Recent Trends of Big Data in Precision Agriculture: a Review

Abstract

Abstract Recent developments in the field of technology have led to a renewed interest in the field of smart agriculture. The current smart agricultural system produces and depends on large amounts of data, yet, it is hard to process the vast amounts of data using traditional data analysis systems. Big Data technologies have attracted much attention among researchers due to their potential to handle large amounts of data. Thus, for numerous possibilities and powerful data processing capabilities, Big Data continues to become a hot topic of research in the agricultural field. This is indicated by the existing several pilot projects as well as various investigations that have been performed in the Big Data area. Therefore, this study attempts to review the recent trends of Big Data technology in the field of precision agriculture. The research focuses on the latest applications of Big Data technology in multi-disciplinary agri-area domains. A total of 25 recently published studies about Big Data in agri-areas were selected for the review process after proper screening. The selected papers were categorized according to their fields of study, purposes, methods applied, as well as their contributions in the agri-field. The findings indicated that Big Data application areas are expanding, and the impacts are significant in precision agriculture.