Satellite Farming

This book focuses on the recent advances in precision agriculture and satellite farming, detailing applications for sensing, data handling, modeling, and control. In addition, the book reviews its history - establishing the background on the various processes and applications – describes the current status, and offers insight into the future technology of satellite farming in India. Introducing processes and applications based on a global scale, the book reveals how precision agriculture can be used in large-scale agriculture, community agriculture, and diversified farming. It includes site-specific information from a variety of information sources for planning, planting, growing, and harvesting agricultural crops. It also presents a new concept based on the control system theory that can be used to formulate systematic methods for more effective precision crop production.

Dr. Latief Ahmad is currently working as Scientist (Agrometeorology) at Department of Agronomy, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Shalimar Kashmir. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in Agriculture (Hons) from Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, CCS-SDS College, Aligarh and Master’s and Doctoral Degree in Agronomy from Faculty of Agriculture, Allahabad Agricultural Institute, Allahabad. The author has published more than 80 research articles in journals of National and International repute. He has authored 27 book chapters and 15 extension bulletins. He has attended more than 35 national and international conferences/Training programmes and is a life member of five scientific associations. He has received best research proposal award by SERB-DST. His areas of interest include Agrometeorology, Climatology, Crop simulation modeling, Precision Agriculture, Water management and Crop Science. Dr. Ahmad is also the Technical Officer of Agromet field Unit-Srinagar and is Co-PI of three externally funded projects.

Dr. S. Sheraz Mahdi is currently working as an Assistant Professor-cum-Jr. Scientist (Agronomy) at Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir (SKUAST-K), Shalimar, Srinagar, Kashmir (J&K), India with specialization in crop-climate modeling, climate change and cereal crops production. Before this, he has served the Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur, Bihar in the capacity of Assistant Professor, Agronomy for five years (2013-2017) and has been a member of natural resource management research advisory group of the University and state committee on climate change studies. He has worked on climatology of extreme weather events and their impact on rice-wheat cropping system in Bihar. Dr. Mahdi has also worked as a Research Associate at the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), Srinagar, Kashmir. He took his PhD (Agronomy) degree from Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir (SKUAST-K) and is the recipient of the Young Scientist Award from the Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi, Government of India. Dr. Mahdi has been also an independent researcher in the cold arid region of Kargil Ladkh (Jammu and Kashmir), India, and has guided 06 post-graduate and 05 under graduate students.  He has published more than 45 research papers, 12 books and some popular articles, covering some aspects of advanced agronomy in particular.