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Top1. Introduction
India is the land of agriculture, where most of the income depends upon agriculture. According to the survey of India Brand Equity Foundation, 58% of total population has agriculture as primary source of livelihood and INR 17.67 Trillion is estimated as contribution in Total GDP of Indian economy. Integration of computer science and information technology can play a magnificent role in improving the quality of agriculture process. This integration is known as Precision Agriculture (McBratney, Ancev, & Bouma, 2005). Large number of technologies such as Image Processing, Artificial Intelligence, Geographical Information System, Sensor Network and Global Positioning System are included in Precision Agriculture. The first objective of the paper is to review of research work done in the field of precision agriculture, second objective is to compare the research work done in overseas with India, third objective is to analysis the gap between research work published and real implementation of PA by Indian farmers. Followed by Introduction this paper is comprises with component of agriculture, review of past endeavors, broach from literature survey, analysis of gap using questionnaire, conclusion and future work.
Figure 1. Components of precision agriculture
Top2. Components Of Precision Agriculture
The Home Grown Cereals Authority (HGCA) define precision farming as being ‘management of farm practices that uses computers, satellite positioning systems and remote sensing devices to provide information on which enhanced decisions can be made.’ United States Department of Agriculture also defines as agriculture ‘as needed’ farming and define it as ‘a management system that is information and technology based, is site specific and uses one or more of the following sources of data: soils, crops, nutrients, pests, moisture or yield, for optimum profitability, sustainability and protection of the environment’. Components of Agriculture are GIS, Satellite Navigation System, Wireless Sensor and Image Processing.
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Geographical Information System (Rigaux, Scholl, & Voisard, 2002) is a set of computer programs that is used to retrieve, store, manage and analyze spatial and geographical data. Geographical Information System is useful in many fields like Crime Mapping, Hydrology, Water Management, and of course in precision agriculture. There are many open-sources, free and licensed software available for creating maps like ArcGIS, GRASS and OpenStreet, etc. Field mapping, detection of soil erosion and estimation of Evapotranspiration are the fields of precision agriculture where Geographical Information System is used.
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Satellite Navigation Systems provide spatial positioning of a geo-location using satellite. GPS (Global Positing System) is the implementation of navigation system. GPS (“Global Position System, 2018) is the network of satellites that makes available a geographical location to a GPS server with the help of navigation devices. Place location, vehicle tracking, and aviation are the major applications of GPS. In precision agriculture, GPS plays a vital role in tractor guiding, yield mapping and crop monitoring.
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Wireless Sensor Network (Akyildiz, Su, Sankarasubramaniam, & Cayirci, 2002) is an emerging field of research. Wireless Sensor Network is a network of physically scattered sensing nodes which are self-organized but decentralized in nature. Wireless Sensor Networks are used in security, health-care monitoring, fire detection and many other areas. In agriculture, Wireless Sensor Networks used in field monitoring and automated irrigation systems. WSN in Agriculture is shown in below Figure Number 2:
Figure 2. Scenario of WSN in agriculture