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A shortage of calcium and the resulting physiological problems, like tip burn, create serious difficulties for indoor hydroponic lettuce growing, reducing both harvest and grade. This paper puts forward a unique strategy that merges cutting-edge image segmentation and classification methods to spot calcium insufficiency in lettuce during its growth phases under colored LED light. Recognizing nutrient shortfalls at an early stage is key for prompt correction and efficient nutrient control. The trial cultivated butterhead lettuce in a Deep-Water Culture (DWC) arrangement with managed calcium doses. Image preparation steps, involving Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) and Red Color Correction (RCC), were used to boost picture quality and uniformity, and augmentation was performed to increase model resilience. Our method adopted a two-step workflow that enabled us to exploit the advantages of dedicated models. First, lettuce foliage was separated from the backdrop through state-of-the-art architectures, including U-Net, U-Net++, Recurrent U-Net, and Inception U-Net. U-Net++ showed the top segmentation performance (98.56%) with strong generalization compared to its counterparts. Segmentation extracts the target zone and discards background clutter, permitting the classifier to focus more productively on disease-indicating traits. Deep learning classification networks, namely ResNet and EfficientNet, were used in the second step to identify calcium insufficiency from the segmented pictures. EfficientNetB2 stood out as the most dependable classifier, securing an accuracy of 91.51% on the RCC dataset, while Resnet50 attained a closely matching accuracy of 91.18% on that same dataset. This work emphasizes the promise of weaving deep learning models into automated hydroponic setups for live nutrient tracking, supplying a workable answer to improve output and sustainability in indoor hydroponic operations.

Health surveillance depends fundamentally on the reliable tracking of individual calves. Yet, prevailing multi-object tracking frameworks are prone to recurrent identification anomalies, particularly ID switches arising under occluded conditions. To overcome this limitation, we introduce YSD-BPTrack in this work, a novel multi-object tracking framework tailored for calves within occlusion-prone farm environments. The architecture is divided into two principal stages: detection and tracking. For the detection stage, DCNv4 is embedded into the YOLOv8s model to learn spatial deformations caused by occlusion, thereby strengthening detection robustness under such conditions. Meanwhile, the Star operation borrowed from StarNet is adopted to deliver high detection capability while keeping computational demands low. In the tracking stage, we first devise an original rematching mechanism (Rematching module) alongside a redesigned trajectory removal policy (Trajectory removal module). The Rematching module exploits expanded trajectory prediction boxes to re-establish correspondences with detection boxes during occlusion events, thereby cutting down on ID switch errors. The Trajectory Removal module, in turn, flexibly governs the timeout period for lost trajectories, minimizing the risk of premature trajectory deletion. Concretely, the framework we propose sets a new HOTA (Higher Order Tracking Accuracy) score of 91.6%, leading competing approaches in both tracking quality and runtime performance. Experimental evidence further demonstrates the advantage of YSD-BPTrack, with HOTA climbing by 17.6%, MOTA (Multiple Object Tracking Accuracy) by 13.9%, MOTP (Multiple Object Tracking Precision) by 1.8%, IDF1 (Identification F1 Score) by 15.4%, accompanied by reductions of 49.1% in parameters, 88.9% in IDSw (Identification Switches), and 39.2% in computational overhead relative to the other frameworks. Collectively, the presented multi-object tracking framework carries strong potential to redefine calf tracking practice.

As urban landscaping advances, the struggle with garden pests and diseases grows more critical. Substantial interest has been drawn to large language models for their skill in interpreting what users mean and producing suitable responses. The addition of knowledge graphs has offered these models a well-organized, high-quality foundation of facts. This investigation merges knowledge graphs (KGs), large language models (LLMs), and similar tools to engineer a smart question-answering (Q&A) framework for garden pest and disease contexts. Forge a knowledge graph dedicated to garden pests and diseases by amassing dependable data through web scraping and scholarly review. Pinpoint central entities and their links to shape a conceptual schema. Employ the ERNIE-BiLSTM-CRF architecture to pull facts from unstructured text. Testing reveals the fact-extraction system advanced in this work scores above 92% on precision, recall, and F1 metrics, beating competing designs. Put forward a Q&A strategy that fuses the garden pest and disease KG with the ERNIE-Bot-turbo engine. Knowledge is turned into vectors, and the closest matches are located via similarity search; these top hits are then bundled with the query into cues fed to the language engine for natural language output. Trials stacking our technique against ERNIE-Bot-turbo and ChatGLM-6B showed strong results across easy, mid-level, and tough problems, sidestepping off-base replies to out-of-scope questions. It exceeded both baselines in correctness, hitting a 90% exact-answer mark for straightforward queries.

Precise categorization of avocado ripeness plays a vital role in strengthening post-harvest operations and curbing waste throughout agricultural supply networks. The present study centers on constructing a resilient ensemble classification framework employing spectral readings from 120 kilograms of Buccaneer avocados procured from the Royal Project in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The specimens were assessed via near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy at 18 wavelengths. Five distinct machine learning models—Random Forest, Decision Tree, XGBoost, Gradient Boosting, and Gaussian Mixture Model—were separately trained and subsequently fused into a unified ensemble. Four distinct algorithms were deployed to fine-tune the weighting of each model: Bayesian optimisation, differential evolution, particle swarm optimisation, and grid search. Evaluation metrics covering accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, confusion matrices, and ROC curves were applied. Grid Search yielded the strongest classification outcomes, securing an accuracy of 82.5% alongside an F1-score of 85.3%, emphasizing the value of weight-refined ensemble learning relative to standalone classifiers. This investigation delivers a scalable and transparent pipeline for non-destructive ripeness identification. The outcomes, notwithstanding constraints related to overfitting and dependency on spectral data integrity, pave the way for eventual real-time field deployment in agriculture.

