Cyber Physical direction of irrigated agriculture development

Until recently, new technologies introduced into irrigated agriculture were mainly aimed at developing one or several related control actions. However, the needs of society to increase the volume and improve the quality of agricultural products have led to significant qualitative changes in irrigated agriculture. The various robotic systems used for this have proven their effectiveness in the mechanization and automation of the irrigation process, as well as in the application of chemical fertilizers and chemical protection of agricultural crops from diseases and pests. This resulted in higher yields while lowering production costs.Nowadays, biotechnologies currently being developed and being introduced into irrigated agriculture, as well as systems for controlling and monitoring environmental impacts, are aimed at solving problems related to further increasing the efficiency of the use of natural resources, while minimizing the risks of negative impact on components and services of the environment.This is largely due to the impact of the rapid development of IC and sensor technologies aimed at creating production management systems based on the cyber-physical systems (CPS) paradigm. For this, there are using a holistic vision of the structure and cybernetic methods of management, artificial intelligence technologies, as well as digital platforms for integrating information flows between sub-subsystems of management, control, monitoring and decision support.In this context, the main difference between developed agricultural CPSs from the existing industrial agricultural systems focused on current economic efficiency lies in the plane of making agricultural production sustainable in the long term based on a balance between economic efficiency and the quality of natural resources used and services of the environment. From this point of view, irrigated agriculture focuses on the efficient use of natural resources, which are water, soil and air, as well as renewable and non-renewable (fossil) energy. At the same time, weather are considered as the impact of the external environment providing an irreplaceable source of water, heat and energy resources but with stochastic characteristics that are difficult to formalize. In connection with this diversity, a CPSs are built taking into account a complex compromise that takes into account many aspects of the negative impact of intensive agricultural production technologies on the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of these resources, not only in the place of their use, but also on the external environment beyond these limits. In this regard, water resources are one of the most important factors necessary, on the one hand, to impart long-term sustainability to irrigated agriculture, and on the one hand, as a factor that can lead in the near future to a significant decrease in fertility, as well as to a negative impact on the environmental services of the surrounding area. This contribution discusses some points of the development of an agricultural irrigation CPS’ subsystem aimed to monitor the soil moisture content at the root zone of the soil cover at the scale of irrigated agricultural crops and their relationship with industrial sprinkling technologies.Acknowledgments: The reported study was funded by RFBR, project number 19-29-05261 mk