How can agricultural water production be promoted？ a review on machine learning for irrigation

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicated that irrigation technology is the key to improving food security. However, the current restricted agricultural water and land resources limit the agricultural production system, and the pressure on global food security is enormous. The development of precise and intelligent irrigation technology is crucial for maintaining the necessary agricultural growth rates without further damage to the environment. The rapid development of machine learning (ML) algorithms provides opportunities for improvements in irrigation efficiency, and ML is thus expected to become an important solution for the modernization of irrigation systems. This review collates all the research on ML in irrigation and presents the types of ML algorithms used in irrigation, the sources of data, and the evolution of ML. The findings on ML are described in detail in terms of water scarcity diagnosis, water demand prediction, and irrigation decision-making while elaborating on how the literature has evolved and the advantages and disadvantages of ML in the field of irrigation. Aiming for efficient and sustainable development of water resources, we propose an intelligent irrigation model framework based on ML, which provides the basis for the research on intelligent irrigation technology.