Edge devices are increasingly regarded as a portable, budget-friendly alternative to conventional personal computer terminals, offering a promising route toward downsizing equipment and highly flexible robotic fruit harvesting at the field scale. The present study proposes a compact, optimized You Only Look Once version 8n (YOLOv8n) architecture tailored for Orah fruit detection and subsequent deployment on an edge computing platform. Initially, ADown modules were brought into the design to shrink the overall model footprint while safeguarding detection performance. Next, a Concentrated-Comprehensive Dual Convolution (C3_DualConv) component, built around paired convolutional bottlenecks, was devised to reinforce the network’s ability to perceive Orah fruits partly hidden behind branches and foliage; this intervention also contributed to additional model compression. Furthermore, a Bidirectional Feature Pyramid Network (BiFPN) equipped with a high-resolution layer at pyramid level 2 was adopted to facilitate more powerful multi-scale feature aggregation. In parallel, three Coordinate Attention (CA) mechanism modules were embedded to sharpen the system’s sensitivity to Orah fruit features. Finally, a more targeted minimum points distance intersection-over-union loss formulation was applied to improve detection throughput for Orah fruits experiencing dense mutual occlusion. Experimental trials confirmed that the enhanced YOLOv8n architecture reliably pinpointed Orah fruits operating inside challenging orchard scenes, delivering precision of 97.7%, Average Precision at IoU threshold 0.5 ([email protected]) of 98.8%, and an F1 score of 96.69%, all while occupying a lean 4.1 MB of storage on a Windows-based system terminal. The resulting model was then optimally transferred to an Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano via the TensorRT Python Application Programming Interface (API), achieving a mean interface throughput of over 30 fps and thereby verifying real-time detection performance. The outcomes of this work stand to offer technical foundations for Orah fruit robotic harvesting powered by edge-based computing.

Within the densely structured environment of an orchard, pinpointing the exact harvesting location is fundamental to the autonomous operation of fruit-picking robotic systems. Despite this, current techniques are prone to miscalculations in positioning under intricate conditions such as abbreviated stalks, partial concealment, or instances where the target is entirely misread, any of which can compromise the robot's operational efficiency in the field. To address complex vineyard harvesting scenarios, this paper presents an advanced method for picking-point determination that relies on semantic-level inference. The approach introduces three novel components: the semantic reasoning module (SRM), the ROI threshold adjustment strategy (RTAS), and the picking point location optimization module (PPOM). The SRM is deployed to resolve cases where obstructions mask grape stalks, suffer from partial recognition errors, or undergo total recognition failure. The RTAS is designed to overcome difficulties associated with stalks that are positioned low and are notably short during the picking sequence. In the final stage, the PPOM adjusts the calculated picking point coordinates to their optimum, granting the manipulator greater maneuverability as it executes the harvest action. Empirical validation demonstrates that SegFormer produces an mIoU (mean Intersection over Union) of 84.54%, accompanied by B_IoU and P_IoU scores of 73.90% and 75.63%, respectively. In addition, the refined fruit-picking point localization method achieved a success rate of 94.96%, representing an improvement of 8.12% over the baseline technique. The average computation time stands at 0.5428 ± 0.0063 s per instance, which is adequate for real-time harvesting demands.

The choice of methodologies is a pivotal factor in disease identification, particularly when computer vision intersects with agricultural innovation. Safeguarding global food supplies depends on the timely and accurate identification of crop diseases. Deep learning offers a feasible pathway to satisfy this demand. To move this research forward, we engineered and tested a disease identification framework grounded in a novel ensemble strategy. Our contribution includes the presentation of DenseNetMini, a more compact iteration of the DenseNet architecture. We advocate merging DenseNetMini with a learning resizer via an ensemble approach to improve training fidelity and accelerate knowledge acquisition. A further innovative element involves deploying Gradient Product (GP) as the optimization mechanism, efficiently reducing the training time while simultaneously improving model performance. Investigating imagery at varying magnifications reveals remarkable improvements in diagnostic consensus and precision. Accuracy figures on test data reach 99.65%, 98.96%, and 98.11% for the Plantvillage, Tomato leaf, and Appleleaf9 collections, respectively. A core triumph of this investigation is the substantial reduction in computational time, suggesting that GP adoption could make agricultural disease screening more accessible and operationally efficient. Beyond numerical gains, the work foregrounds Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) approaches as indispensable for enhancing the interpretability and clarity of the disease detection framework. By visually pinpointing diagnostically relevant zones on foliage, XAI enhances the model’s comprehensibility, thereby nurturing user confidence and insight into how it arrives at its conclusions.

