Internet of Things and smart sensors in agriculture: Scopes and challenges

Agriculture is an essential sector needed for survival of the human community. Several measures have been taken to enhance the crop production. However harsh environmental conditions and frequent pest infestation lead to the agricultural loss. In such scenario, integration of advanced technologies such as advanced sensors coupled with Internet of Things (IoT) could escalate the agricultural production and minimize the economic loss. Studies have been conducted across the world that satisfactorily demonstrated the implication of integrated IoT-smart sensors in monitoring environmental factors such as moisture, humidity, temperature, and soil composition that are critical for crop growth. Green house gases such as Carbon dioxide, Methane, etc., are also measured through automated sensors. Smart farming also enables measurement of nitrogen contents in soil that helps farmers to determine the amount of fertilizers to be used in farm lands. Some IoT-enabled equipments and unmanned aerial vehicles are useful in accurate surveillance of pest attack and associated diseases in farm vegetation. Though the smart farming has great scopes in future, it faces certain limitations related to high implementation cost, data security, and lack of sufficient digital knowledge in farmers. Special economic policies, data encryption, and digital literacy could ease IoT-enabled smart farming in future.