ABSTRACT
Precision agriculture is a new farming practice that has been developing since the late 1980s. Research activities in precision agriculture started with the development of yield monitors, grid soil sampling, soil sensors, positioning systems, and variablerate technology at universities in the United States and Europe in the late 1980s. By the early 1990s, grain yield monitors and variable rate controllers became commercially available. With advances in global positioning systems (GPS), geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and sensor technology, the agricultural community has witnessed a rapid growth of a new body of precision agriculture technologies since the mid-1990s. The rst biannual international conference on precision agriculture was held in 1992. The rst biannual European and Asian conferences on precision agriculture were held in 1997 and 2005, respectively. The rst international journal entitled Precision Agriculture was launched in 1999, and precision agriculture has been an important topic in many agriculture-related journals. Several books on this topic have been published, including The Precision-Farming Guide for Agriculturists by Ess and Morgan (2010) and Handbook of Precision Agriculture: Principles and Applications, which was edited by Srinivasan (2006). These conferences, proceedings, journals, and books provide effective forums for disseminating original and fundamental research and experiences in the fast growing area of precision agriculture.
