Precision Agriculture

Precision agriculture is an innovative farming management concept aiming to revolutionize agriculture and soil improvement, both by optimizing crops return and at the same time preserving resources. In recent years, the practice of precision agriculture has been enabled by the advent of GPS that facilitates the farmer’s ability to locate their precise position in a field allows for the creation of maps of the spatial variability of as many variables as can be measured, such as crop yield, terrain features/topography, organic matter content, moisture levels, nitrogen levels, pH, minerals, and so on. This can be coupled with artificial intelligence and machine learning to propose tailor-made interventions.
 
 
Precision agriculture has also been enabled by unmanned aerial vehicles / drones that can be easily operated by novice pilots. These drones can be equipped with cameras and other equipment and can provide additional features and geographical references. Recently, Genomics have emerged as a fundamental discipline in order to determine the soil’s microflora. This has been made possible by using metagenomics, bacterial and fungal species using next-generation sequencing. As such, this information can be taken into consideration when making recommendations for soil improvement, using integrated artificial intelligence-based decision support tools.