Predictions and Estimations in Agricultural Production under a Changing Climate—Volume II

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Precision and Digital Agriculture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 September 2024 | Viewed by 1652

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Department of Botany and Nature Protection, Institute of Biology, Pomeranian University in Slupsk, Arciszewskiego 22b St., 76-200 Slupsk, Poland
Interests: artificial neural networks; Artificial Intelligence; machine learning; yield modelling; predictions; potato production; plant breeding; soil science; plant growth analysis
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Department of Biosystems Engineering, Faculty of Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, Poznań University of Life Sciences, Wojska Polskiego 50, 60-627 Poznań, Poland
Interests: artificial neural networks; artificial intelligence; machine learning; yield modelling; predictions; forecasting; crop production
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Department of Biosystems Engineering, Faculty of Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, Poznań University of Life Sciences, Wojska Polskiego 50, 60-627 Poznań, Poland
Interests: agricutural engineering; soil tillage; precison agriculture; soil monitoring; proximal sensing; spectroscopy; digital farming; smart farming
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Field and Horticultural Crops Research Department, Kurdistan Agricultural and Natural Resources Research and Education Center, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Jam-e Jam Cross Way, P.O. Box 741, 66169-36311 Sanandaj, Iran
Interests: plant breeding; plant tissue culture; gene transformation; statistical designs; machine learning
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Prediction is the rational and scientific anticipation of future events in order to reduce risk in the decision-making process. Prediction in today’s agriculture is a very important aspect of improving and refining the management of any agricultural activity. Predictive analytics is increasingly being used in agriculture not only to describe large-scale processes but also at the scale of individual crop fields. The results of such forecasts can help to decide on many current activities during the growing season, including the date of harvesting or plant protection treatments. Up-to-date forecasts make it possible to monitor the prepared storage area and estimate the necessary inputs. Forecasting is becoming increasingly important under climate change. These inevitable changes have a huge impact on the transformation of ecosystems, both natural and under strict human control. Taking into account the above arguments, it is worth developing systems for reliable monitoring and prediction of multistage agricultural production, which will allow, among other things, for estimating in advance the possible production effects to be achieved in both atypical years and standard conditions. Simulations of processes occurring in food production help us to understand the combined effects of water and nutrient deficiencies, pests, diseases, the impact of yield variability, and other field conditions during the growing season. In other words, they integrate multiple factors affecting the final production outcome with relatively low prediction error. Currently, tools supporting prediction in agriculture include classical statistical models, machine learning, GIS tools, satellite and aerial remote sensing, the Internet of Things, and big data. The abovementioned techniques have become allies of decision makers in key decision-making processes, supporting industry databases with relevant information necessary in the process of managing and monitoring agricultural production.

Dr. Magdalena Piekutowska
Prof. Dr. Gniewko Niedbała
Dr. Tomasz Wojciechowski
Dr. Mohsen Niazian
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • yield prediction
  • predictive analytics
  • crop maturity prediction
  • crop quality and quantity prediction
  • machine learning
  • artificial neural networks
  • crop models and modeling
  • agrometeorological models
  • model application for sustainable agriculture
  • crop monitoring
  • proximal and remote sensing for agriculture
  • IoT and big data
  • data science
  • predictive agriculture
  • precision agriculture
  • smart farming

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 1408 KiB  
Article
Calibration and Evaluation of the SIMPLE Crop Growth Model Applied to the Common Bean under Irrigation
by Miguel Servín-Palestina, Irineo López-Cruz, Jorge A. Zegbe, Agustín Ruiz-García, Raquel Salazar-Moreno and José Ángel Cid-Ríos
Agronomy 2024, 14(5), 917; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy14050917 (registering DOI) - 26 Apr 2024
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Abstract
Bean production is at risk due to climate change, declining water resources, and inadequate crop management. To address these challenges, dynamic models that predict crop growth and development can be used as fundamental tools to generate basic and applied knowledge such as production [...] Read more.
Bean production is at risk due to climate change, declining water resources, and inadequate crop management. To address these challenges, dynamic models that predict crop growth and development can be used as fundamental tools to generate basic and applied knowledge such as production management and decision support. This study aimed to calibrate and evaluate the SIMPLE model under irrigation conditions for a semi-arid region in north-central Mexico and to simulate thermal time, biomass (Bio), and grain yield (GY) of common beans cv. ‘Pinto Saltillo’ using experimental data from four crop evapotranspiration treatments (ETct) (I50, I75, I100, and I125) applied during the 2020 and 2021 growing seasons. Both experiments were conducted in a randomized complete block design with three replicates. Model calibration was carried out by posing and solving an optimization problem with the differential-evolution algorithm with 2020 experimental data, while the evaluation was performed with 2021 experimental data. For Bio, calibration values had a root-mean-square error and Nash and Sutcliffe’s efficiency of <0.58 t ha−1 and >0.93, respectively, while the corresponding evaluation values were <1.80 t ha−1 and >0.89, respectively. The I50 and I100 ETct had better fit for calibration, while I50 and I75 had better fit in the evaluation. On average, the model fitted for the predicted GY values had estimation errors of 37% and 22% for the calibration and evaluation procedures, respectively. Therefore, an empirical model was proposed to estimate the harvest index (HI), which produced, on average, a relative error of 6.9% for the bean-GY estimation. The SIMPLE model was able to predict bean biomass under irrigated conditions for these semi-arid regions of Mexico. Also, the use of both crop Bio and transpiration simulated by the SIMPLE model to calculate the HI significantly improved GY prediction under ETct. However, the harvest index needs to be validated under other irrigation levels and field experiments in different locations to strengthen the proposed model and design different GY scenarios under water restrictions for irrigation due to climate change. Full article
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14 pages, 3265 KiB  
Article
Time Series from Sentinel-2 for Organic Durum Wheat Yield Prediction Using Functional Data Analysis and Deep Learning
by Adriano Mancini, Francesco Solfanelli, Luca Coviello, Francesco Maria Martini, Serena Mandolesi and Raffaele Zanoli
Agronomy 2024, 14(1), 109; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy14010109 - 01 Jan 2024
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Abstract
Yield prediction is a crucial activity in scheduling agronomic operations and in informing the management and financial decisions of a wide range of stakeholders of the organic durum wheat supply chain. This research aims to develop a yield forecasting system by combining vegetation [...] Read more.
Yield prediction is a crucial activity in scheduling agronomic operations and in informing the management and financial decisions of a wide range of stakeholders of the organic durum wheat supply chain. This research aims to develop a yield forecasting system by combining vegetation index time-series data from Sentinel-2 L2A time-series data, field-measured yields, and deep learning techniques. Remotely sensed data over a season could be, in general, noisy and characterized by a variable density due to weather conditions. This problem was mitigated using Functional Principal Component Analysis (FPCA). We obtained a functional representation of acquired data, and starting from this, we tried to apply deep learning to predict the crop yield. We used a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) approach, starting from images that embed temporal and spectral dimensions. This representation does not require one to a priori select a vegetation index that, typically, is task-dependent. The results have been also compared with classical approaches as Partial Least Squares (PLS) on the main reference vegetation indexes such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Difference Red Edge index (NDRE), considering both in-season and end-season scenarios. The obtained results show that the image-based representation of multi-spectral time series could be an effective method to estimate the yield, also, in the middle stage of cropping with R2 values greater than 0.83. The developed model could be used to estimate yield the neighbor fields characterized by similar setups in terms of the crop, variety, soil, and, of course, management. Full article
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