New Trends in Weed Control and Smart Agriculture
A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Agricultural Science and Technology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 October 2022) | Viewed by 6850
Special Issue Editors
Interests: machines for soil tillage; conservation and no tillage; machines for physical weed control; soil disinfection with physical methods; precision agriculture
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: farm mechanization and farm machinery; precision agriculture; conservation agriculture; nonchemical weed control; machine for turfgrass and landscape management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: sustainable agricultural systems; agroecology; cover crops; intercropping; agroforestry; conservation agriculture; organic farming
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Farming systems are increasingly moving towards sustainable management practices with the aim to reduce chemical inputs. The European Union has been promoting integrated and organic farming systems for years to enhance the wellness and the safety of people and the environment. Weed control is probably the major issue in organic agriculture as chemical herbicides are completely forbidden. Farmers have to find effective alternatives to avoid unacceptable yield losses. On the other hand, the reduction in the use of herbicides is a very important task for integrated farming systems.
Smart agriculture technologies can help the farmers to achieve the goal of more sustainable crop management thanks to the development of “intelligent” machines that are able to optimize the efficiency of each treatment. For example, intra-row weed control can be performed thanks to a vision-based system that recognizes the crop, allowing a specific tool to go in and out from the row. For integrated farming systems, the use of smart sprayers can allow the adjustment of the dose of the herbicide treatment according to a prescription map or according to the response of a proximal sensor. Furthermore, the integration between preventive, cultural, plant-based weed control methods (e.g., ground covering, cover cropping, intercropping) and precision agricultural techniques (e.g., adaptation of permanent groundcover management according to soil/weed prescription maps) is another outstanding issue in this research field.
In this Special Issue, all contributions regarding innovative technologies and machines for sustainable management of weeds in organic and integrated agriculture are welcome, including applications of mechanical weed control, thermal weed control, highly efficient smart sprayers and autonomous machines. Manuscripts describing innovative software and sensors to be applied to the machines or to the agricultural management techniques for weed control are also welcome. Thus, we invite experts and researchers to contribute with original research, reviews and opinion pieces covering the topics of this Special Issue.
Prof. Dr. Michele Raffaelli
Prof. Dr. Marco Fontanelli
Prof. Dr. Daniele Antichi
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- innovative strategies and machines for weed control
- precision agriculture
- organic agriculture
- integrated agriculture
- low rate sprayers
- autonomous machines for weed control
- autonomous machines for groundcover and cover crop management
- herbicides reduction
- sensors and software for weed-crop discrimination
- sensors and software for weed-row detection
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