Assessing the extent of plant injury is a vital element of crop safeguarding. Currently, domain experts evaluate the plots by hand. This labor-intensive activity can be mechanized utilizing cutting-edge computer vision (CV) technology. Image-reliant systems, and lately those grounded in deep learning, have demonstrated strong performance across multiple agricultural use cases. These image-based applications surpass specialist appraisals in regulated conditions and are now progressively being incorporated into uncontrolled, in-field deployments. A new solution, rooted in deep learning techniques and image processing, is proposed to estimate crop damage under field conditions. The recommended solution operates through a two-stage pipeline. The first stage identifies individual plants within the plots using a YOLO-based object detection model. After that, a regression model is applied to gauge the damage per isolated plant. The system was designed and corroborated on oilseed rape plants to measure the damage inflicted by the flea beetle. The plant detection model achieves an overall mean average precision of 91%, with [email protected] of 0.99 and [email protected] of 0.91 for the oilseed rape category. The regression model, built to predict damage severity up to 60% in single plants, yields an MAE of 7.11 and an R² of 0.46 when evaluated against plant-by-plant assessments conducted by human experts. Both models are packaged in a Docker container and can be directly queried via a REST API using images captured in the field from a mobile device.

Accurate identification of rice diseases in precision agriculture using imagery remains difficult due to substantial misclassification rates, a wide range of influencing factors, and fluctuating conditions. While machine learning together with convolutional neural networks has yielded encouraging results for detecting rice diseases, these approaches have struggled to elucidate the interconnections among disease characteristics. In this work, we introduce an enhanced classification framework for rice diseases that combines a convolutional neural network (CNN) with a bidirectional gated recurrent unit (BiGRU). Concretely, a residual connection was embedded into the Inception module, its depth was enlarged, and a refined Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) was incorporated. The upgraded CNN and the BiGRU were trained and evaluated separately; their outputs were then concatenated and forwarded to the classification layer for final prediction. Trials confirm that this strategy achieves 98.21% classification accuracy across four rice disease categories, delivering a robust solution for rice disease detection research.

The contemporary food system generates data at nearly every point where biological production, industrial processing, logistics, retail exchange, and consumer behaviour intersect. Farms produce sensor, satellite, machinery, weather, input, yield, and management data, while processing plants generate quality, safety, traceability, energy, water, and waste records. Downstream actors produce further streams of information through cold-chain monitoring, inventory systems, point-of-sale records, household consumption patterns, and nutrition-related choices. Despite this expanding data environment, the food system remains poor in system-wide intelligence because most data are captured, governed, and analysed within isolated organisational and technical domains. Production analytics, manufacturing intelligence, supply chain visibility, and consumer analytics have developed unevenly and are rarely connected into a coherent information architecture. As a result, decisions continue to be optimised locally rather than across the whole food system. This article proposes a conceptual framework for integrating production, processing, distribution, and consumption analytics into a unified food system intelligence capability. Food system intelligence is defined as the capacity to connect data across food system stages, convert them into actionable knowledge, and support decisions that improve productivity, sustainability, resilience, quality, and consumer value simultaneously. The article does not present new empirical data but synthesises existing literature to construct an integrative framework. The framework identifies four core data layers corresponding to production, processing, distribution, and consumption, joined through an integration layer based on standards, shared semantics, interoperable platforms, data-sharing agreements, and governance mechanisms. It also emphasises feedback flows, especially the use of downstream consumption, waste, and demand data to inform upstream production and processing decisions. Conversely, upstream sustainability, provenance, and production-practice data can enrich downstream retail, labelling, and consumer choice. The central argument is that food system intelligence is not primarily constrained by the absence of data but by the absence of integration and governance. Building this capability requires technical interoperability, institutional trust, reciprocal value creation, and a shift from stage-specific analytics to whole-system reasoning. The proposed framework offers a roadmap for connecting food system data to decisions from farm to fork and from fork back to farm.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being embedded in agri-food supply chains through applications such as automated quality grading, risk scoring, demand forecasting, logistics optimisation, pricing analytics, and food safety alerts. These systems promise efficiency, resilience, and improved decision support, but they also reshape how decisions are made and who is affected by them. In food systems, AI governance is not only a technical issue but also a matter of safety, fairness, market access, and public trust. Existing responsible AI principles provide important normative foundations, including fairness, transparency, accountability, human oversight, and social benefit. However, these principles are often framed at a general level and do not fully address the distinctive structure of agri-food supply chains. Food chains are fragmented across farms, processors, logistics providers, retailers, technology platforms, regulators, and consumers, which makes governance more complex than in single-organisation AI deployment. This article develops a domain-specific Responsible AI Governance Framework for agri-food supply chains. The framework integrates four pillars: transparency, accountability, traceability, and human oversight. It argues that responsible AI in food must make algorithmic decisions visible, assign responsibility across distributed actors, preserve auditable records, and ensure meaningful human safeguards for high-risk decisions. The proposed framework specifies transparency requirements for different AI applications, maps accountability responsibilities across supply chain actors, connects traceability systems to auditability, and defines human oversight mechanisms for safety-critical and livelihood-sensitive decisions. Three tables operationalise the framework through transparency requirements, accountability allocation, and integrated governance mechanisms. The article concludes that responsible AI in food requires governance that is as distributed, interconnected, and safety-conscious as the supply chains it seeks to guide.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly used in food safety systems to support contamination detection, shelf-life prediction, quality classification, inspection prioritisation, and risk scoring. These applications promise faster, more sensitive, and more scalable decision support across complex food supply chains. However, the same predictive complexity that makes AI useful can also make its outputs difficult for food safety professionals, regulators, and operators to interpret. The central problem addressed in this framework article is that AI-supported food safety decisions may become opaque, uncontestable, and weakly aligned with existing structures of regulatory responsibility. When risk scores or alerts cannot be understood, challenged, or traced to relevant evidence, they may undermine rather than strengthen food safety governance. This problem is especially serious because food safety decisions involve direct public health consequences, market consequences, and legal accountability. The objective of this article is to develop an original Explainable AI Framework tailored to food safety decision systems. The framework integrates four interdependent dimensions: risk interpretation, regulatory confidence, operational accountability, and human review. It treats explainability not only as a technical property of models but also as a governance condition for responsible food safety decision-making. The article is based on a conceptual synthesis of 27 peer-reviewed articles published between 2017 and 2025 across food safety, explainable artificial intelligence, algorithmic accountability, risk assessment, and digital food safety systems. It does not present new empirical data. Instead, it constructs a design and governance framework that can guide the development, validation, deployment, and oversight of AI-supported food safety tools. The proposed framework defines four pillars: interpretable risk communication, transparent regulatory evidence, accountable operational responsibility, and contestable human review. Together, these pillars show how food safety AI systems can become not only predictive but also auditable, trustworthy, and practically usable. The article argues that embedding explainability into food safety AI is a governance and trust-building imperative rather than a purely technical enhancement.

