"With ever-increasing pressures on world agriculture in both economic and environmental terms, application of the concept of precision agriculture is one way of enabling farmers and producers to cope. ‘Doing arable agriculture and horticulture more precisely’ means that the use of inputs is optimised, crop yield and quality are maximised and leakage of agro-chemicals and fertilisers to the environment is minimised. This publication contains papers presented at the 6th European Conference on Precision Agriculture. The papers reflect the wide range of disciplines encompassed by precision agriculture, including: soil physics, crop physiology, agronomy, IT, agricultural technology, sensor technology, remote sensing, geostatistics and environmental science. The wide range of research topics reported will be a valuable resource for researchers, advisors, teachers and professionals in agriculture long after the conference has finished. Peer-reviewed papers from the 3rd European Conference on Precision Livestock Farming are presented in a companion proceedings, Precision livestock farming ’07."

"Precision livestock farming ’07 contains the latest scientific results from worldwide research, field studies and practical applications. The peer-reviewed papers were presented at the 3rd European Conference on Precision Livestock Farming. The major topics in this book are: - Feed quality management - Sensor technology in animal husbandry - Environmental effects of precision livestock farming - Automation in livestock farming - Implementation, education and training The wide range of research topics reported will be a valuable resource for researchers, advisors, teachers and professionals in agriculture long after the conference has finished. Peer-reviewed papers from the 6th European Conference on Precision Agriculture are presented in a companion publication, Precision agriculture ’07."

Precision Agriculture is becoming ever more relevant as the agricultural industry struggles to come to terms with the environment, economics, traceability, vehicle guidance and crop management. Whilst some benefits have proved elusive, others contribute positively to today’s agriculture. Research continues to be necessary and needs to be reported and disseminated to a wide audience. These proceedings contain the reviewed papers from the 7th European Conference on Precision Agriculture. The papers reflect the wide range of disciplines that impinge upon precision agriculture including remote sensing, plant disease and weed detection, yield monitoring, soil sensing, geo statistics and path planning, regional and crop modelling, cooperation and guidance of robots, precision application, ICT in precision agriculture, future farming and European relevance for precision agriculture. The broad range of research topics reported is a valuable resource for researchers, advisors, teachers and professionals in agriculture. Also note that the reviewed papers from the 4th European Conference on Precision Livestock Farming are presented in a companion publication.

Precision agriculture (PA) involves the application of technologies and agronomic principles to manage spatial and temporal variation associated with all aspects of agricultural production in order to improve crop performance and environmental quality. The focus of this book is to introduce a non-specialist audience to the the role of PA in food security, environmental protection, and sustainable use of natural resources, as well as its economic benefits. The technologies covered include yield monitors and remote sensing, and the key agronomic principles addressed are the optimal delivery of fertilizers, water and pesticides to crops only when and where these are required. As a result, it is shown that both food production and resource efficiency can be maximized, without waste or damage to the environment, such as can occur from excessive fertilizer or pesticide applications. The authors of necessity describe some technicalities about PA, but the overall aim is to introduce readers who are unfamiliar with PA to this very broad subject and to demonstrate the potential impact of PA on the environment and economy. Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 3.0 license.

The aim of this book is to bring together a series of contributions from experts in the field to cover the major aspects of the application of geostatistics in precision agriculture. The focus will not be on theory, although there is a need for some theory to set the methods in their appropriate context. The subject areas identified and the authors selected have applied the methods in a precision agriculture framework. The papers will reflect the wide range of methods available and how they can be applied practically in the context of precision agriculture. This book is likely to have more impact as it becomes increasingly possible to obtain data cheaply and more farmers use onboard digital maps of soil and crops to manage their land. It might also stimulate more software development for geostatistics in PA.

Agricultural Internet of Things and Decision Support for Smart Farming reveals how a set of key enabling technologies (KET) related to agronomic management, remote and proximal sensing, data mining, decision-making and automation can be efficiently integrated in one system. Chapters cover how KETs enable real-time monitoring of soil conditions, determine real-time, site-specific requirements of crop systems, help develop a decision support system (DSS) aimed at maximizing the efficient use of resources, and provide planning for agronomic inputs differentiated in time and space. This book is ideal for researchers, academics, post-graduate students and practitioners who want to embrace new agricultural technologies. - Presents the science behind smart technologies for agricultural management - Reveals the power of data science and how to extract meaningful insights from big data on what is most suitable based on individual time and space - Proves how advanced technologies used in agriculture practices can become site-specific, locally adaptive, operationally feasible and economically affordable

This book provides a review of precision agriculture technology development, followed by a presentation of the state-of-the-art and future requirements of precision agriculture technology. It presents different styles of precision agriculture technologies suitable for large scale mechanized farming; highly automated community-based mechanized production; and fully mechanized farming practices commonly seen in emerging economic regions. The book emphasizes the introduction of core technical features of sensing, data processing and interpretation technologies, crop modeling and production control theory, intelligent machinery and field robots for precision agriculture production.

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. While identifying spatial variability of soil and crop growth within fields is an important first step towards precision management, using that variability to formulate variable rate application plans of farming inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides is another essential step in precision agriculture.The purpose of this book is to present the historical, current and future developments of soil and crop sensing technologies with fundamentals and practical examples. The first chapter gives an overview of soil and crop sensing technologies for precision crop production. The next six chapters provide details on theories, methods, practical applications, as well as challenges and future research needs for all aspects of soil and crop sensing. The last two chapters show how soil and crop sensing technologies can be used for plant phenotyping and precision fertilization. The chapters are written by some of the world’s leading experts who have contributed significantly to the developments of precision agriculture technologies, especially in the area of soil and crop sensing. They use their knowledge, experiences, and successful stories to present informative and up-to-date information on relevant topics. Therefore, this book is an invaluable addition to the literature and can be used as a reference by scientists, engineers, practitioners, and college students for the dissemination and advancement of precision agriculture technologies for practical applications.

High yields and environmental control in crop farming call for precise adaptations to local growing conditions. Treating large fields in a uniform way by high capacity machinery cannot be regarded as a sustainable method for many situations. Because differences existing within single fields must be considered. The transition from former field work carried out manually or by small implements to present-day high-capacity machinery caused that the farmers lost the immediate and close contact with soils and crops. However, modern sensing and controlling technology can make up for this deficit. High tech methods that include proximal sensing and signals from satellites can provide for controls that allow adjusting farming operations to small fractions of one ha and sometimes even down to some m2, hence in a site-specific mode. This applies to operations for soil cultivation, sowing, fertilizing and plant protection. This book deals with site-specific concepts, applications and results.

Agriculture has experienced a dramatic change during the past decades. The change has been structural and technological. Structural changes can be seen in the size of current farms; not long ago, agricultural production was organized around small farms, whereas nowadays the agricultural landscape is dominated by large farms. Large farms have better means of applying new technologies, and therefore technological advances have been a driving force in changing the farming structure. New technologies continue to emerge, and their mastery and use in requires that farmers gather more information and make more complex technological choices. In particular, the advent of the Internet has opened vast opportunities for communication and business opportunities within the agricultural com- nity. But at the same time, it has created another class of complex issues that need to be addressed sooner rather than later. Farmers and agricultural researchers are faced with an overwhelming amount of information they need to analyze and synthesize to successfully manage all the facets of agricultural production. This daunting challenge requires new and complex approaches to farm management. A new type of agricultural management system requires active cooperation among multidisciplinary and multi-institutional teams and ref- ing of existing and creation of new analytical theories with potential use in agriculture. Therefore, new management agricultural systems must combine the newest achievements in many scientific domains such as agronomy, economics, mathematics, and computer science, to name a few.