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The delineation of hazelnut plantations has the potential to assist land management and utilization strategies, thereby enabling the advancement of collaborative precision agriculture infrastructures. This investigation addresses the recognition of hazelnut cultivation by leveraging both optical and radar remote sensing. A comparative appraisal of various Machine Learning methodologies is conducted. The framework put forward harnesses multi-temporal information from the Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 archives, acquired over several years and processed in cloud computing environments. A data collection encompassing 62,982 annotated instances is furnished, with 16,561 cases assigned to the ‘hazelnut’ category and 46,421 to the ‘other’ category, gathered from 8 disparate geographic sectors within the province of Viterbo. Two distinct comparative assessments are performed: initially, a Nested 5-Fold Cross-Validation routine is used to fit, tune, and compare multiple Machine Learning classifiers confined to a single sector. In a follow-on trial, the classifiers were fitted on one sector and then validated against the remaining seven geographic sectors. The investigation confirms that AI-driven interpretation of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery is a viable solution for hazelnut cartography. The outcomes indicate that Random Forest delivers the most robust generalizability, achieving peak results in the second trial, with 96% accuracy and an F1 score of 91% for the ‘hazelnut’ group.

Quantifying fruit mass and volume manually is a laborious, repetitive task that can hinder production scheduling. This investigation developed a computer vision framework to predict the volume and mass of baobab fruits from single-view photographs captured with affordable, widely accessible cameras, including smartphones. The baobab fruits were sourced from two experimental sites situated within the savanna ecological zone. Following image capture, the fruits were detected and segmented with an accuracy exceeding 97%. The segmented outputs were converted to binary format, from which two-dimensional (2D) attributes—namely the segmented area, centroid, bounding box, equivalent diameter, and major diameter—were derived. Volume estimations were generated from the 2D attributes by employing random forest, linear, polynomial, and radial support vector machine regressors. Every model achieved strong goodness-of-fit, yet the random forest regressor performed best, with an R2 of 99.8%. The linkage between mass and volume conformed to a quadratic expression (mass = 38.23 + 0.25 × volume + 4.49e−05 × volume2) and achieved an R2 of 92%. Correlations were substantiated through graphical plots and statistical evaluations, with credible intervals for the point estimates derived from the posterior distributions of their respective samples. This finding spotlights the potential to deploy artificial intelligence techniques in a less restrictive environment to support ecological studies and agricultural oversight. Commercial firms that manufacture baobab powder and seed oil ought to adopt these models to streamline production planning. Acquiring deeper insight into how climatic gradients shape the morphological properties of baobab fruits would help refine the model.

Acquiring data across many locations and enabling fast decision-making are strengths of hyperspectral measurements. Nevertheless, a range of data processing approaches (Savisky-Golay [SG], first derivative [FD], and normalization) and modeling frameworks (partial least squares regression [PLS], weighted k-nearest neighbor [KKNN], support vector machine [SVM], and random forest [RF]) can be applied to establish the strongest link between physical observations and hyperspectral signatures. In this study, FD emerged as the top processing technique, while SVM was the leading model for estimating mean cotton (Gossypium spp., Malvaceae) height and node counts. Conversely, the integration of FD with RF achieved the highest accuracy in predicting cotton leaf area index, canopy cover, and chlorophyll levels throughout the growing period. Furthermore, outputs from models built with both SVM and RF corresponded closely to the pseudo-CHIME satellite wavebands, a process in which field-collected hyperspectral data were adjusted to the spectral intervals of an anticipated spaceborne hyperspectral sensor. The knowledge and outcomes supplied here will equip growers and other players in the cotton sector to execute swift, well-informed actions that could foster higher productivity and sustainable intensification.

A large segment of India’s rural population depends on agriculture for its livelihood, yet difficulties with manual processes and disease management persist. To address these problems, this study presents an automated framework for detecting leaf damage and identifying plant diseases using advanced deep learning methods. The introduced technique unfolds in six steps: first, YOLOv8 is harnessed to pinpoint regions of interest from drone-acquired images; second, DeepLabV3+ is applied for background stripping to aid disease categorization; third, a CNN model is deployed for reliable disease sorting, registering strong training and validation accuracy figures (96.97% and 92.89%, respectively); fourth, UNet-based semantic segmentation is utilized for meticulous pixel-scale damage identification, with an assessment accuracy of 99%; fifth, disease severity is gauged; and sixth, customized remedial measures are put forward according to the disease category and the extent of damage. Experimental trials using the Plant Village dataset confirm the technique’s ability to detect various defects across crops, including apple, tomato, and corn. This mechanized strategy carries significant potential to boost agricultural output and strengthen disease management both within India and globally.

