Precision farming : Components and applications?A review

Agriculture is the back bone of our country and economy, which accounts for almost 30 per cent of GDP and employs 70 per cent of the population. Over the last decade, technical methods have been developed to utilize modern electronics to respond to field variability. Such methods are known as spatially variable crop production, geographic positioning system (GPS)-based agriculture, site-specific and precision farming (precision agriculture). The term ‘spatially variable crop production’ seems to be more accurate and descriptive than the term precision agriculture. The concept of Precision Agriculture avails the recent developments in sensors, green-house and protected agriculture structures. This technology can be meaning fully deployed for hot and extremely dry regions where water is scarce, soil is salty, temperature is high and rain fall is low. It is also certain that even in developing countries, availability of labour for agri-horticultural activities is going to be in short supply in future. The time has now arrived to exploit all the modern tools available by bringing information technology and agricultural science together for improved economic and environmentally sustainable crop production. Precision Agriculture is an integrated crop management system that at tempts to match the kind and amount of inputs with the actual crop needs for small areas within a farm field.