The Use of Drones in Agriculture: Applications, Benefits, Challenges, and Prospects for Precision Farming
Keywords:
Agricultural drones, Crop monitoring, Precision agriculture, Remote sensing, Smart farming, Unmanned aerial vehicles, Multispectral imaging, Pesticide sprayingAbstract
The rapid development of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology has created new opportunities for improving agricultural production, crop monitoring, and resource management. Agricultural drones equipped with RGB, multispectral, hyperspectral, and thermal sensors can collect high-resolution information about crops and field conditions and provide data for precision-management decisions. This study reviews the existing literature on the use of drones in agriculture, focusing on crop monitoring, disease and pest detection, weed management, irrigation management, crop phenotyping, yield estimation, and pesticide and fertilizer application. A structured narrative literature-review approach was employed to synthesize findings from peer-reviewed studies addressing agricultural UAV applications and their associated benefits and limitations. The reviewed literature indicates that drones provide important advantages through their high spatial resolution, flexibility of deployment, and ability to collect information at critical stages of crop development. UAV-based remote sensing can assist in identifying crop stress, disease, weeds, water deficiency, and variations in crop growth, while spraying drones can facilitate the application of agricultural inputs in locations where conventional machinery may be difficult to operate. However, the literature also identifies significant technical, economic, environmental, and regulatory challenges. These include limited battery capacity, weather dependence, high equipment and processing costs, requirements for technical expertise, lack of standardized data-processing procedures, and concerns regarding pesticide spray drift. The findings suggest that drones are most effective when integrated with other precision-agriculture technologies and conventional agronomic knowledge rather than being treated as independent replacements for farmers or agricultural machinery. The study concludes that future developments in artificial intelligence, autonomous flight, sensor technology, data integration, and service-based models could increase the accessibility and effectiveness of agricultural drones.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Olumide Awolowo (Author)
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