Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) in Agriculture: A Pursuit of Sustainability
Metadata
Show full item recordAuthor
Ahmad, Ali; Ordóñez García, Bonifacio Javier; Cartujo Cassinello, Pedro; Martos Núñez, María VanesaEditorial
Mdpi
Materia
Drone Precision agriculture Remote sensing UAV Plant growth Crop monitoring Vegetation index Agriculture 4.0 Sustainable agriculture
Date
2020-12-23Referencia bibliográfica
Ahmad, A.; Ordoñez, J.; Cartujo, P.; Martos, V. Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) in Agriculture: APursuit of Sustainability. Agronomy 2021, 11, 7. [https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11010007]
Abstract
The current COVID-19 global pandemic has amplified the pressure on the agriculture
sector, inciting the need for sustainable agriculture more than ever. Thus, in this review, a sustainable
perspective of the use of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) or drone technology in the agriculture
sector is discussed. Similarly, the types of cameras (multispectral, thermal, and visible), sensors,
software, and platforms frequently deployed for ensuring precision agriculture for crop monitoring,
disease detection, or even yield estimation are briefly discoursed. In this regard, vegetation indices
(VIs) embrace an imperative prominence as they provide vital information for crop monitoring and
decision-making, thus a summary of most commonly used VIs is also furnished and serves as a
guide while planning to collect specific crop data. Furthermore, the establishment of significant
applications of RPAs in livestock, forestry, crop monitoring, disease surveillance, irrigation, soil
analysis, fertilization, crop harvest, weed management, mechanical pollination, crop insurance and
tree plantation are cited in the light of currently available literature in this domain. RPA technology
efficiency, cost and limitations are also considered based on the previous studies that may help to
devise policies, technology adoption, investment, and research activities in this sphere.