A Controlled Environment Agriculture with Hydroponics: Variants, Parameters, Methodologies and Challenges for Smart Farming

Soilless agriculture, hydroponics can be implemented efficiently with a Controlled Environment Agriculture System (CEA). The technological progress and improvements in smart farming have provided a platform for successful deployment of CEA. With more and more advances, the use of complex mathematical models by the hardware software interfacing, artificial intelligence and adaptive data analysis are providing the CEA with versatile design and control strategy to implement the broader level of automation. The review is an attempt to highlight the different hydroponic techniques their pros and cons in building an economic system. This study reviews various physical and environmental variables that influence the plant growth for the sustainable and efficient farming system. This research also highlights the methodologies that are used to automate, monitor and control the parameters for optimal plant growth. The research ultimately proposes the prediction models using machine learning techniques to understand the correlation analysis with plant growth dynamics. Finally, the research also focuses on the challenges that are to be identified while integrating smart farming in a CEA to minimize the energy inputs, enhancing productivity for higher quality crops.