The surveillance of animal behavior is a vital tool in animal production systems. This approach to monitoring behavior can serve as an indicator of animal welfare and health status, potentially translating into superior productive outcomes. The present investigation was designed to determine the optimal accelerometer placement (on the halter compared to a neck collar) and data transmission sampling periods (from 6 up to 600 seconds) for the forecasting of behavioral repertoires, which included frequencies of water and feed consumption along with additional activities, in young beef cattle bulls under feedlot conditions. To meet the study’s goals, a suite of machine learning classifiers was implemented, including random forests, support vector machines, multilayer perceptrons, and naive Bayes. Every model examined achieved high classification performance (above 0.90) regardless of placement site, except those trained with the naive Bayes classifier. Accordingly, integrating accelerometers into collars represents a more feasible solution for on-animal use, given the relative ease of application compared with halter mounting. The adoption of a larger dataset (i.e., shorter sampling windows) did not substantially improve the performance of the fitted models. Consequently, operating with datasets of reduced observational density is more beneficial, as it can reduce both the computational load and time investment required for model fitting while simultaneously extending the device’s battery longevity.

Forest health is under mounting pressure from diseases driven by invasive pathogens, and the ability to detect these diseases early and precisely is vital for targeted, prompt forest management. Breakthroughs in spectral imaging and artificial intelligence have paved the way for novel approaches to plant disease identification in both crop and tree species. The present study employed the Dutch elm disease (DED; caused by Ophiostoma novo-ulmi) and American elm (Ulmus americana) pathosystem as a model to test the efficacy of two custom-fabricated, high-precision, portable hyper- and multispectral leaf scanners, paired with machine learning, as innovative instruments for forest disease surveillance. Hyper- and multispectral imagery was collected from leaves of American elm genotypes with varying degrees of disease susceptibility following mock inoculation and inoculation with O. novo-ulmi in controlled greenhouse conditions. Both classical machine learning and cutting-edge deep learning architectures were trained on extracted spectra and directly on spectral image volumes. Deep learning frameworks that leverage combined spectral and spatial information from high-definition spectral leaf images surpass classical machine learning approaches that rely exclusively on spectral data for DED identification. Within the deep learning framework, leaf margins and symptomatic lesions were accentuated as discriminative spatial cues for separating leaves originating from inoculated versus mock-inoculated specimens. Furthermore, the spectral and spatial signature profiles uncovered by the machine learning-based models corresponded to the DED susceptibility levels of the elm genotypes. While supplementary investigations are warranted to gauge transferability across other pathosystems, hyper- and multispectral leaf scanners integrated with machine learning show considerable promise as emerging tools for disease phenotyping in tree species.

Properly managing water application in urban plantings is essential throughout arid and semi-arid regions and depends upon consistently accurate calculations of reference evapotranspiration (ETo). The meteorological observations obtainable in city landscapes, however, are rarely sufficient to apply the standard Penman-Monteith methodology for ETo derivation. Intelligent landscape irrigation controllers thus often rely on temperature-driven ETo approximations to automate watering schedules. The present study is directed at crafting deep learning temperature-based ETo predictors and contrasting their accuracy against two widely adopted empirical temperature-based formulas, specifically the FAO Blaney and Criddle (BC) and Hargreaves and Samani (HS). A complementary, freely available, and intuitive software utility, DeepET, was also developed based on the highest-performing deep learning predictors produced in this work. Four classes of artificial neural network (ANN) predictors were assembled, one group operating on raw weather observations and a second group utilizing wavelet-transformed reconstructed signals as input features. Additionally, long short-term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural network (NN) and one-dimensional convolutional neural network (CNN) predictors were built. The dataset underpinning this work was sourced from 101 operational California Irrigation Management Information System (CIMIS) weather stations, yielding more than 725,000 data points spanning 1985-2019. All predictors were benchmarked against the officially reported CIMIS ETo. When tested on previously unseen station records, the temperature-fed DL (Deep Learning) predictors yielded mean absolute errors that were 15%–20% lower than those from the locally calibrated HS equation. Feeding reconstructed wavelet-transform signals into the ANN predictors did not yield any measurable gain. Our findings suggest that DL-based predictors constitute a compelling approach to improving ETo accuracy in urban settings when only temperature readings are available. The DeepET utility is reachable from the Haghverdi Water Management Group portal: http://www. ucrwater.com/software-and-tools.html.

