Progress and Challenges in Earth Observation Data Applications for Agriculture at Field Scale in India and Small Farm Holdings Regions

The paper traces the evolution of agricultural remote sensing in India through its four phases: initial exploratory and aerial data based (1969–1982), IRS Utilization Program led (1983–1995), post-IRS-1C launch (1996–2011) and since the establishment of a dedicated institution for EO-based crop forecasting and other agricultural applications (2012 onward). Published field-scale studies are discussed before introducing the submissions to the special issue of the journal, namely Advanced Geospatial Technologies for Agriculture with Special emphasis on field level Applications. A total of 17 articles grouped under crop discrimination and mapping, crop yield estimation, crop suitability analysis, irrigation management and others (UAV, fodder and field boundary extraction) and 15 of these describe work over India and remaining two have Iran as their study area. These studies are linked to other published work as well as challenges under major issues of data access, use of UAV, use of smartphones, data processing and crop simulation models. Taken together, these articles report substantial improvements in capabilities of field-scale monitoring for developing new class of agricultural applications in India as well as other regions in the world with small farm holdings.