Circular food systems require a shift from linear models of production, consumption, disposal, and remediation toward systems that continuously recover value from biological materials. This conceptual article argues that such a transition cannot rely on policy, behavioural change, or technological substitution alone. It also requires an intelligence layer capable of sensing waste generation, interpreting material quality, identifying recovery options, and coordinating decisions across fragmented food-system actors. Artificial intelligence offers this intelligence layer by enabling predictive, diagnostic, and decision-support capacities across the food chain. Rather than treating AI as a narrow automation tool, this article positions AI as cognitive infrastructure for circular food economies. Its role is to connect data on food loss, by-product composition, logistics, environmental impacts, recovery technologies, and stakeholder constraints. The article develops a conceptual framework for AI-enabled circular food systems. The framework integrates five functions: waste detection, valorisation pathway selection, resource recovery, sustainability-oriented decision support, and cross-actor coordination. These functions are presented as mutually reinforcing layers that allow food materials to be tracked, evaluated, redirected, and valorised before they become unmanaged waste. The article contributes to sustainability and circular economy scholarship by linking food-waste valorisation with material flow intelligence and multi-criteria decision support. It highlights how AI can support real-time evaluation of waste streams, match heterogeneous residues with suitable recovery pathways, and improve the coordination of producers, processors, retailers, consumers, waste managers, and policymakers. It also clarifies the risks of fragmented digitalisation when data systems are not aligned with circular outcomes. The proposed framework is intended for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers seeking to design circular food systems that are adaptive, evidence-based, and sustainability-oriented. It does not present new empirical data. Instead, it provides a conceptual basis for future empirical testing, digital platform development, policy design, and interdisciplinary research on AI-enabled food circularity.

Food systems increasingly generate consumer data through digital platforms, shopping records, dietary applications, wearable technologies, loyalty schemes, and personalised nutrition services. These data can reveal patterns of preference, dietary behaviour, product use, affordability constraints, and health-oriented needs. However, consumer data are often used for commercial targeting while remaining disconnected from product reformulation, nutrition improvement, and public health goals. AI-enabled food intelligence is frequently positioned as a tool for predicting consumer preferences or delivering personalised recommendations. This narrow use limits the potential of AI to support healthier food environments, more acceptable reformulated products, and more transparent consumer communication. A broader framework is needed to connect consumer insight with nutrition evidence, product innovation, ethical governance, and public trust. This article proposes a consumer-centred food intelligence framework linking AI, nutrition personalization, product reformulation, trust, transparency, and public health. The framework treats consumers not only as data sources but also as beneficiaries, participants, and evaluators of food-system innovation. It explains how individual and aggregated consumer intelligence can inform dietary advice, product design, reformulation priorities, and responsible communication. The article contributes a structured conceptual model for ethically transforming consumer data into health-oriented and trust-sensitive food-system decisions. It argues that AI should not only recommend diets or predict purchasing behaviour, but should also help translate nutritional evidence into acceptable products and transparent innovation pathways. Consumer-centred food intelligence is presented as a foundation for more responsible, healthier, and publicly trusted digital food systems.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly promoted as a tool for improving agricultural productivity, food-system coordination, sustainability monitoring, risk prediction, quality control, and decision support. Across agri-food systems, AI is expected to support more timely decisions, more efficient resource use, and more adaptive responses to climatic, market, and production uncertainty. These expectations have encouraged investment in digital tools, analytics platforms, automated monitoring systems, and predictive applications. Yet the availability of AI tools does not mean that agri-food systems are prepared to use them effectively or responsibly. Readiness depends on the quality of data infrastructure, the strength of institutions, the capabilities of farmers and other users, and the maturity of governance arrangements. When these conditions are weak, AI implementation can deepen inequality, create dependence on opaque platforms, reduce trust, or generate risks that are difficult to identify and manage. This article develops an agri-food AI readiness framework that explains the conditions required for responsible and effective AI implementation. The framework conceptualises readiness as a socio-technical condition produced through the interaction of data infrastructure and digital capacity, institutional capacity and policy support, farmer capability and adoption readiness, and governance maturity and risk management. It emphasises that AI readiness is not a single technical threshold but a combined maturity condition across interconnected system dimensions. The framework contributes a structured way to assess whether agri-food systems are prepared to adopt, adapt, govern, and benefit from AI. It identifies how weaknesses in one dimension can reduce the effectiveness of the others, even where advanced technologies are available. By linking implementation capacity with governance responsibility, the framework supports more inclusive, trustworthy, and context-sensitive pathways for agri-food AI.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly embedded in agricultural decision support, farm platforms, automation, sensing, advisory systems, and data-driven management. These systems influence how farms interpret risk, allocate inputs, monitor environments, plan production, and respond to market and ecological uncertainty. As agricultural AI becomes more consequential, its governance must address not only technical performance but also the social conditions under which digital decisions are made, trusted, challenged, and revised. Agricultural AI governance is often framed around technical accuracy, transparency, regulatory compliance, or institutional oversight. While these are necessary, they are insufficient when farmers have limited influence over system design, data practices, model assumptions, recommendation logic, or dispute pathways. Governance weaknesses can produce exclusion, loss of autonomy, data misuse, algorithmic opacity, dependency on platforms, and digital decisions that affected users cannot meaningfully challenge. This article develops a participatory AI governance framework for agriculture centred on farmer voice, local knowledge integration, contestable digital decisions, and accountability safeguards. The framework treats governance as a socio-technical practice that connects design, deployment, monitoring, revision, and redress. It argues that responsible agricultural AI requires institutional mechanisms through which farmers and other affected actors can shape, interpret, evaluate, contest, and improve digital systems. The framework contributes to agricultural AI governance by showing how participation can strengthen legitimacy, trust, accountability, and contextual fit. It positions farmer voice as a condition of decision legitimacy, local knowledge as a condition of contextual accuracy, contestability as a condition of procedural fairness, and accountability safeguards as a condition of responsible institutional performance. Participatory governance is therefore presented as a practical foundation for agricultural AI that is more locally grounded, explainable, responsive, and accountable.

