Leveraging precision agricultural tools for enhanced crop protection in rice cultivation

Rice production is crucial for meeting the food demand of the ever-growing global population. However, it is impeded by biotic stressors viz., insect pests, diseases and weeds. Traditionally, farmers and plant protection experts rely on conventional crop protection measures to combat these challenges. These measures have various drawbacks including intensive labour requirement, higher cultivation costs, untimely pest detection and indiscriminate agrochemical use which adversely affects the consumers and the environment. Precision tools and technologies can address all these issues to benefit the farmers and agricultural ecosystem on a sustainable basis. Remote sensing technologies aid in weed mapping and detecting disease and pest incidence in rice fields by evaluating the changes in crop reflectance brought about by biotic stressors. Agricultural robotic systems are multifunctional and have attained more than 80 % correct image classification, 96 % weed control and less than 10 % crop damage. Unmanned aerial vehicles for pesticide spraying are cost-effective substitutes for manual spray and can reduce spray volume by more than 20 times besides good application efficiency and effective control. Artificial intelligence offers precise solutions for biotic stress identification and control. Biosensors have also been developed for aiding in detecting rice blast, false smut, tungro incidence and bacterial leaf blight. Apart from highlighting the utilization of precision agriculture tools and technologies for plant protection and weed control in rice, this article also reviews the challenges and prospects related to its application and its feasibility for the stakeholders utilising them to gain sustainable rice production.