Search

Climate stress is reshaping the operational conditions under which agricultural decisions are made. Drought, heat, flooding, salinity, and increasingly variable weather patterns intensify uncertainty around irrigation, fertilisation, pest management, crop selection, and yield planning. Precision agriculture has therefore become a central domain in which artificial intelligence is expected to support adaptive, data-driven decision-making. This systematic review examines how artificial intelligence decision models are used in precision agriculture under climate stress. The review focuses on three connected dimensions: the model families used to support decisions, the data sources on which these models depend, and the sustainability outcomes that are reported. The objective is to clarify whether current evidence supports the claim that artificial intelligence can deliver more resilient and sustainable agricultural management. The review synthesises peer-reviewed journal articles published. The study selection followed a PRISMA-oriented logic, using predefined search strings, inclusion criteria, and screening stages to identify relevant work on machine learning, deep learning, remote sensing, sensor-based agriculture, irrigation optimisation, yield prediction, crop disease detection, and sustainability assessment. No new empirical field data were generated. The evidence base shows rapid expansion in machine learning and deep learning applications, especially for yield prediction, irrigation management, crop monitoring, plant disease detection, and smart farming decision support. Satellite imagery, UAV data, IoT sensors, weather variables, soil information, and farm-management records appear as the dominant data sources. However, the review also identifies uneven attention to climate stress conditions, limited integration of long-term climate projections, and inconsistent reporting of sustainability outcomes.The review concludes that artificial intelligence for precision agriculture under climate stress is technically promising but methodologically fragmented. Most studies emphasise model accuracy, yield improvement, or input optimisation, while fewer evaluate environmental trade-offs, social impacts, farmer livelihoods, or long-term resilience. A more rigorous, transparent, and sustainability-centred research agenda is needed to move the field beyond predictive performance toward climate-resilient agricultural decision systems.

Machine learning is increasingly applied across agri-food systems to support prediction, classification, optimisation, monitoring, and decision-making. These applications now extend from farm-level production to processing, logistics, consumption, and food-waste management. As data-intensive agriculture expands, machine learning is often presented as an enabling technology for sustainable agri-food transitions. Despite this promise, the sustainability evidence base remains fragmented. Many studies report improvements in model accuracy, prediction performance, or operational decision support, but they do not always specify how these technical gains translate into environmental, economic, or social outcomes. This creates uncertainty about whether machine learning contributes to sustainability transitions directly, indirectly, or only under particular implementation conditions. This systematic review examines how machine learning contributes to sustainable agri-food transitions through environmental, economic, and social impact pathways. It focuses on the relationship between machine learning methods, agri-food applications, and sustainability-relevant outcomes rather than treating model performance as an end in itself. The review asks where evidence is strongest, where it remains indirect, and how different pathways vary across production, processing, distribution, consumption, waste reduction, and governance. The review finds that environmental and economic pathways are more developed than social and equity pathways. Evidence is strongest where machine learning supports precision input management, yield forecasting, irrigation decision support, operational efficiency, supply-chain analytics, and food-waste reduction. However, stronger longitudinal evaluation, causal assessment, life-cycle integration, participatory design, and equity-sensitive governance are needed before machine learning can be judged as a reliable driver of sustainable agri-food transitions.