with exponential decay learning rate scheduling achieved RMSE improvements up to 5.88% for soybeans and 21.85% for corn, while Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models demonstrated RMSE reductions up to 11.52% for soybeans and 29.92% for corn using exponential decay learning rates. To compare the proposed method with state-of-the-art technique, we introduce the Vision Transformer (ViT) model for crop yield estimation. The ViT model, applied to the same dataset, achieves remarkable performance without explicit pre-processing, with R2 scores ranging from 0.9752 to 0.9875 for soybean and 0.9540 to 0.9888 for corn yield estimation. The RMSE values range from 7.75086 to 9.76838 for soybean and 26.25265 to 34.20382 for corn, demonstrating the ViT model's robustness. This research contributes by (1) introducing the Quartile Clean Image method for enhancing RS data quality and improving crop yield estimation accuracy, and (2) comparing it with the state-of-the-art ViT model. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach and highlight the potential of the ViT model for crop yield estimation, representing a valuable advancement in processing high-altitude imagery for precision agriculture applications.

Systematic literature review on the application of precision agriculture using artificial intelligence by small-scale farmers in Africa and its societal impact

Systematic literature review on the application of precision agriculture using artificial intelligence by small-scale farmers in Africa and its societal impact

Spatial analysis with unoccupied aircraft systems data in wheat breeding yield trials

AbstractAn important aspect of reliable cultivar development is good field trial evaluations. Unoccupied aircraft systems (UAS also known as drones or UAVs) are a popular high‐throughput phenotyping tool that has been used to successfully evaluate plant stress and other canopy characteristics in a field. In precision agriculture applications, UAS imagery has been used to identify spatial variability in field settings. Here, we use UAS spectral imagery to improve field trial spatial analysis, better control spatial variability, and reduce errors for more reliable selections. UAS imagery data were collected across 47 breeding trials planted in an augmented complete block design (ACBD) or alpha‐lattice replicated designs from 2020 through 2023. Trials were evaluated using three spatial analysis strategies: linear models incorporating block effect, row‐column effect, or 2D splines. UAS‐derived spectral reflectance indices (SRI) were combined with each model as covariates. Modeling strategies were used across all trials and evaluated for autocorrelation, model fitness, and coefficient of variation (CV). Akaike information criterion (AIC) was used to assess model fitness. For spatial analysis trials, SRIs significantly lowered model AIC by an average of 38.4 for alpha‐lattice trials and 69.1 for ACBD trials. CV scores were also lowered when SRIs were utilized, with average CV values being 2.6 lower for alpha‐lattice and 2.1 for ACBD trials. This study highlights the potential for SRIs to improve the analyses of field breeding trials despite extreme environmental variables and climate conditions, improving experiment reliability and changing the way breeders plan and implement breeding experiments.

Rapid Classification of Sugarcane Nodes and Internodes Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy and Machine Learning Techniques.

Accurate and rapid discrimination between nodes and internodes in sugarcane is vital for automating planting processes, particularly for minimizing bud damage and optimizing planting material quality. This study investigates the potential of visible-shortwave near-infrared (Vis-SWNIR) spectroscopy (400-1000 nm) combined with machine learning for this classification task. Spectral data were acquired from the sugarcane cultivar Khon Kaen 3 at multiple orientations, and various preprocessing techniques were employed to enhance spectral features. Three machine learning algorithms, linear discriminant analysis (LDA), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNNs), and artificial neural networks (ANNs), were evaluated for their classification performance. The results demonstrated high accuracy across all models, with ANN coupled with derivative preprocessing achieving an F1-score of 0.93 on both calibration and validation datasets, and 0.92 on an independent test set. This study underscores the feasibility of Vis-SWNIR spectroscopy and machine learning for rapid and precise node/internode classification, paving the way for automation in sugarcane billet preparation and other precision agriculture applications.

