AI-powered Pheno-Farm Server: Making adaptive farming decisions

Agricultural productivity faces growing challenges due to climate variability, resource constraints, and the demand for sustainable practices. Precision agriculture, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) integrate high-throughput phenotyping, offers practical advancements for monitoring crop traits, growth patterns, and responses to environmental factors. The Pheno-Farm Server (PFS) leverages AI-driven approaches to integrate real-time data, analyse it, and enable adaptive decision making for efficient crop management in diverse farming environments such as glasshouses, rain-out shelters (ROS), experimental farms, and open fields. This empowers stakeholders to make informed, data-driven decisions. This study evaluates the potential of the PFS in advancing precision agriculture through adaptive AI models. It focuses on the system's ability to collect, process, and analyse data by developing a robust pipeline for integrating phenotyping datasets and optimizing nitrogen application. Additionally, it assesses the effectiveness of AI/ML-based adaptive decision-making in improving crop management and resource utilization. The PFS was implemented using a structured framework integrating hardware, software, and data processing components. Data from phenotyping platforms, including plant area (PA) measurements and digital biomass (DBM) estimates from four cereal cultivars under varying nitrogen levels (NL) and drought conditions (DC), were aggregated into the PFS. Three regression models such as Ridge Regression, Support Vector Regression (SVR), and Random Forest were trained and evaluated using a structured pre-processing pipeline. Hyperparameters were optimized through grid search with 5-fold cross-validation. Model performance was assessed using the coefficient of determination (R 2 ) and normalized root mean squared error (NRMSE). Tests were conducted to validate the system's reliability and applicability. The experimental implementation of the PFS demonstrated its capability to collect and analyse data from various sources effectively. The SVR model had the highest accuracy with an R 2 of 0.992 and an NRMSE significantly lower than other models followed by Random Forest and Ridge Regression. SVR was good at understanding complex relationships and worked well with unseen nitrogen levels. Random Forest showed limitations in generalization due to data dependency. The integration of AI-powered servers like PFS improve precision agriculture by making real-time data analysis possible, allowing smart decisions, and using resources more efficiently. The integration of AI-powered systems like PFS represents a significant advancement in sustainable farming. These systems help drive innovation and tackle important agricultural problems, leading to farming that is productive, profitable and environmentally friendly. The study shows how AI can change traditional farming and set new standards for data-driven farming practices. • PFS optimizes farm management with real-time data analysis and decision-making. • Pheno-Farm Server uses adaptive AI to enable sustainable cultivation practices. • AI models predict plant health, stress, and growth, providing precise insights into crop traits. • PFS drives innovation, resilience, and sustainability in precision agriculture.

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Publication Details

Journal
Agricultural Systems
Published
2025-11-20
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2025.104563
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Smart Agriculture and AI
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
1.75
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article

AI-powered Pheno-Farm Server: Making adaptive farming decisions

Hans‐Peter Kaul, Andreas Holzinger, Kenny Paul, Stefan Schweng et al.
1 citations
Agricultural Systems
Smart Agriculture and AI
1.75
article

AI-powered Pheno-Farm Server: Making adaptive farming decisions

Hans‐Peter Kaul, Andreas Holzinger, Kenny Paul, Stefan Schweng, Franz Gansberger
article en
1 citations

Abstract

Agricultural productivity faces growing challenges due to climate variability, resource constraints, and the demand for sustainable practices. Precision agriculture, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) integrate high-throughput phenotyping, offers practical advancements for monitoring crop traits, growth patterns, and responses to environmental factors. The Pheno-Farm Server (PFS) leverages AI-driven approaches to integrate real-time data, analyse it, and enable adaptive decision making for efficient crop management in diverse farming environments such as glasshouses, rain-out shelters (ROS), experimental farms, and open fields. This empowers stakeholders to make informed, data-driven decisions. This study evaluates the potential of the PFS in advancing precision agriculture through adaptive AI models. It focuses on the system's ability to collect, process, and analyse data by developing a robust pipeline for integrating phenotyping datasets and optimizing nitrogen application. Additionally, it assesses the effectiveness of AI/ML-based adaptive decision-making in improving crop management and resource utilization. The PFS was implemented using a structured framework integrating hardware, software, and data processing components. Data from phenotyping platforms, including plant area (PA) measurements and digital biomass (DBM) estimates from four cereal cultivars under varying nitrogen levels (NL) and drought conditions (DC), were aggregated into the PFS. Three regression models such as Ridge Regression, Support Vector Regression (SVR), and Random Forest were trained and evaluated using a structured pre-processing pipeline. Hyperparameters were optimized through grid search with 5-fold cross-validation. Model performance was assessed using the coefficient of determination (R 2 ) and normalized root mean squared error (NRMSE). Tests were conducted to validate the system's reliability and applicability. The experimental implementation of the PFS demonstrated its capability to collect and analyse data from various sources effectively. The SVR model had the highest accuracy with an R 2 of 0.992 and an NRMSE significantly lower than other models followed by Random Forest and Ridge Regression. SVR was good at understanding complex relationships and worked well with unseen nitrogen levels. Random Forest showed limitations in generalization due to data dependency. The integration of AI-powered servers like PFS improve precision agriculture by making real-time data analysis possible, allowing smart decisions, and using resources more efficiently. The integration of AI-powered systems like PFS represents a significant advancement in sustainable farming. These systems help drive innovation and tackle important agricultural problems, leading to farming that is productive, profitable and environmentally friendly. The study shows how AI can change traditional farming and set new standards for data-driven farming practices. • PFS optimizes farm management with real-time data analysis and decision-making. • Pheno-Farm Server uses adaptive AI to enable sustainable cultivation practices. • AI models predict plant health, stress, and growth, providing precise insights into crop traits. • PFS drives innovation, resilience, and sustainability in precision agriculture.

Agricultural SystemsVol. 231
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (AT), Institute for Biodiversity (DE), BOKU University (AT)
Openalex Percentile: Top 11%
Smart Agriculture and AI
1.75
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