Machine Learning Techniques for Precision Agriculture Using Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In India, approximately 70% of the total population is dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Hence, it is essential to pay attention to agriculture to increase crop quality and quantity, thus increasing the overall cultivation yield. The traditional methods used require a lot of farmer’s effort and hard work, which results in delayed crop cultivation. Moreover, it’s challenging to predict the environmental conditions and detect the particular area where there are weeds, insects, etc., which requires immediate treatments, thus affecting overall crop production. So, there is a need to make it automated, and this can be done by adopting advanced techniques of precision agriculture (PA) or intelligent agriculture. Precision agriculture is one of the fields in which wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are widely adopted, which consists of a large number of sensors placed in the field to monitor and measure the various environmental parameters, such as humidity, temperature, soil moisture, soil PH value, precipitation, water level, etc., for enhancing the productivity, profitability, quantity, and quality of crops. The machine learning techniques can be applied to precision agriculture to increase crop growth, manage the process of crop cultivation, and create a perfect environment for the crops to increase productivity with less human effort. This paper provides an insight into various machine learning techniques used for precision agriculture using wireless sensor networks.