In agricultural production and yield, product quality certification is a critical procedure. Older methodologies for grading seed quality suffer from drawbacks such as overly complex workflows, limited accuracy, and slow inspection rates at high output volumes. Automated sorting methods based on computer vision and machine learning offer swift, high-capacity alternatives. Even with the substantial breakthroughs in modern automatic classification models, there remains a need to advance these systems by integrating other approaches. This study details the creation of a computer vision platform for autonomously sorting diverse seed types. It relies on machine learning frameworks and data mining procedures, using a collection of geometric descriptors of bean seeds derived from binary imagery. A comparison was drawn among three machine learning strategies: Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN). The workflow also included Principal Component Analysis (PCA), hyperparameter optimization within machine learning algorithms, and dataset rectification using the Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE). Findings revealed that data mining operations—namely Principal Component Analysis, hyperparameter optimization, and the SMOTE approach—improve the quality of classification outputs. The KNN classifier delivered the strongest showing, attaining close to 95% accuracy alongside 96% precision and recall. The top-tier outcomes were achieved by performing hyperparameter optimization and applying the SMOTE method during data preparation, resulting in a gain of roughly 2.6%. The results validated that integrating data mining into the preprocessing stage and machine learning classification approaches can effectively and swiftly improve sorting accuracy and facilitate automated selection of bean seeds from digital images. This assists small-scale growers and agricultural overseers in making decisions about seed selection to increase yields.

In light of ongoing trends in metropolitan farming and global climate shifts, there is a growing need for alternative plant cultivation strategies that can operate independently of soil. Aquaponic and hydroponic growing methods have proven workable replacements, yet the scarcity of streamlined, ideal procedures for watering and nutrient delivery curtails their deployment at a mass commercial scale. The primary objective of this investigation was to develop statistical techniques and Machine Learning models to adjust nutrient levels in aquaponic irrigation systems in response to crop demand, thereby securing peak plant performance and facilitating wider commercial uptake of aquaponic farming. A core difficulty in crafting these models is the thinness of available data, which calls for the application of Bolstered error estimation methodologies. This paper assesses a range of linear and non-linear algorithms conditioned on comparatively small data sets using bolstered error estimation techniques to identify the superior approach for guiding nutrient control decisions in hydroponic contexts. Upon conducting multiple tests on the data, it was concluded that the Semi-Bolstered Resubstitution Error estimation strategy yields the best results in our scenario, using a Linear Support Vector Machine as the categorizer with a penalty factor of 1. A series of suggested directives was developed as a Decision Support System, derived from the Machine Learning model’s outputs, and verified against the baseline framework’s findings. Moreover, the constructive influence of the recommended nutrient mixtures on plant growth in aquaponic conditions is examined in detail.

Leaching losses of nitrogen (N) from grazed pasture are driven predominantly by urinary N deposited by cattle. This work aimed to use non-invasive accelerometer-based sensors to capture the timing and duration of urination and defecation events in grazing cattle. To register the back arching motion that accompanies urination and defecation, each cow was fitted with two accelerometer sensors. Experiments took place outdoors under grazing conditions during two seasons—autumn and summer—and captured a total of 160 urination events. Across the majority of these events, the tilt angle was observed to shift within a range of 8 to 22.5 degrees. Using 18 selected features that characterise a cow's back arching, ensemble machine learning classifiers were constructed to recognise urination and defecation. The urination classifier delivered an F1 score of 0.80 (harmonic mean computed from a precision of 0.82 and a sensitivity of 0.78). In contrast, the defecation classifier gave an F1 score of 0.73 (calculated from 408 hours of recordings made between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. from 19 cows). Predictive models for urination event duration were statistically significant. Still, they underperformed, with low explanatory power, in part because the relationship between the duration of back arching and the duration of urine passage was only moderate (R² values of 0.29 in autumn and 0.47 in summer). The work highlights that non-invasive accelerometer sensing has real promise for capturing individual cows' urination patterns and for generating animal-level information that farm decision support systems (such as those addressing urine-N excretion) and managerial actions (such as selective culling or breeding) could use as input.

Data science has become a central analytical foundation of precision agriculture, enabling researchers and practitioners to transform heterogeneous farm, crop, soil, climate, machinery, sensor, and remote-sensing data into decision-relevant knowledge. This original bibliometric and thematic review examines how precision agriculture data science has evolved as a research field, how its knowledge structures are organized, and which methodological and application frontiers are shaping its future direction. The review follows a transparent bibliometric logic by distinguishing database searching, eligibility screening, metadata cleaning, keyword normalization, bibliometric indicators, thematic mapping, and interpretive synthesis. Because verified database-export counts were not available in the present working environment, the manuscript does not report invented publication totals, citation rankings, cluster sizes, or network metrics. Instead, it develops a cautious bibliometric-thematic framework grounded in the approved reference set and in clearly stated methodological safeguards. The review focuses on research evolution from early sensor analytics and remote observation toward machine learning, deep learning, big data, IoT-enabled systems, data fusion, decision support, and sustainable smart farming. It also examines knowledge structures around journals, keywords, co-occurrence logic, thematic clusters, and emerging research fronts. The main contribution is an integrated synthesis of precision agriculture data science as a field shaped by technical innovation, methodological fragmentation, data-quality constraints, interoperability challenges, explainability needs, reproducibility demands, and farmer-centered implementation concerns. The review provides a future agenda for more robust, transparent, usable, and responsible data science in precision agriculture.