UAV Remote Sensing for Fertilization Rating in Olive Groves

Smart Agriculture involves a management strategy that improves resource efficiency, production, quality, profitability, and sustainability of the crops. In recent years, olive tree management is increasingly focused on determining the correct health status of the plants in order to distribute the main resource using different technologies. In olive groves, the focus is often on the use of multispectral and thermal information from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These emerging technologies can provide significant potential in Smart Agriculture applications, enabling the acquisition of high spatial and temporal resolution images environmental data. However, these technologies are expected to revolutionize agriculture, promising significant reduction in cost, and optimization of farm inputs. Despite several advantages, the use of UAVs in the context of Smart Agriculture must overcome some challenges in data acquisition and image processing methods. The main issue is the lack of a standardized workflow for the use of UAVs. In this chapter, the primary pros and cons of using these platforms in olive groves are discussed, highlighting the key operational choices to program a flight, manage the photogrammetric process, and process the data to extract useful information for site-specific management. In the second part, a complete case study is presented, where the use of a UAV in an intensive olive grove is aimed at generating a fertilization prescription map using standard and easily applicable methods from multispectral images.