Advancing sustainable agriculture with beneficial microbes: Enhancing crop growth and yield for food security and human health

Embracing smart irrigation management techniques empowers growers to irrigate with greater efficiency, thereby promoting sustainable agricultural production. In this context, growers often rely on crop evapotranspiration (ETc) as a key factor in making informed irrigation decisions, underscoring the significance of accurately determining and spatially mapping crop water status. Technological progress, exemplified by the emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has brought about a revolutionary shift in agricultural monitoring. UAV platforms can capture high-resolution images with centimeter-level spatial accuracy and offer higher temporal coverage compared to satellite imagery. Considering these advancements, this study introduces a robust method for classifying water stress in cotton using a compact UAV platform and convolutional neural networks (CNN). The experiment was conducted at the USDA-ARS Cropping Systems Research Laboratory (CSRL) in Lubbock, Texas, where the cotton field was divided into 12 drip zones. The study included three replications to evaluate four irrigation treatments: “rainfed”, “full irrigation”, “percent deficit of full irrigation”, and “time delay of full irrigation”. The results demonstrated that the CNN model successfully classified the cotton water stress using the UAV-based RGB image, achieving an overall best prediction accuracy of approximately 91%. By segmenting the original cotton images into separate canopy and soil areas using morphological image processing methods, the authors also isolated and analyzed the individual contributions of these components to cotton water stress. Additionally, a random forest classifier revealed the relative importance of different image features in the classification process through feature importance analysis. These findings highlighted the state-of-the-art performance of the proposed system in cotton water stress classification and provided valuable insights into the key image features contributing to accurate classification. The authors concluded that integrating UAV-based RGB imagery and CNN models had great potential for assessing water stress in cotton.

A new approach to measure spatial variability of soil parameters and field technique to test-value specific fertilizer

Information on the distribution of soil properties is important to know the status of nutrients in the soils based on which fertilizer nutrients are recommended. Given the variability of nutrients in the soils, making a site-specific fertilizer recommendation seems to be a compelling work. To determine the spatial variability of soil nutrients and to make judicious and precise fertilizer recommendations, new measures are designed with this study. These measures are tested against the soil samples (n = 43) for total nitrogen (N), organic matter (OM), phosphorus (P2O5), and potassium (K2O) in the study area. The descriptive statistical analysis indicated an average of low nitrogen and organic matter, while phosphorus was found to be very high and the level of potassium was high. The spread of nutrients across the data sets, however, included low, medium, high, and very high levels of ratings. The Deviation Square Index was developed and applied for the variability measurement and found that the largest variation was with phosphorus distribution, followed by potassium, nitrogen, and organic matter. The coefficient of variation (CV%) analysis also exhibited similar trends in nutrient distributions. Nitrogen was the main determinant explaining the variations in rice yield, while phosphorus and potash were negatively related to the yield. An index of fertilizer nutrient recommendation called Test-Value Specific Dose (TVSD) was developed and used to calculate the nutrient recommendation for each sampled location. This new method gave easy and more accurate doses of fertilizer over the blanket recommendation to fit the variations across the soil samples.

Advancing sustainable agriculture with beneficial microbes: Enhancing crop growth and yield for food security and human health

Amanullah Amanullah, Urooj Khan

Article ID: 2426
Vol 4, Issue 2, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.54517/ama.v4i2.2426
VIEWS - 4330 (Abstract)

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Abstract

The application of biofertilizers (beneficial microbes) represents a transformative paradigm in modern agriculture. This paper delves into the multifaceted benefits of biofertilizers in the context of crop production. It examines how biofertilizers work their magic in enhancing crop growth, yield, and quality, underpinning their pivotal role in sustainable agriculture. Beyond these primary advantages, the paper explores the ripple effects of biofertilizer utilization, where it emerges as a linchpin in the global quest for food security. Biofertilizers not only reduce the environmental footprint of agriculture but also contribute to improving human health. This paper synthesizes current knowledge, revealing that biofertilizers have emerged as a potent tool in addressing the challenges of modern agriculture, from crop enhancement to environmental conservation and public health. It serves as a call to action for their wider adoption, heralding the era of biofertilizers as a cornerstone of sustainable agricultural practices.

Keywords

biofertilizers; sustainable agriculture; food security; environmental sustainability; crop quality; nutrient management; economic and health benefits

References

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2025-02-01

Highlight article: Innovations in Modern Agriculture: UAVs and CNNs Transform Cotton Water Stress Monitoring

In the realm of modern agriculture, the integration of cutting-edge technologies is revolutionizing the way we approach sustainable farming practices. A recent study published in Advances in Modern Agriculture titled "Classification of cotton water stress using convolutional neural networks and UAV-based RGB imagery" has garnered significant attention for its innovative approach to precision irrigation management. Conducted by researchers from Institute of Data Science and the AgriLife Research and Extension Center of Texas A&M University (authors's information is below). This study introduces a novel method for classifying cotton water stress using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and convolutional neural networks (CNNs), offering a powerful solution for optimizing water use in agriculture.

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