Digital Agriculture Approaches for Water-Smart Crop Production
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22048879Keywords:
Digital agriculture, IoT, Precision irrigation, Remote sensing, Water-smart farmingAbstract
Climate change and groundwater depletion are converging to produce systemic water crisis in global agriculture. Conventional irrigation practices include fixed schedule or sensory assessments, which often leads to inefficient water use and long-term degradation of soil and crop. Such scenario needs an efficient, sustainable and smart approach which can provide a real time details about irrigation to the crop. It is cantered around tools such as soil moisture sensors (IoT), satellite and drone imagery, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems capable of forecasting the real time crop's water requirement. Such technologies rely on real-time information about soil, weather and plant's health to instruct farmers when and how to irrigate rather than on a scheduled basis. It also examines smart software tools (decision support systems) and digital farm models that are useful to simulate irrigation requirements before putting water on the field. These digital approaches can reduce water consumption by 20-50%, with a maintenance or enhancement of crop yields, particularly in arid areas. Farmers, however, have a tough time trying to use these tools due to cost, technical knowledge, poor internet connectivity and the ability to integrate technologies. Digital agriculture can have a significant impact on water efficiency and on adaptation to climate change in farming, but it requires more widespread adoption, which requires government support, cheap technology and proper training of farmers. Further research is needed to develop low-cost, user-friendly tools targeted to small and resource-poor farmers.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Turpunati Sreekanth, Masina Sairam, Shaik Rishitha, Sumit Ray, Debanjan Guchhait, Bisruti Maity, Sagar Maitra
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
