Developing machine learning models from multisourced real-world datasets to enhance smart-farming practices

Smart farming technologies empower farmers to achieve sustainability by enabling data-driven decision-making. For instance, smart farming can contribute to farm sustainability through optimized pest control. By utilizing pest risk prediction models, farmers can conserve resources and minimize environmental impact by avoiding unnecessary treatments. However, effective crop pest control relies on timely treatments at specific phenological stages. Therefore, the ability to accurately predict phenological development becomes a crucial factor in increasing farm sustainability. This paper describes the design, development and evaluation of a set of Machine Learning models that predict the phenology of grapevines. The models were trained on multisourced data that combine 9 different datasets with different temporal and spatial resolutions. The authors evaluated and compared different machine learning algorithms to predict 9 different phenological stages of grapevines. The models that performed best also included data derived from Sentinel-2 images, which suggests that multispectral satellite images could be used to monitor and predict woody plant phenology. A key contribution of our proposal is the combination of multiple data sources and a fine-grained prediction aimed at distinguishing among 9 phenological states.