Optimizing Tomato Production through IoT-based Smart Data Collection and Analysis

摘要

The always-growing diffusion and adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies is revolutionizing heterogeneous scenarios (e.g., home, industry, safety, etc.), including the agricultural/farming: this paves the way to the Smart Agriculture (SA) paradigm. In detail, this approach leverages the exploitation of IoT smart objects (e.g., sensors, actuators, ground robots, and flying drones) to optimize and improve agricultural practices, eventually improving both sustainability and efficiency. This paper presents an IoT-based data collection and analysis architecture expedient to acquire and manage IoT data streams generated from the field. The proposed approach has been applied to a real experimental use case to optimize tomato production in the "Azienda Sperimentale Stuard" farm located in Parma, Italy. The obtained results highlight the feasibility, sustainability, and gain margins (i.e., in terms of cost/benefits) returned by such a deployment in a real scenario, enabling farmers to make informed decisions based on on-field data acquisition (e.g., reducing water consumption during the growing season).