Remote Sensing in Precision Agriculture: Focus on Crop Water, Salt Stress and Nutrient Deficiency
A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2026 | Viewed by 25
Special Issue Editors
Interests: application of remote sensing technology in agriculture; reclaimed water irrigation; water-saving agriculture
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: the application of remote sensing technology in the fields of hydrology and water resources; agricultural soil and water engineering; intelligent water conservancy; hydrological remote sensing; optimal allocation of water resources; intelligent irrigation management systems; the development of new technologies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
As extreme weather intensifies and water scarcity deepens, safeguarding food security has become an urgent global priority.
Against this backdrop, mapping the spatiotemporal dynamics of crop water and nutrient status is essential for efficient irrigation and optimized fertilization. In contrast to traditional field assessments based on sampling and expert judgment, remote sensing leverages visible, near-infrared, and thermal infrared data to detect water stress, nutrient deficiency, and salt stress (soil salinization) rapidly, non-destructively, and at scale—reducing subjectivity and improving consistency. Recent advances in satellite and UAV platforms, together with machine learning and data assimilation, enable the robust field-to-regional retrieval of canopy temperature, vegetation indices, and energy-balance metrics for monitoring and early warning. Building on these advances, multi-source data fusion (optical, thermal, radar), integrated with in situ sensing and crop models, is forming transferable, long-term monitoring frameworks across crops and growth stages. Consequently, remote sensing is helping close the loop for precision management, including variable-rate irrigation and fertilization.
In this context, we invite submissions to this Special Issue on applications of remote sensing for crop water and salt stress and nutrient deficiency.
Prof. Dr. Junying Chen
Prof. Dr. Zhitao Zhang
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- remote sensing
- precision agriculture
- crop water stress
- salt stress (soil salinization)
- nutrient deficiency
- multi-source data fusion
- satellite and UAV imagery
- machine learning
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