Monitoring and Optimization of Livestock and Poultry Housing Environments

A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472). This special issue belongs to the section "Farm Animal Production".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 June 2026 | Viewed by 35

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Interests: livestock environment; animal housing; precision livestock farming; climate control in animal facilities; odour management; animal welfare
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Guest Editor
College of Mathematics and Informatics, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
Interests: animal welfare; intelligent poultry breeding; animal health detection; deep learning; animal audio analysis; animal behavior recognition

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Guest Editor
College of Electrical and Information, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, China
Interests: enviormental control; data perception; artificial intelligence; machin learning
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Monitoring and optimization of farm environments is critical to ensure the sustainability and productivity of livestock and poultry. Traditionally, environmental control has relied on standardized ventilation techniques to manage and control the temperature, humidity, and air quality within animal housing. Due to the growing global demand for animal products, intensive production farming has become dominant. As such, challenges to balance productivity with animal welfare, environmental sustainability, and economic viability emerge. It necessitates a fundamental shift from traditional control methods towards intelligent, responsive, and data-based precision management techniques.

The aim of this Special Issue is to explore innovative solutions to improve the environmental conditions in livestock and poultry housing through novel techniques. It encompasses cutting-edge technologies and methods including smart sensor networks, precision welfare monitoring, AI-based behavior recognition, intelligent ventilation, and machine-learning-based environmental prediction models. These innovative methods offer new opportunities to understand and optimize the complex interactions between animals, microclimates, and external environmental factors. Ultimately, this Special Issue seeks contributions that can enhance farm animal production, reduce indoor and outdoor emissions, improve resource efficiency, and strengthen the resilience of animal production systems under evolving climates and increasing production scales.

We invite high-quality contributions including original research, reviews, case studies, and technical developments. In particular, we welcome papers focusing on real-time environmental monitoring, intelligent control systems, animal welfare assessment, greenhouse gas and odor management, data perception, automation, and the integration of artificial intelligence in livestock housing. Interdisciplinary studies that connect animal science, engineering, and digital agriculture are strongly encouraged.

Prof. Dr. Kaiying Wang
Dr. Kaixuan Cuan
Prof. Dr. Qiuju Xie
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agriculture is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • precision livestock farming
  • environmental monitoring
  • ventilation control method
  • model predictive control, sustainable animal production
  • animal welfare
  • sustainable agriculture
  • smart sensors
  • machine learning
  • data driven management

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Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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