Digital Agriculture in Iran: Use Cases, Opportunities, and Challenges

Abstract

Agriculture is constantly developing into a progressive sector by benefiting from a variety of high-tech solutions with the ultimate objectives of improving yield and quality, minimizing wastes and inputs, and maximizing the sustainability of the process. For the case of Iran, adaptation of digital agriculture is one of the key economic plans of the government until 2025. For this purpose, the development of infrastructure besides understanding social and cultural impacts on the transformation of traditional agriculture is necessary. This chapter reports the potential of the existing technological advances and the state of the current research efforts for the implementation of digital agriculture in open-field and closed-field crop production systems in Iran. The focus of the study was on the development of affordable IoT devices and their limitations for various farming applications including smart irrigations and crop monitoring, as well as an outlook for the use of robotics and drone technology by local farmers in Iran.