Agri-food systems increasingly rely on analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, environmental monitoring, and decision-support tools to evaluate sustainability performance. These systems can estimate resource use, model environmental impacts, detect risks, and inform actions across farms, supply chains, markets, and governance settings. As analytics become embedded in sustainability decisions, their outputs increasingly shape how environmental problems are recognised and acted upon. Yet sustainability analytics does not become useful or responsible simply because it produces indicators, predictions, rankings, or dashboards. Environmental metrics may be technically sophisticated while remaining difficult for farmers, firms, auditors, regulators, and communities to interpret or challenge. This creates an explainability problem in which users need to understand not only what an analytic system reports, but also how the result was produced, what assumptions it contains, and what consequences may follow from acting on it. This article develops a conceptual framework for explainable sustainability analytics in agri-food systems. The framework treats explainability as a system-level requirement for linking environmental impact interpretation, risk explanation, responsibility attribution, human review, and accountability safeguards. It argues that sustainability analytics should be evaluated not only by predictive performance or measurement coverage, but also by whether it supports transparent, contestable, and context-sensitive decision-making. The article contributes a structured framework for interpreting environmental impact, explaining risk, attributing responsibility, and supporting accountable review in agri-food decision contexts. It positions explainable sustainability analytics as an approach that connects data, models, indicators, explanation mechanisms, human judgement, and governance safeguards. In doing so, it provides a foundation for sustainability analytics that is more interpretable, trustworthy, and actionable.

Agri-food systems increasingly rely on artificial intelligence for farm decision support, automation, quality control, sustainability monitoring, logistics, supply-chain coordination, risk prediction, and resource management. These applications promise productivity gains and improved responsiveness to environmental and market pressures. Yet their growing influence also creates new governance demands because AI systems can shape decisions that affect farms, firms, workers, consumers, ecosystems, and public institutions. Trustworthy AI in agri-food systems cannot be established through technical performance claims alone. A model may be accurate in a narrow test environment while remaining opaque, unsafe under changing field conditions, unfair across producer groups, or unable to substantiate sustainability claims. Certification therefore needs to move beyond reputational signalling and provide credible assurance that AI systems can be examined, challenged, monitored, and held accountable. This article develops a trustworthy AI certification framework for agri-food systems centred on auditability, safety, fairness, and sustainability-claim verification. The framework treats certification as a governance mechanism rather than a simple label or checklist. It identifies the evidence, assurance procedures, monitoring expectations, and institutional safeguards needed to make certification credible in technically complex and socially consequential agri-food settings. The article contributes a structured approach for regulators, certification bodies, technology providers, agri-food firms, farmer organisations, sustainability auditors, and public institutions. It argues that trustworthy AI certification should depend on verifiable evidence, independent auditability, lifecycle risk assurance, distributional accountability, environmental claim verification, and clear responsibilities across the AI value chain. Certification becomes meaningful only when it supports systems that are auditable, safe, fair, environmentally credible, and publicly accountable.

