This book covers an array of issues on emerging agricultural engineering and technology, featuring new research and studies. The volume is broken into three parts: emerging technologies, energy management in agriculture, and management of natural resources, in which particular attention is paid to water management, a necessary consideration for successful crop production, especially in water-scarce regions. Topics include: alleviating drainage congestion solar energy for agriculture anaerobic digestion by inoculation with compost self-propelled inter-cultivators agrobiodiversity watershed development and management This volume offers academia, engineers, technologists, students, and others from different disciplines information to gain knowledge on the breadth and depth of this multifaceted field of agricultural engineering. There is an urgent need to explore and investigate the current shortcomings and challenges of the current innovations and challenges.

This volume comprises the papers from 2011 International Conference on Information Technology and Agricultural Engineering (ICITAE 2011). 2011 International Conference on Information Technology and Agricultural Engineering (ICITAE 2011) has been held in Sanya, China, December 1-2, 2011. All the papers have been peer reviewed by the selected experts. These papers represent the latest development in the field of materials manufacturing technology, spanning from the fundamentals to new technologies and applications. Specially, these papers cover the topics of Information Technology and Agricultural Engineering. This book provides a greatly valuable reference for researchers in the field of Information Technology and Agricultural Engineering who wish to further understand the underlying mechanisms and create innovative and practical techniques, systems and processes. It should also be particularly useful for engineers in information technology and agriculture who are responsible for the efficient and effective operations.

This book provides a review of precision agriculture technology development, followed by a presentation of the state-of-the-art and future requirements of precision agriculture technology. It presents different styles of precision agriculture technologies suitable for large scale mechanized farming; highly automated community-based mechanized production; and fully mechanized farming practices commonly seen in emerging economic regions. The book emphasizes the introduction of core technical features of sensing, data processing and interpretation technologies, crop modeling and production control theory, intelligent machinery and field robots for precision agriculture production.

Food security is one of the primary themes of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. In this regard, agricultural engineering is considered the backbone of agriculture, and agricultural mechanization is considered a helpful way to enhance crop yield and farmers’ profitability. Technology in Agriculture presents research in the field of agricultural engineering technologies and applications in agricultural equipment engineering, biosystem engineering, energy systems engineering, and computers in agriculture. It provides an overview of recent advancements in agricultural engineering and examines key aspects of emerging technologies and their applications. In addition, the book explores modern methodologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning for agricultural mechanization.

As technology continues to saturate modern society, agriculture has started to adopt digital computing and data-driven innovations. This emergence of “smart” farming has led to various advancements in the field, including autonomous equipment and the collection of climate, livestock, and plant data. As connectivity and data management continue to revolutionize the farming industry, empirical research is a necessity for understanding these technological developments. Artificial Intelligence and IoT-Based Technologies for Sustainable Farming and Smart Agriculture provides emerging research exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of critical technological solutions within the farming industry. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as crop monitoring, precision livestock farming, and agronomic data processing, this book is ideally designed for farmers, agriculturalists, product managers, farm holders, manufacturers, equipment suppliers, industrialists, governmental professionals, researchers, academicians, and students seeking current research on technological applications within agriculture and farming.

This book was created with the intention of informing an international audience about the latest technological aspects for developing smart agricultural applications. As artificial intelligence (AI) takes the main role in this, the majority of the chapters are associated with the role of AI and data analytics components for better agricultural applications. The first two chapters provide alternative, wide reviews of the use of AI, robotics, and the Internet of Things as effective solutions to agricultural problems. The third chapter looks at the use of blockchain technology in smart agricultural scenarios. In the fourth chapter, a future view is provided of an Internet of Things-oriented sustainable agriculture. Next, the fifth chapter provides a governmental evaluation of advanced farming technologies, and the sixth chapter discusses the role of big data in smart agricultural applications. The role of the blockchain is evaluated in terms of an industrial view under the seventh chapter, and the eighth chapter provides a discussion of data mining and data extraction, which is essential for better further analysis by smart tools. The ninth chapter evaluates the use of machine learning in food processing and preservation, which is a critical issue for dealing with issues concerns regarding insufficient foud sources. The tenth chapter also discusses sustainability, and the eleventh chapter focuses on the problem of plant disease prediction, which is among the critical agricultural issues. Similarly, the twelfth chapter considers the use of deep learning for classifying plant diseases. Finally, the book ends with a look at cyber threats to farming automation in the thirteenth chapter and a case study of India for a better, smart, and sustainable agriculture in the fourteenth chapter. This book presents the most critical research topics of today’s smart agricultural applications and provides a valuable view for both technological knowledge and ability that will be helpful to academicians, scientists, students who are the future of science, and industrial practitioners who collaborate with academia.

Engineering Interventions in Agricultural Processing presents recent advanced research on biological engineering, bioprocessing technologies, and their applications in agricultural food processing, and their applications in agriculture science and agricultural engineering, focusing on biological science, biological engineering, and bioprocessing technology. With contributions from a broad range of leading researchers, this book presents several innovations in the areas of processing technologies in agriculture. The book is divided into three parts, covering agricultural processing: interventions in engineering technologies novel practices in agricultural processing agricultural processing: health benefits of medicinal plants With contributions from a broad range of leading researchers, this book presents several new innovations in the areas of processing technologies in agriculture that will be helpful to researchers, scientists, students, and industry professionals in agriculture.

For nearly a century, scientific advances have fueled progress in U.S. agriculture to enable American producers to deliver safe and abundant food domestically and provide a trade surplus in bulk and high-value agricultural commodities and foods. Today, the U.S. food and agricultural enterprise faces formidable challenges that will test its long-term sustainability, competitiveness, and resilience. On its current path, future productivity in the U.S. agricultural system is likely to come with trade-offs. The success of agriculture is tied to natural systems, and these systems are showing signs of stress, even more so with the change in climate. More than a third of the food produced is unconsumed, an unacceptable loss of food and nutrients at a time of heightened global food demand. Increased food animal production to meet greater demand will generate more greenhouse gas emissions and excess animal waste. The U.S. food supply is generally secure, but is not immune to the costly and deadly shocks of continuing outbreaks of food-borne illness or to the constant threat of pests and pathogens to crops, livestock, and poultry. U.S. farmers and producers are at the front lines and will need more tools to manage the pressures they face. Science Breakthroughs to Advance Food and Agricultural Research by 2030 identifies innovative, emerging scientific advances for making the U.S. food and agricultural system more efficient, resilient, and sustainable. This report explores the availability of relatively new scientific developments across all disciplines that could accelerate progress toward these goals. It identifies the most promising scientific breakthroughs that could have the greatest positive impact on food and agriculture, and that are possible to achieve in the next decade (by 2030).

Precision agriculture integrates new technologies with the agronomic experience to intelligently manage the high spatial variability of all agricultural variables and the time scales at which these variables change. The right application of this approach increases the size and quality of the agricultural production; saves resources; improves environmental quality; helps to achieve self-sufficiency, food security, and agricultural sustainability; increases exports; and more. Precision Agriculture Technologies for Food Security and Sustainability is an essential reference source that compiles a comprehensive, multidisciplinary review of current research in the field of precision agriculture. It also discusses cutting-edge tools and models that can help facilitate and improve the systems implementation. Featuring coverage of a wide range of topics including agronomy, public policy, and internet of things, this book is ideally designed for agriculturalists, government officials, economists, environmentalists, academicians, researchers, students, and engineers in the fields of electronics, ICT, and agriculture.