Precision Irrigation System: Challenges and Opportunities

Dear Colleagues,

Precision irrigation is an essential part of modern agriculture. It connects with many aspects of crop management to make better use of water, improve crop growth, and support resilience in a changing climate. Advances in sensors, communication systems, and decision support tools now allow farmers and researchers to monitor crop water needs with greater detail and accuracy. 

At the same time, important challenges remain. Precision irrigation practices are not always easy to combine with other areas of crop management such as fertilizer use, disease management, and integrated pest management. Many growers face barriers related to costs, training, and access to technology. While new sensing systems and modeling approaches show strong potential to increase water use efficiency, more work is needed to understand their long-term effects on farm management and adoption across diverse regions. New technologies are expanding the role of image analysis in agriculture. Field images can reveal disease symptoms, pest pressure, and crop stress, offering insights that help refine irrigation decisions and open pathways to both economic gains and environmental benefits.

This Special Issue will examine new knowledge and practical solutions under the theme “Precision Irrigation System: Challenges and Opportunities.” The articles will highlight recent progress in monitoring tools, modeling, and case studies from different production systems. Attention will also be given to the role of irrigation in integrated crop management, including its connections with nitrogen, disease monitoring, and integrated pest management. By presenting this wide range of research, the collection seeks to provide a clearer picture of how precision irrigation can support sustainable agriculture.

We invite contributions on, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Irrigation scheduling and management: Use of decision support tools, data driven models, and field studies to guide efficient water use.
• Image-based analysis for irrigation support: Use of images to detect crop stress, disease, and pest conditions, and to link these observations with irrigation management for more informed decision making and complete view of field management.
• New irrigation technologies: Development of sensors, control systems, and water delivery methods that allow detailed monitoring of crop water status and precise application.
• Quantitative modeling for irrigation management: Application of crop models, hydrological models, machine learning, deep learning, and other data driven approaches to improve irrigation decisions.
• Social and economic perspectives: Cost–benefit analysis, training needs, cultural factors, and policies that influence the adoption of precision irrigation.

Dr. Weizhen Liang
Dr. Jingqiu Chen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• precision irrigation
• sensor
• crop water detection
• irrigation decisions
• modeling
• irrigation scheduling
• irrigation science
• irrigation management
• image analysis
• remote sensing
• deep learning