Manifold and spatiotemporal learning on multispectral unoccupied aerial system imagery for phenotype prediction

AbstractTimeseries data captured by unoccupied aircraft systems (UASs) are increasingly used for agricultural applications requiring accurate prediction of plant phenotypes from remotely sensed imagery. However, prediction models often fail to generalize well from one year to the next or to new environments. Here, we investigate the ability of various machine learning (ML) approaches to improve yield prediction accuracy in new environments from multispectral timeseries imagery acquired on a set of rice (Oryza sativa L.) experiments with different management treatments and varieties. We also trained deep learning models that perform automated feature extraction and compared these against a suite of other approaches. We observed similar performance on a held‐out growing season for a spatiotemporal model (a three‐dimensional convolutional neural network) trained on raw images compared to simpler workflows using dimension reduction of manually extracted features from temporal imagery (i.e., vegetation indices and image texture properties). Manifold learning on raw imagery was better suited for the prediction of phenological traits due to the preservation of local structure in image embeddings at some time points. Together, these results highlight the competitiveness of classical ML approaches for UAS image analysis alongside computationally expensive deep learning models. Along with a new benchmark dataset for rice, our results help extend the toolkit for UAS image analysis, contributing to improved phenotype prediction in plant breeding and precision agriculture applications.

Wearable platform based on 3D-printed solid microneedle potentiometric pH sensor for plant monitoring

The continuous chemical monitoring of analytes in plants can provide a better understanding of plant dynamics and the identification of health conditions. pH can be an indicator of plant abiotic stress due to changes in environmental conditions or biotic stress as a result of damage done to the plant by other living organisms. With the intensification of climate change, abiotic and biotic stresses are exacerbated. Hence, the engineering of miniaturized tools to monitor chemical signaling such as pH can be highly valuable as smart sensors for precision agriculture. Herein, 3D-printed microneedle-based electrochemical sensors are presented for in-plant monitoring of pH in leaf sap. First, affordable 3D-printed microneedle arrays (MNAs) of 900 µm in height, 300 µm in width, and 30 µm in tip diameter were manufactured. Subsequently, a metallic layer was sputtered on top of the MNAs to create microneedle electrodes. A novel plug-in two-electrode setup based on two MNAs was used to develop the MNA pH sensor employing polyaniline as a pH-sensitive layer. The MNA pH sensor was analytically characterized exhibiting near-Nernstian response (i.e., −59.9 ± 1.5 mV pH-1) even after several insertions in a leaf proving its mechanical robustness. Ex vivo analysis with plant sap from different species was successfully validated with a standard glass pH electrode. Finally, MNA sensors were used to continuously monitor pH in two plant species under regular conditions for four days. Interestingly, MNA sensors were also able to distinguish shifting pH events in plants under abiotic stress conditions (i.e., drought and watering). This new design brings a leap forward in smart sensors for applications in precision agriculture.

Multi-Sensor Soil Probe and Machine Learning Modeling for Predicting Soil Properties.

We present a data-driven, in situ proximal multi-sensor digital soil mapping approach to develop digital twins for multiple agricultural fields. A novel Digital Soil CoreTM (DSC) Probe was engineered that contains seven sensors, each of a distinct modality, including sleeve friction, tip force, dielectric permittivity, electrical resistivity, soil imagery, acoustics, and visible and near-infrared spectroscopy. The DSC System integrates the DSC Probe, DSC software (v2023.10), and deployment equipment components to sense soil characteristics at a high vertical spatial resolution (mm scale) along in situ soil profiles up to a depth of 120 cm in about 60 s. The DSC Probe in situ proximal data are harmonized into a data cube providing vertical high-density knowledge associated with physical-chemical-biological soil conditions. In contrast, conventional ex situ soil samples derived from soil cores, soil pits, or surface samples analyzed using laboratory and other methods are bound by a substantially coarser spatial resolution and multiple compounding errors. Our objective was to investigate the effects of the mismatched scale between high-resolution in situ proximal sensor data and coarser-resolution ex situ soil laboratory measurements to develop soil prediction models. Our study was conducted in central California soil in almond orchards. We collected DSC sensor data and spatially co-located soil cores that were sliced into narrow layers for laboratory-based soil measurements. Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) cross-validation was used to compare the results of testing four data integration methods. Method A reduced the high-resolution sensor data to discrete values paired with layer-based soil laboratory measurements. Method B used stochastic distributions of sensor data paired with layer-based soil laboratory measurements. Method C allocated the same soil analytical data to each one of the high-resolution multi-sensor data within a soil layer. Method D linked the high-density multi-sensor soil data directly to crop responses (crop performance and behavior metrics), bypassing costly laboratory soil analysis. Overall, the soil models derived from Method C outperformed Methods A and B. Soil predictions derived using Method D were the most cost-effective for directly assessing soil-crop relationships, making this method well suited for industrial-scale precision agriculture applications.

