Present and future scopes and challenges of plant pest and disease (P&D) monitoring: Remote sensing, image processing, and artificial intelligence perspectives

Since the dawn of agriculture, farmers have been at the stake of dealing with pests and diseases. Chemical pesticides are a reliable source of controlling pests and pathogens, but indiscriminate use of pesticides can cause severe consequences for human health and the ecosystem. Therefore, sustainable crop production is to be followed where pests and pathogens infestation should be detected at the very initial stage of infection so that judicious management practices could be undertaken. Initial detection of pests and pathogens in standing crops is a big challenge. Many approaches, such as traditional visual and molecular detection, are used to detect pathogens invasively at a very small scale in the field and require laboratory facilities. However, the recent advancement of remote sensing and image analysis-based technologies have been used to detect the occurrence of pests and pathogens precisely in vast areas, in real-time, and in a non-invasive way. This paper discussed the latest achievements in monitoring pests and diseases using remote sensing technologies coupled with image processing and spectroscopy-based methods. We also discussed the opportunities and challenges of P&D monitoring using these technologies. Despite many challenges, these cutting-edge technologies could be used to ensure sustainable and safe crop production by avoiding the excessive yet expensive and harmful use of pesticides in crop protection and ensuring precision agriculture.