Digital Twin in Smart Farming: A Categorical Literature Review and Exploring Possibilities in Hydroponics

Digital Twins (DT) have massive scope for success in the field of sustainable agriculture. But the number of works done in this field is relatively less compared to other domains like Manufacturing, Healthcare, Autonomous Vehicles, and Aviation. Due to frequent natural calamities like floods and epidemics, the need for sustainable and self-sufficient agriculture from the primary level is essential. Soil-less agriculture is gaining more popularity over soil-born methods due to issues of soil-based agriculture like soil erosion, intensive labor, water reusability, and overall productivity. This work deals with one of the popular soil-less methods, Hydroponics. The various ways in which DTs can contribute to the various phases of hydroponics like designing, operation, monitoring, optimization, and maintenance are discussed. This paper also presents a review of research works done in the application of DT in smart farming.