Abstract
Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) is an important cash crop and primary materials for clothing, fine paper, animal feed, and oil industries. Cotton production is affected by a combination effect of crop varieties, environment, and management. Precision agriculture technology has shown great potential to improve cotton production with sufficient high-resolution spatiotemporal data of soil, environment, and cotton development from seedling to harvest. The advances in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), computer vision, and remote and proximal sensing technologies make it possible to scan large-scale field efficiently and quantify crop development. The big data analytics enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) have significantly increased the capacity in processing and analyzing complex data to quantify the interactions of environment and management on crop growth and yield. This chapter aims to summarize UAV applications in cotton production, focusing on field scouting and decision making, such as stand count, growth monitoring, and yield prediction, under different soil, weather conditions, and irrigation management. Meanwhile, the potentials and challenges of using UAV technologies in cotton production are also discussed.
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Feng, A., Vong, C.N., Zhou, J. (2022). Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Applications in Cotton Production. In: Zhang, Z., Liu, H., Yang, C., Ampatzidis, Y., Zhou, J., Jiang, Y. (eds) Unmanned Aerial Systems in Precision Agriculture. Smart Agriculture, vol 2. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2027-1_3
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