Cyber-agricultural systems for crop breeding and sustainable production

Soumik Sarkar; Baskar Ganapathysubramanian; Arti Singh; Fateme Fotouhi; Soumyashree Kar; Koushik Nagasubramanian; Girish Chowdhary; Sajal K Das; George Kantor; Adarsh Krishnamurthy; Nirav Merchant; Asheesh K Singh

doi:10.1016/j.tplants.2023.08.001

Cyber-agricultural systems for crop breeding and sustainable production

Trends Plant Sci. 2024 Feb;29(2):130-149. doi: 10.1016/j.tplants.2023.08.001. Epub 2023 Aug 28.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA; Department of Computer Science, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA. Electronic address: soumiks@iastate.edu.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA; Department of Computer Science, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.
³ Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.
⁴ University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS, USA.
⁵ Department of Electrical Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.
⁶ Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA.
⁷ Department of Computer Science, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, USA.
⁸ Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
⁹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.
¹⁰ Data Science Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
¹¹ Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA. Electronic address: singhak@iastate.edu.

PMID: 37648631
DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2023.08.001

Abstract

The cyber-agricultural system (CAS) represents an overarching framework of agriculture that leverages recent advances in ubiquitous sensing, artificial intelligence, smart actuators, and scalable cyberinfrastructure (CI) in both breeding and production agriculture. We discuss the recent progress and perspective of the three fundamental components of CAS - sensing, modeling, and actuation - and the emerging concept of agricultural digital twins (DTs). We also discuss how scalable CI is becoming a key enabler of smart agriculture. In this review we shed light on the significance of CAS in revolutionizing crop breeding and production by enhancing efficiency, productivity, sustainability, and resilience to changing climate. Finally, we identify underexplored and promising future directions for CAS research and development.

Keywords: cyber-agricultural systems; cyberinfrastructure; digital twins; precision agriculture; smart farming; ubiquitous sensing.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Agriculture*
Artificial Intelligence*
Plant Breeding