Water Management in Agriculture: A Survey on Current Challenges and Technological Solutions

Water plays a crucial role in the agricultural field for food production and raising livestock. Given the current trends in world population growth, the urgent food demand that must be answered by agriculture highly depends on our ability to efficiently exploit the available water resources. Among critical issues, there is water management. Recently, innovative technologies have improved water management and monitoring in agriculture. Internet of Things, Wireless Sensor Networks and Cloud Computing, have been used in diverse contexts in agriculture. By focusing on the water management challenge in general, existing approaches are aiming at optimizing water usage, and improving the quality and quantity of agricultural crops, while minimizing the need for direct human intervention. This is achieved by smoothing the water monitoring process, by applying the right automation level, and allowing farmers getting connected anywhere and anytime to their farms. There are plenty of challenges in agriculture involving water: water pollution monitoring, water reuse, monitoring water pipeline distribution network for irrigation, drinking water for livestock, etc. Several studies have been devoted to these questions in the recent decade. Therefore, this paper presents a survey on recent works dealing with water management and monitoring in agriculture, supported by advanced technologies. It also discusses some open challenges based on which relevant research directions can be drawn in the future, regarding the use of modern smart concepts and tools for water management and monitoring in the agriculture domain.