by Agricultural drones, also known as agricultural unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are UAVs utilized specifically for agricultural purposes. These are capable ofautonomously performing tasks related to agriculture including crop monitoring, pesticide/fertilizer spraying, surveying crops, irrigation and more.
Benefits
Crop monitoring and analytics:
Agricultural drones equipped with cameras, spectral sensors and thermal sensors can survey large fields in a fraction of time required by manual monitoring. They can capture high-resolution aerial images and transmit real-time data to analyze crop health, detect diseases and monitor crop growth. Any variances or issues can be identified early before they significantly impact yields. This monitoring enables targeted and preventive actions.
Precision spraying:
Drones allow precision application of inputs like water, pesticides and fertilizers only where required by the crops. This reduces waste and over-application of chemicals. Sensors and GPS enable drones to spray or spread inputs with high precision based on crop needs and field conditions. Unlike traditional spraying, drones ensure each part of the field receives the required amount of inputs. This lowers agricultural costs and decreases environmental pollution.
Yield estimation and analytics:
By capturing images over the crop lifecycle, drones can accurately estimate crop yields much before harvest. Advanced analytics of images captured at different growth stages helps in predictions of yield quantity and quality. This empowers farmers to plan logistics, finances and sale of final produce well in advance. Any potential issues impacting yields can be addressed proactively.
Soil analysis:
Multispectral and thermal sensors onboard agricultural drones can perform analysis of soil properties like moisture content, nutrient levels and deficiencies. Images captured are processed to generate soil maps indicating variations across fields. This helps farmers apply targeted soil treatments, fertilization, lime or gypsum application. It promotes optimum soil health management.
Reduced labor costs:
Tasks like crop monitoring, spraying and scouting huge farmlands traditionally required large crop scouting teams. They automate and accelerate these processes significantly reducing labor requirements. One operator can manage operations of multiple drones resulting in lower operational expenses for farmers. Advanced drones with autonomy can fly and work independently as well.
Time and cost savings:
Compared to traditional methods, drones complete agriculture jobs much faster with optimized route planning and autonomous operations. This translates to considerable time savings for critical tasks. Together with reduced wastage of inputs, accurate record keeping and yield estimation, agricultural drones lower overall production costs per hectare.
Challenges and recommendations
Regulatory framework:
Despite benefits, lack of clear regulations and policies is a major hurdle for large scale adoption of agricultural drones in India. Farmers are hesitant due to regulatory uncertainty. Relevant ministries must work with industry to create accommodative regulatory framework for drones usage in agriculture.
Connectivity and range issues:
Dependence on wireless networks and remote pilots inhibits autonomous operations beyond visual line of sight required for large fields. Limited flight times due to battery capacity is another challenge. Developing long range, high bandwidth connectivity solutions through initiatives like 5G can help address this.
High initial costs:
Specialized with required sensors and equipment are currently expensive for smallholder farmers. Innovations bringing down costs through local manufacturing and enabling pay-per-use models can boost adoption. Government schemes promoting its usage can further help.
Lack of skills and awareness:
Majority of Indian farmers are non-technical and unaware of benefits of this new Precision Agriculture technology. Capacity building programs, demo trials and sector-specific educational initiatives can play a big role in skills enhancement, awareness generation and allaying adoption concerns.
Data management and analytics:
Huge volumes of unorganized, unlabelled and raw drone data is of limited use. Development of integrated platforms, tools and services for actionable analytics, insights, advisory and monitoring would optimize value delivery from agricultural drones.
Road ahead
If addressed methodically, the challenges mentioned above can be overcome paving the way for widescale deployment of them across India in coming years. This includes pilots with farmers cooperatives to demonstrate impact. Public-private partnerships must be enhanced to develop customizable, ruggedized drones suited to Indian conditions at competitive prices.
Capacious batteries, 5G connectivity along with swarms of autonomous drones promise to revolutionize Precision Agriculture and boost farm yields and incomes. With proactive policy push, India can emerge as a global leader in this sunrise sector of agricultural technology. The future appears bright for Indian farmers with widespread adoption of agricultural drones for progressive, sustainable and efficient agriculture.
*Note:
1. Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research
2. We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it
