Plantain in Precision Agriculture

This book provides a review of the state-of-the-art of agricultural robotics in different aspects of PA, the goals, and the gaps. The book introduces the area of Agricultural Robotics for Precision Agriculture (PA) specifically the conditions and limitations for implementing robots in this field and presents the concepts, principles, required abilities, components, characteristics and performance measures, conditions, and rules for robots in PA.

This book brings together in one place two dynamic subjects, precision agriculture and geostatistics, that have spatial variation at their core. Geostatistics is applied in precision agriculture (PA) to sampling, prediction, mapping, decision-making, economics, designed experiments, variable-rate applications and so on. Contributions from experts in both fields illustrate how geostatistics can and has been used to advantage with PA data such as yield, soil, crop, pests, aerial photograph, remote and proximal imagery.

Soil and crop sensing is a fundamental component and the first important step in precision agriculture. Unless the level of soil and crop variability is known, appropriate management decisions cannot be made and implemented. In the last few decades, various ground-based sensors have been developed to measure spatial variability in soil properties and nutrients, crop growth and yield, and pest conditions. Remote sensing as an important data collection tool has been increasingly used to map soil and crop growth variability as spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions of image data have improved significantly in recent years.