Prospects of UAVs in Agricultural Mapping

The food security of most rural sectors depends on traditional agricultural practices. Geomatics tools contribute to traditional agricultural practices through Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in smart agriculture, agricultural mapping and improving sustainable agricultural production. The study’s objective is to explore the application of UAVs in agricultural mapping through a literature review of the use of this tool in agriculture. The methodology of this review performs a literary search on the application of UAVs to explore the structure, dynamics and domain of this area of knowledge. Subsequently, the analysis includes scientific contributions, the most relevant authors, evolution of themes and trends in sustainable agriculture. The results show that the countries with the greatest scientific contribution in this area of knowledge are the United States (USA) and China. The predominant themes are monitoring plant phenology/crop detection, status/evaluation of agricultural soils, irrigation applications/water resources and agricultural yield. UAV use, and their fusion with other technologies is a technological trend contributing to agricultural mapping through thematic maps and object-based image analysis in digitising sustainable farming activities and practices.