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Internet of Things (IoT) and Agricultural Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in...
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Internet of Things (IoT) and Agricultural Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Smart Agriculture

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 October 2023) | Viewed by 8458

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Wanxue Zhu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Crop Sciences, University of Göttingen, Von-Siebold-Str. 8, 37075 Göttingen, Germany
Interests: precision agriculture; unmanned aerial vehicle; remote sensing; machine learning; deep learning; image analysis; irrigation mapping; hydrology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Internet of Things (IoT) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are transforming the way agriculture is being practiced, ushering in the era of smart agriculture. UAV remote sensing observations and IoT sensors can provide farmers with a wealth of real-time data and depict the spatial patterns of crop growth status and environmental conditions. With this information, farmers can make informed decisions about how to optimize crop production and resource usage, including water, fertilizer, or pesticide practices, and take necessary actions before problems escalate and result in significant crop losses. On the other side, the combination of IoT and UAV technology makes it possible to automate many farming processes, including monitoring and controlling irrigation systems, thereby reducing water waste and optimizing plant growth, as well as reducing the need for human intervention and increasing efficiency.

This Special Issue focuses on the application of IoT and UAVs in agriculture for better serving agro-management via providing real-time and accurate information of crop growth (including field crops, vegetation, ornamental, and fodders). This issue on Digital Agriculture will include interdisciplinary studies embracing agriculture with disciplines of biology, ecology, remote sensing, and engineering. Original research and reviews are accepted.

Dr. Wanxue Zhu
Guest Editor

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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

  • unmanned aerial vehicle
  • sensors
  • internet of things
  • remote sensing
  • crop growth
  • agricultural management
  • spatial analysis
  • precision agriculture

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

21 pages, 6074 KiB  
Article
Design and Implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) Platform Targeted for Smallholder Farmers: From Nepal Perspective
by Ritu Raj Lamsal, P. Karthikeyan, Pablo Otero and Alfonso Ariza
Agriculture 2023, 13(10), 1900; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture13101900 - 28 Sep 2023
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 7396
Abstract
Nepal, a lower-middle-income country in South Asia, predominantly features smallholder farming communities operating on modest land holdings. These smallholders often adhere to traditional farming methods, relying on familial labor, which has become increasingly inefficient in contemporary agricultural landscapes. To enhance their productivity and [...] Read more.
Nepal, a lower-middle-income country in South Asia, predominantly features smallholder farming communities operating on modest land holdings. These smallholders often adhere to traditional farming methods, relying on familial labor, which has become increasingly inefficient in contemporary agricultural landscapes. To enhance their productivity and efficiency, smallholder farmers require affordable and accessible Internet of Things (IoT)-based systems. However, the prevailing IoT solutions in the market primarily cater to large-scale commercial enterprises, rendering them unsuitable for the specific needs and constraints faced by smallholder farmers. In response to this gap, we have introduced a cost-effective, customizable, scalable, and dependable IoT platform tailored expressly for smallholder farmers. This platform empowers them to visualize, monitor, and control real-time data pertaining to their crops, livestock, and other agricultural assets. To ascertain the efficacy and suitability of our proposed platform, we conducted a comparative analysis with existing counterparts such as Blynk IoT and ThingSpeak IoT, evaluating their respective features and application services against standard requirements. Additionally, we subjected our platform to rigorous server load testing, assessing crucial performance parameters including throughput, response time, user capacity, and data sampling rates. Over an observation period spanning an average of 339 days, our platform successfully processed and stored a substantial volume of data, encompassing 817,633 sensor messages, averaging 2412 messages per day, with a cumulative storage size of 14,238.28 KB. Extrapolating from these results, it is noteworthy that an A0 instance with 20 GB of cloud space can adequately accommodate 200 users at a rate of 100 MB per user, which is adequate for the smallholder needs. Furthermore, the purposed platform was deployed inside a polyhouse to perform off-season grafting of citrus plants. The achieved success rate of 84% closely approached the success rate of 90–95% observed during on-season grafting. These empirical findings, coupled with the extensive data gathered during our research, underscore the reliability and performance of our proposed IoT platform for smallholder farmers. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things (IoT) and Agricultural Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Smart Agriculture)
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