Intelligent agriculture increasingly uses artificial intelligence, sensors, remote sensing, automation, modelling, and decision-support systems to monitor and manage agricultural production. These tools can strengthen observation, prediction, and coordination across farms and landscapes. Yet their contribution to agricultural transformation depends on the ecological aims toward which they are designed and governed. Regenerative agriculture requires more than improved efficiency or narrower optimisation of inputs. It calls for soil restoration, biodiversity protection, ecological feedback, and long-term system health. Intelligent systems therefore need to be evaluated not only by productivity gains, but also by their capacity to support ecological recovery. This article develops a conceptual framework for regenerative intelligence in agriculture. Regenerative intelligence is defined as the AI-supported capacity of agricultural systems to monitor, interpret, and support soil restoration, biodiversity protection, and long-term system health through adaptive and ecologically accountable decision pathways. The framework explains how sensing, ecological analytics, modelling, decision support, monitoring, feedback, and governance can contribute to regenerative agricultural transformation. It also clarifies that AI-supported agriculture is not automatically regenerative. Its regenerative value depends on ecological indicators, farmer participation, responsible governance, biodiversity sensitivity, soil-health interpretation, and sustained learning from ecological outcomes.

Digital twins are increasingly proposed as cyber-physical representations that may support precision agriculture through monitoring, simulation, prediction, optimization, and decision support. However, agricultural systems described as digital twins vary substantially in data quality, interoperability, synchronization, modelling depth, predictive reliability, decision functionality, validation, and operational governance. This article proposes a conceptual maturity framework that evaluates agricultural digital twins through capability progression rather than technology adoption alone. The framework begins with descriptive monitoring and advances through real-time farm representation, simulation and scenario analysis, prediction and optimization, and supervised autonomous decision support. Monitoring maturity depends on reliable sensing, remote sensing, Internet of Things integration, data fusion, spatial and temporal adequacy, traceability, and human-interpretable representation. Simulation and prediction maturity require explicit farm-system boundaries, calibrated models, uncertainty estimation, local validation, and evidence that analytical outputs remain valid for their intended context. Optimization maturity additionally requires transparent objectives, constraints, robustness assessment, and distinction between predictive accuracy and decision value. The highest proposed level permits only narrowly bounded and supervised decision initiation supported by human authority, explainability, safety mechanisms, governance, cybersecurity where relevant, and continuous feedback. The framework does not constitute a validated maturity standard or establish agronomic, environmental, economic, or autonomous decision benefits. Its principal contribution is an integrated structure for assessing capability readiness, identifying progression barriers, and preventing monitoring, simulation, prediction, or optimization functions from being overinterpreted as evidence of deployment-ready autonomy.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly embedded in precision agriculture through sensing, remote observation, predictive modelling, automated classification, and decision-support applications. Technical performance alone, however, is insufficient for determining whether these systems are responsibly designed or appropriately used. This article proposes an original governance framework that connects agricultural context definition, farm-data governance, transparency, explainability, accountability, sustainability assessment, farmer participation, human oversight, risk safeguards, implementation-readiness review, monitoring, and adaptive feedback. The framework treats transparency as a requirement for documenting data provenance, data quality, model assumptions, system limitations, and decision pathways, while explainability is positioned as a task-specific means of supporting interpretation rather than proof of model validity. Accountability is structured through explicit allocation of responsibilities among developers, platform providers, data stewards, advisors, farmers, and oversight actors. Environmental, social, and economic sustainability are assessed alongside digital inclusion, usability, local relevance, farmer autonomy, and trust-building conditions. The framework also addresses algorithmic opacity, bias, model drift, poor local calibration, data misuse, cybersecurity, automation dependence, accountability gaps, and implementation overclaiming. Its principal contribution is a layered, adaptive governance model for responsible agricultural decision support. The framework supports governance planning and research design but does not establish empirical validity, legal compliance, policy acceptance, farmer approval, sustainability performance, trust, certification, or deployment readiness.

Precision agriculture is increasingly shaped by sensors, remote sensing, artificial intelligence, automated machinery, digital platforms, and data-driven decision support. However, technical capability alone does not establish whether a smart farming system is usable, locally appropriate, socially responsible, environmentally beneficial, resilient under disruption, or worthy of farmer reliance. This conceptual article proposes a human-centered precision agriculture framework that places farmers, farm workers, agricultural advisors, local knowledge, farm conditions, usability, accessibility, explainability, decision confidence, human oversight, and responsible governance at the center of system design. The framework integrates sustainability and resilience assessment with user-centered artificial intelligence, participatory design, transparent data practices, uncertainty communication, accountable decision support, and iterative learning. It distinguishes decision confidence from decision quality, explainability from guaranteed trust, participation from assured adoption, and technological potential from demonstrated sustainability or resilience. The proposed structure organizes human-centered smart farming into interconnected stages covering problem definition, stakeholder mapping, farmer-needs assessment, data and system context, sustainability and resilience requirements, explainability design, participation, oversight, governance, evaluation, and feedback. Its main contribution is a socio-technical framework for structuring research and design priorities while maintaining explicit boundaries around empirical validation, farmer autonomy, responsible implementation, and claims of system readiness.

Smart farming technologies are frequently associated with improved efficiency, environmental performance, and adaptive agricultural management, yet digital capability alone does not establish sustainability. This article proposes a sustainability-by-design framework that embeds environmental, economic, social, resilience, and governance considerations into the design and evaluation of smart farming technologies. The framework connects digital agriculture capabilities with resource-use baselines, water- and nutrient-use assessment, conditional pesticide and energy considerations, soil and biodiversity relevance, waste and emissions evaluation, and human oversight. It further integrates climate-risk assessment, scenario planning, adaptive farm-system design, operational resilience, learning feedback, and explicit boundaries against treating monitoring or prediction as proof of climate resilience. Social value is addressed through farmer participation, autonomy, digital inclusion, accessibility, usability, affordability, local relevance, knowledge integration, trust, transparency, data governance, and accountability. Cross-cutting sustainability design principles include context sensitivity, life-cycle thinking, interoperability, trade-off assessment, uncertainty communication, evaluation planning, controlled updating, and clearly defined decision boundaries. The proposed framework is intended to organize design choices, evidence requirements, governance safeguards, and future evaluation rather than prescribe farm-management actions or certify sustainable outcomes. Its main contribution is a structured socio-technical model for examining when, how, for whom, and under what conditions smart farming technologies may support sustainability-oriented agricultural transformation.