Precision crop mapping: within plant canopy discrimination of crop and soil using multi-sensor hyperspectral imagery

Leveraging diverse optomechanical and imaging technologies for precision agriculture applications is gaining attention in emerging economies. The precise spatial detection of plant objects in farms is crucial for optimizing plant-level nutrition and managing pests and diseases. High-resolution remote sensors mounted on drones have been increasingly deployed for large-scale crop mapping and field variability characterization. While field-level crop identification and crop-soil discrimination have been studied extensively, within-plant canopy discrimination of crop and soil has not been explored in real agricultural farms. The objectives of this study are: (i) adoption and assessment of spectral unmixing for discriminating crop and soil at within-plant canopy level, and (ii) generation of benchmark terrestrial and drone-based hyperspectral datasets for plant or sub-plant level discrimination using various spectral mixture modelling approaches and sources of endmembers. We acquired hyperspectral imagery of vegetable crops using a frame-based sensor mounted on a drone flying at different heights. Further, several linear, non-linear, and sparse-based spectral unmixing methods were used to discriminate plant and soil based on spectral signatures (endmembers) extracted from different spectral libraries prepared using in situ or field, ground-based, and drone-based hyperspectral imagery. The results, validated against pixel-to-pixel ground truth data, indicate an overall crop-soil discrimination accuracy of 99–100%, subject to a combination of endmember source and flying height. The influences of different endmember sources, spatial resolution as indicated by flying height, and inversion algorithms on the quality of estimated abundances are assessed from a verifiable and functionally relevant perspective. The generated hyperspectral datasets and ground truth data can be used for developing and testing new methods for sub-canopy level soil-crop discrimination in various agricultural applications of remote sensing.

GABA-Decorated Nanocarrier for Smart Delivery of Fludioxonil for Targeted Control of Banana Wilt Disease.

Developing a targeted nanopesticide to control the vascular disease of banana in agriculture is crucial to improve pesticide utilization. In this study, according to the degree of functionalization, three γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-decorated nanocarriers (PSI-GABA8, PSI-GABA18, and PSI-GABA28) were constructed for smart delivery of nonsystemic fungicide in banana phloem tissues. Fludioxonil (Flu) was loaded in nanocarriers to form Flu@PSI-GABA nanoparticles with a core/shell structure for control of banana wilt disease. Results demonstrated that the delivery dosage of Flu was up to 1.6 mg/L in castor phloem sap using PSI-GABA28 nanocarriers. In vitro results showed that the EC50 of Flu@PSI-GABA28 was 0.0116 mg/L, and the inhibitory activity was about 8.8 times higher than that of technical-grade (TC) Flu. Flu@PSI-GABA28 could be transported for long distances and accumulated to the rhizome of banana by foliar application, and the control effectiveness was about 20 times that of the conventional Flu (50% WP) for the banana wilt. This study provides a distinctive guidance for effective control of vascular diseases in precision agriculture application.

An adaptive hexagonal deployment model for resilient wireless sensor networks in precision agriculture

This study presents an innovative hexagonal deployment model designed specifically for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with a primary application in precision agriculture. The proposed protocol integrates advanced features, notably an adaptive frequency-hopping spread spectrum (AFHSS) mechanism and a decentralized real-time adaptation strategy to optimize data transmission in dynamic agricultural environments. The simulation study, conducted in diverse terrains with realistic sensor node distributions, meticulously evaluates the protocol’s performance using comprehensive Quality of Service (QoS) metrics. The hexagonal deployment model operates by strategically positioning sensor nodes in a hexagonal grid pattern, ensuring uniform coverage of the agricultural field. The AFHSS mechanism dynamically adjusts frequency channels, mitigating interference and fortifying the network’s robustness against external disruptions. Complementing this, the decentralized real-time adaptation empowers individual nodes to autonomously respond to the ever-changing environmental conditions, optimizing data transmission efficiency. Quantitative results from the simulations exhibit outstanding performance metrics. The protocol achieves an average latency of 50 milliseconds, a packet loss rate below 2%, a success rate exceeding 95%, and highly efficient obstacle management, with adjusted nodes accounting for less than 5%. These compelling outcomes underscore the protocol’s exceptional ability to deliver responsive and reliable data transmission, positioning it as a promising solution for enhancing environmental monitoring in precision agriculture. This study provides quantitative evidence of the protocol’s prowess and delves into the nuanced working mechanisms, offering a deeper understanding of its potential impact. The findings contribute significant insights to the field, serving as a robust foundation for researchers and practitioners engaged in designing and implementing resilient WSNs tailored for precision agriculture applications.