Environmentally Friendly Slow Release Nano-Chemicals in Agriculture

Agriculture is important for people all over the world in order to obtain food to sustain the ever-growing population. However, the current practices for obtaining more and more food has several environmental challenges. Hence, new environmentally friendly fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides have been developed that enhance crop yield by facilitating maximum nutrient uptake by the application of nanotechnology that will help in promoting sustainable agriculture by the slow or controlled release fertilizers. This slow discharge encourages improved delivery of nutrients to the plants that further speeds up early germination, fast growth, and high nutritional level. The current study is aimed to review nano-chemicals used in agriculture that have been developed by the researchers all over the world.

Internet of Things for Automation in Smart Agriculture

By combining the different monitoring and automation techniques available today, we can develop cutting-edge internet of things (IoT) systems that can support sustainable development through smart agriculture. Systems are able to monitor the farming areas and react to the parameters being monitored on their own without the presence of human beings. This automation can result in a more precise way of maintaining the aspects that affect the growth of plants, leading to an increase in the food production on farmlands. This chapter focuses on IOT for automation in smart agriculture and provides a pathway to develop automation system in the smart environment.

Sustainable Smart-Farming Framework

Agriculture and allied activities play a vital role in a country's economic prosperity. The conventional methods in agricultural practices have become insufficient to cater to the increasing needs. To fulfill the demands, new technologies are to be introduced to raise agricultural standards. Over the past few years, there has been significant interest in designing smart agricultural systems. The manageability of agricultural frameworks has turned into a noteworthy concentration for discusses about future human survival. A significant part of the contention seems to depend on shortsighted understanding of biological models and flops enough to define what maintainability goals are being looked for. To adapt to the undeniably multifaceted nature and between connectedness of current cultivating frameworks with regards to globalization and potential bothers like environmental change, we require a pluralistic way to deal with strategy, which can adapt to the abnormal amounts of vulnerability in these territories and which enables most extreme flexibility of reaction to evolving conditions.

Smart Irrigation Techniques for Water Resource Management

Rising temperatures and increased frequency of extreme events will have direct and negative impacts on natural resources. Water resources are limited on earth; hence, there is a need to manage the utilization techniques of water. The irrigation system improvement using the wireless network is a solution to accomplish water conservation goal as well as improvement in irrigation practices. Smart farming enhances the capacity of the agricultural systems to support food security. The need for adaptation and the potential for mitigation into sustainable agriculture development strategies can be incorporated into such system. The smart farming system includes different techniques of agricultural practices to conserve different resources including water. Solar powered smart irrigation systems are a part of the smart irrigation system. Smart irrigation system includes temperature, moisture, and humidity sensors system. Different smart irrigation systems which are used all over the world will be discussed in this chapter.

Automation of Marginal Grass Harvesting

In the European Union (EU), the use of fossil fuels brings several disadvantages, as they are the main culprits responsible for pollutants and GHG emissions. The increasing demand for sustainable fuels leads to the research of alternative technologies, such as biogas production from lignocellulosic materials. Therefore, the acquisition of biomass from marginal areas under Danish conditions has been evaluated in terms of alternative harvesting equipment: an automated robot (Grassbot) versus a regular tractor for key grass materials used for biogas plants (chopped, unchopped, and baled grass) and compared regarding operational, economical, and environmental performances. The evaluation uses two operations models (IRIS and DRIFT) to consider the field characteristics, machinery characteristics, etc. Selected results show that in terms of fuel consumption, chopping, and mowing are the most demanding operations, and that there is no significant difference between the harvesting equipment regarding CO2 emissions.

Wireless Sensor Networks Technologies and Applications for Smart Farming

In recent years, there has been increased use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) which consists of sensor nodes and the intelligent machine learning algorithms to improve the performance of various applications in smart environments. These smart environments include smart home, smart agriculture, smart office, and smart hospital. In various countries throughout the world, agriculture is regarded as the backbone of the economy. To date, many families in Africa are employed in the agriculture industry. The dawn of information communication technologies (ICT) has changed the conventional way in which farming is conducted. However, quite a large number of farmers in Africa are still stagnant and highly dependent on the traditional ways of farming which started hundreds of years ago. This chapter has presented the current problems in farming and irrigation systems and suggests solutions through proposing the intelligent WSNs in a smart environment.

The Study of Technological Development in the Field of Smart Farming

Agriculture is the backbone of any developing country for their sustainable development. So, it is our responsibility to educate the society regarding the sustainable development of agriculture. In the last 10-15 years, technology has been developing at a rapid speed. Various researchers are giving more emphasis to applying technology to agriculture. This is called smart farming. Smart farming uses computer technology and communication for greater yield and production of crops. This chapter studies the various technological developments in the field of smart farming. A few of them are related to internet of things (IOT), wireless communication, irrigation system, and agriculture automation. This chapter helps the new researchers in the field of smart farming to understand the current technological developments.

Sustainable Development in Agriculture

Agriculture is the prime source of livelihood for human beings, animals, and all living beings. Agriculture also plays a vital role in the economy of India. This chapter describes the importance of agriculture and factors affecting the development of agriculture. The international scenario of agriculture, current status of Indian agriculture, and position of Rajasthan (state in India) in agriculture are described in this chapter. The total production, total imports and exports, method of irrigation, net area of irrigation, types of crops, fertilization consumption, and highlight of Union Budget 2018-19 of Indian agriculture are described in this chapter. The geography of Rajasthan according to agriculture, production of crop, and consumption of fertilization are also elaborated in this chapter. This chapter is concluded with future perspectives of India agriculture.

Peregrinating Gardens From Traditional to Most Advanced Handy Approach for Avoiding the Unnecessary Utilization of Resources

We always say agriculture is a backbone of Indian economy. In this chapter, the authors have proposed a novel approach based on priority-driven scheduling-based irrigation model (for home garden) which supplies optimum and good quality water to the crops. Technology used in this proposed system is wireless sensor network. Proposed system will be very useful as it immediately irrigates the plants if the moisture level decreases to avoid the future losses. In this process, soil moisture values will be sensed and compared to find out the lowest value. Such systems will start a new era in agriculture and will prove this could be the major requirement in future due to many critical factors such as irregularity of monsoon, less availability of water, etc. Subtopics enlisted in this chapter such as literature survey, design and modeling, technical specification, sampling, results, and analysis will elaborate depth of proposed system.

Internet of Things Practices for Smart Agriculture

Agriculture is an important economic sector that leads to the overall economic growth of a nation. This sector has to meet the increasing consumption needs of the world population, which is expected to increase by 70% by 2050, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The advancements in the technology in the field of agriculture will facilitate the growth in farming activities. The internet of things (IoT) industry enables the farmers to face these challenges. IoT sensors provide the information about the crop yields, soil moisture, rain fall, livestock, etc. to the farmers that can be used for decision making. The information can be accessed by the farmers with the aid of smart phones. This chapter focuses on the smart agriculture practices with IoT that helps the farmer to analyze the operational data to improve decision making. The implementation platform for the IoT and the communication technologies for smart farming are discussed. A prototype for a smart irrigation system has also been proposed.