Integrating IOTA’s Tangle with the Internet of Things for Sustainable Agriculture: A Proof-of-Concept Study on Rice Cultivation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Remarks:

1.     The Abstract could have been written more precisely to prepare the reader for what to expect from this paper.

2.     From the title a Proof-of-Concept is expected. The key purpose of proof-of-concept is to identify if an idea or technology could be effectively applied to address a specific problem or meet a particular need. The answer is given in section 4, but it is not entirely clear how the following statements are proven:

-      In Abstract: “Results indicate significant resource conservation: by effectively implementing recommended sustainable agriculture practices, water usage was halved, nitrogen consumption reduced by 25%, and methane emissions curtailed by 50% to 70%. (line 6 - 8)

-      In Section 2 Material and Methods: “…water usage can be halved, nitrogen consumption can be reduced by 25%, and methane emissions can be curtailed by 50% to 87 70%.” - Reference [6] (line 86 - 88)

-      In section 4. Discussion: DLTs in Agriculture - IOTA and Traditional Blockchains: “Water usage can be halved, nitrogen consumption can be reduced by 25%, and methane emissions can be curtailed by 0% to 70%.”, Reference [6] (line 387 - 389),

-      In section 5 Conclusion: “Specifically, the system has the potential to monitor practices that could halve water usage, reduce nitrogen consumption by 25%, and cut methane emissions by 50% to 70%.” (line 546 - 547)

Given that the authors explicitly note: “Our case study simulates a data-intensive paddy farm environment where optimal 93 management can enhance production and resource conservation, especially in irrigation.” (line 93-94)

3.     There is no clearly defined purpose in the paper. The following formulations are encountered in the text:

-      “This study aims to extend the capabilities of IoT in agriculture by integrating it with IOTA, a DLT designed for high-frequency IoT scenarios”. (line 78-79)

-      „The central aim of this study was to monitor the effective utilization of resources, emphasizing water efficiency.“ (Line 542-543)

At the same time, the title states that a proof-of-concept is being carried out.

If the authors specify the goal, many of the ambiguities will be overcome.

4.     It is advisable to emphasize from the beginning of the paper that “…we developed an analytical dashboard…” (line 319).

Overall, the paper is interesting and has potential for future research and development.

Question:

Have the authors been able to answer the question: „Is it possible to devise a web application that seamlessly integrates Tangle IOTA with IoT-enabled 57 sensors? (line 57-58)?

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Brief summary: The paper discusses issues of agrifood sector with focus resource utilization, particularly water efficiency by integrating Internet of things with IOTA's Tangle. This approach is based on the results of Mboyerwa et al. in: Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems [6] and Prem Kumar, G.E.; Lydia, In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Data [4]. The results obtained from the study are useful for analysis and practical application in Agriculture.

Particular comments:

1.  Why the rice cultivation was chosen for consideration?

2. There is no precise formulation of the purpose of the paper.

3. Analysis and review of related works on the problem discussed is not provided.

4. Is there an analysis and comparison with other methods to determine "the method of the study focuses on optimizing recourses..." (section 2, line 83)?

5. In section 5 conclusion is written "...by providing real-time data that can guide such optimizations." (line 545)?

Questions:

1. What are the criteria and constraints for optimization?

2. Again, in section 5 conclusion is written "intelligent irrigation systems" (line 545). The question is what exactly is "intelligent" in this system?

3. In section 4.3 Real-time monitoring of cultivation Practices marked "our prototype" (line 483-492). Where such a prototype is described, which is not marked either in abstract or in keywords?

4.  In the abstract, the authors claim: "The system also lowered electricity consumption for irrigation pumps and generated historical water depth records for future resource management." (line 8). Where this statement is proven?

5. Also, in the Abstract  (line 11) it is noted: “… contributing to environmental conservation and food security“. Evidence is required.

6. It would be useful to briefly formulate, if possible, guidelines for future research and applications in other areas (e.g., other than rice cultivation).

The quality of English is good

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This research addresses the challenges in the agrifood sector such as resource inefficiency and environmental impact by integrating IoT with IOTA’s tangle, a form of distributed ledger technology.

The topic is original in the sense that the technology that has been used in this research is novel as it has used a sensor based intelligent irrigation system to optimize water efficiency in rice field irrigation. It has addressed the specific gap of resource utilization using IoT with IoTA’s tangle.

This proposed research has stressed on the concepts of utilization of resources, employing RaspberryPI, sensor, IoT and IOTA tangle for monitoring various parameters like soil moisture, temperature and pH ect….Existing literature has given stress on certain parameters sometimes on very few parameters, but in this research , the authors have stressed the need for the usage of Technology like IOTA tangle to bridge the gap of the usage of the technology on sustainability of agriculture.

I feel authors have developed a good method for monitoring the environmental parameters using IoT with IOTA’s tangle. Although, the authors have used IOT with a DLT like IOTA tangle, Hope this research may give an idea about usage of other technologies like Machine or deep learning techniques for efficient usage of resources and monitoring of different types of environmental variable with different types of data
received from the sensors. Also MongoDB has been proposed in this research and we need to see the results generated by the model once we change to databases like Apache Hadoop, Microsoft Azure etc.

The conclusion is appropriate with the arguments present in the paper and they have addressed the main question presented in the paper.

All the reference’s mentioned in the article are recent references and they are appropriate for achieving the objectives mentioned in the paper.

Overall, the paper is good and can be considered for a possible publication.

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Authors present an interesting work focused on the integration of IoT and IOTA in the agriculture sector.
Although the work is interesting for the community, some changes would be appreciated before the final acceptance of the paper:
- Abstract: it could be improved by the common paradigm "problem -> objective -> solution -> tests and results". Specifically, the problem is not reported in any form (a part a few words in the first sentence) so it is difficult to understand what is the problem faced by the work, and therefore, the reason why the work can help the whole community
- Related Works / State of the art: the state of the art seems to be completely missing. It is interesting to understand if anyone else already did something similar to the proposed solution and, in case, what does the current work do as an improvement with respect to existing previous works.
- architecture of the system: an image showing the overall architecture of the whole system could help readers visualize what authors describe
- It could be useful to speak about the benefits brought by the adoption of IoT + IOTA compared to the ones brought by common IoT systems (without IOTA)
- Authors did not speak about the consumption of the system (and so did not compare the work with other IoT-only based solutions -> is the IOTA one more efficient? In which terms?)

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf