UAV-Based Remote Sensing: Driving Green Practices in Agriculture

Dear Colleagues,

With an increasing world population and the threat of climate change, current agronomic practices must be highly productive, but also efficient and sustainable, to ensure food safety and security. The exploitation of remote sensing (RS) data has become an essential tool to assess the production and the efficient use of bioresources. For many years, spaceborne and airborne RS have been considered very efficient alternatives in the analysis of large land areas. However, new resource management strategies based on the concepts of precision agriculture increasingly demand higher levels of spatial and temporal data resolution. In recent years, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) have burst onto the market, closing the data acquisition gap between satellites or manned aircraft and traditional ground-based methods. In addition, the availability of a wide range of spectral technologies compatible with these platforms (e.g., optical RS, multi/hyperspectral sensors, LiDAR, thermal cameras, etc.) has completely transformed the way this sector is monitored and managed.

This Special Issue of Agriculture aims to collect state-of-the-art manuscripts related to local-scale applications of UAV-based RS, particularly focused on precision agriculture with a prospective focus on sustainability. We welcome submissions that show evidence of the enhancement of knowledge on (but not limited to) the following topics:

• Production efficiency and resource optimisation (e.g., irrigation water management, fertilization, etc.).
• Innovative solutions in food safety and security based on low-altitude RS.
• New approaches and tools for data processing (e.g., machine learning) in precision agriculture.
• Studies analysing efficiency, cost, advantages, or limitations of drones in agriculture, and potential contributions of UAVs to meet SDGs.

Dr. Marcos Arza
Dr. Alexandra Jacquelyn Burgess
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agriculture is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• food safety and security
• remote sensing
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
• spectral technologies
• precision agriculture
• machine learning