Decision-support systems are increasingly positioned as mechanisms for translating agricultural data and analytical models into farm-management recommendations, yet their methodological quality cannot be judged through predictive performance alone. This article proposes an original methodological framework for designing and evaluating decision-support systems in precision agriculture. The framework integrates farm-management decision-context definition, stakeholder mapping, data-quality and provenance assessment, model and recommendation-logic documentation, explainability and interpretability requirements, usability and farmer-centered design, validation planning, decision-reliability assessment, adoption-barrier analysis, implementation-condition assessment, human oversight, and iterative feedback. Explainability is treated as a role-sensitive design requirement involving input visibility, output explanation, decision rationale, uncertainty communication, traceability, and appropriate explanation timing and format. Usability is addressed through farmer participation, co-design, workflow integration, accessibility, local relevance, manageable decision-support workload, training, and feedback mechanisms. Validation is extended beyond internal model testing to include external and local validation, calibration, error analysis, field-validation planning, drift monitoring, and review of the complete recommendation pathway. Adoption is interpreted as a contextual and voluntary process shaped by perceived usefulness, trust, affordability, infrastructure, digital capability, interoperability, support, and governance. Human oversight remains necessary because neither technical performance nor explanation quality independently establishes decision reliability. The framework contributes a structured method for coordinating design and evaluation activities while retaining explicit boundaries against claims of guaranteed decision quality, adoption, or deployment readiness.

Agricultural data markets are becoming integral to precision farming as data generated by sensors, machinery, remote-sensing systems, farm-management platforms, advisory services, supply chains, and public information infrastructures acquire operational and economic value. However, the expansion of data exchange creates policy challenges that cannot be assessed through innovation, productivity, or monetization potential alone. This article develops an original policy framework that connects agricultural data-market boundaries, actors, data flows, ownership claims, access arrangements, effective control, farmer participation, privacy, competition, platform power, interoperability, fair exchange, accountability, and implementation safeguards. The framework distinguishes data ownership from access, control, portability, consent, and practical farmer agency. It also treats privacy protection as one component of a wider governance architecture that must address platform dependency, market concentration, switching costs, asymmetric information, bargaining-power imbalances, data-intermediary influence, and unclear accountability. Interoperability is conceptualized as a combination of technical, semantic, organizational, and governance conditions rather than as a sufficient guarantee of fair exchange. The framework further identifies policy gaps involving ambiguous rights, fragmented portability, weak consent, opaque value capture, deficient dispute pathways, and limited monitoring capacity. Its principal contribution is a structured policy-analysis model that links risk identification to context-sensitive safeguards, stakeholder feedback, monitoring, and framework updating. The framework supports policy-oriented analysis but does not independently establish legal compliance, guarantee farmer protection, certify market fairness, or demonstrate implementation readiness.

Edge Artificial Intelligence and Tiny Machine Learning are increasingly discussed as approaches for moving selected analytical functions from remote cloud infrastructure to low-power devices located closer to agricultural data sources. Their potential relevance to precision agriculture lies in supporting local sensing, classification, monitoring, and decision-assistance functions where continuous connectivity, high-performance computing, or extensive data transmission may be impractical. This framework-oriented review examines Edge AI and TinyML through four connected dimensions: low-power intelligence, embedded farm systems, agricultural deployment constraints, and farm-scale applications and implementation barriers. The review distinguishes on-device inference and near-sensor intelligence from conventional agricultural Internet of Things sensing, generic wireless sensor networks, cloud-based artificial intelligence, and non-embedded machine-learning applications. It organizes the reviewed evidence around embedded hardware, model compression, memory, latency, energy use, sensor quality, connectivity, environmental exposure, calibration, maintenance, usability, affordability, local validation, cybersecurity, privacy, and human oversight. The synthesis indicates that compact inference can reduce reliance on continuous cloud access in appropriately designed systems, but miniaturized models alone do not establish accuracy, robustness, affordability, usability, sustainability, or deployment readiness. Farm-scale usefulness remains conditional on the quality of sensing systems, hardware-aware model design, environmental testing, lifecycle maintenance, locally relevant validation, and clear responsibility for system oversight. The main contribution is a framework that connects technical design choices with deployment conditions, implementation boundaries, and a research and practice agenda for evaluating low-power agricultural intelligence without converting prototype feasibility into unsupported operational claims.

Foundation models are becoming relevant to precision agriculture because they can connect sensing, remote sensing interpretation, multimodal data integration, knowledge retrieval, advisory communication, and farm decision-support workflows. Their broad capability, however, does not establish agronomic validity, trustworthy performance, operational safety, or deployment readiness. This article develops an original governance and technical safeguard framework for responsible agricultural foundation models. The framework treats these models as potential components of decision infrastructure and integrates trustworthy artificial intelligence requirements with data governance, validation, human oversight, farmer participation, monitoring, and explicit claim boundaries. It identifies requirements concerning data quality, provenance, documentation, transparency, explainability, interpretability, uncertainty communication, robustness, generalization, bias, fairness, privacy, cybersecurity, accountability, auditability, and traceability. It also maps risks arising from opaque pretraining data, uncertain data control, hallucination, factual error, agronomic invalidity, platform dependency, model drift, data drift, and unclear responsibility. Technical safeguards include data screening, domain-adaptation assessment, external and local validation, robustness testing, bias and fairness review, factual and agronomic checking, human-in-the-loop review, and continuing monitoring. Responsible deployment principles add purpose limitation, context sensitivity, incident response, withdrawal planning, and non-autonomy boundaries. The contribution is a structured conceptual framework that connects governance questions with technical evidence and accountable actors without claiming legal compliance, guaranteed trustworthiness, farmer approval, or deployment readiness.

Generative artificial intelligence is expanding the conversational and interpretive functions available within precision-farming decision support, yet fluent responses may contain factual inaccuracies, unsupported claims, fabricated evidence, agronomically invalid interpretations, local-context mismatches, or understated uncertainty. This article develops a conceptual artificial-intelligence safety framework for managing these risks in generative agricultural decision-support systems. The framework treats hallucination risk as a socio-technical safety problem rather than solely as a language-model defect. It links agricultural use-case definition, advisory-output classification, farm-level consequence assessment, data and knowledge provenance, retrieval and response grounding, hallucination screening, factual verification, agronomic-validity review, uncertainty communication, human oversight, expert escalation, farmer feedback, traceability, accountability, monitoring, and controlled updating. Generative outputs are differentiated according to whether they provide information, interpretation, scenario explanation, or recommendation-like content, because the evidentiary and review requirements increase with potential consequence. Validation is similarly separated into factual checking, external evaluation, local-context assessment, agronomic review, and future field-validation planning. The framework establishes decision boundaries against unsupported agronomic advice, autonomous farm action, hallucination-elimination claims, safety guarantees, and deployment-readiness claims. It also allocates responsibilities among developers, platform providers, data stewards, knowledge-base curators, agricultural reviewers, and farmers while preserving farmer autonomy. The main contribution is an integrated safety model for structuring how hallucination-prone generative outputs may be interpreted, reviewed, restricted, escalated, recorded, and updated within precision-farming decision support. The framework is conceptual and does not independently establish advisory correctness, operational safety, legal compliance, or deployment readiness.

Climate-smart precision agriculture is increasingly discussed as a means of connecting farm data, environmental observation, and analytical modeling with climate adaptation, mitigation-relevant assessment, and resilience planning. However, data availability and predictive capability alone do not establish climate benefit, decision reliability, or farm readiness. This article proposes a conceptual data-science framework that organizes climate-smart use-case definition, farm-context mapping, multi-source data integration, adaptation analytics, mitigation-relevant analysis, climate-risk modeling, uncertainty assessment, resilience-oriented decision support, sustainability feedback, monitoring, and governance safeguards. The framework distinguishes climate hazards, exposure, vulnerability, adaptive capacity, forecasting, scenario analysis, and operational decision support while preserving boundaries between analytical indicators and verified outcomes. Remote sensing, sensors, weather and climate records, soil and crop observations, water and resource-use data, machine learning, geospatial analysis, time-series modeling, and data fusion are positioned as conditional inputs and methods rather than automatic sources of climate benefit. The framework also requires local validation, uncertainty communication, farmer participation, human oversight, data-quality assessment, provenance, interoperability, and feedback updating. Its main contribution is an integrated architecture for interpreting how data-science functions may support climate-smart precision agriculture without presenting modeled outputs as guaranteed adaptation, verified mitigation, proven resilience, carbon accounting, or deployment readiness. The article therefore frames climate-smart precision agriculture as a governed learning system whose value depends on evidence quality, contextual interpretation, transparent limitations, and iterative assessment.

Artificial intelligence is becoming embedded in precision agriculture through data-intensive monitoring, predictive models, digital platforms, advisory systems, robotics, and automated machinery. These arrangements complicate accountability because consequential outputs may result from interactions among data providers, model developers, platform operators, advisors, machinery manufacturers, system integrators, service providers, and farm operators rather than from a single actor or technical component. This article proposes a conceptual accountability framework for examining AI liability issues across agricultural AI systems without treating accountability mapping as a substitute for legal interpretation. The framework begins with agricultural use-case definition and stakeholder-role mapping, then examines data-level duties concerning quality, provenance, access, control, privacy, cybersecurity, and governance. It further maps model-level responsibilities for documentation, validation, robustness, bias assessment, explainability, uncertainty communication, and drift monitoring. Platform and advisory layers are addressed through governance, interface design, monitoring, escalation, human review, professional interpretation, and farmer-autonomy requirements. Machinery, automation, and operational risks are incorporated through control-system responsibilities, sensor-to-actuator traceability, supervisory control, fail-safe design, maintenance, incident reporting, and operational boundaries. The framework also identifies liability gaps created by fragmented evidence, unclear validation ownership, platform ambiguity, ineffective human oversight, and incomplete traceability. Its contribution is a structured method for clarifying responsibility pathways, evidence needs, decision boundaries, and governance gaps across interconnected agricultural AI layers. The framework is conceptual and does not determine legal liability, establish compliance, certify safety, allocate blame, or demonstrate deployment readiness.