Computers and Electronics in Agriculture provides international coverage of advances in the development and application of computer hardware, software, electronic instrumentation, and control systems for solving problems in agriculture, including agronomy, horticulture (in both its food and amenity aspects), forestry, aquaculture, and animal/livestock farming. Its new companion journal, Smart Agricultural Technology provides continuity for smart application being applied in production agriculture.

The journal publishes original papers, reviews, and applications notes on topics pertaining to advances in the use of computers or electronics in plant or animal agricultural production, including agricultural soils, water, pests, controlled environments, structures, and wastes, as well as the plants and animals themselves. On-farm, post-harvest operations considered part of agriculture (such as drying, storage, logistics, production assessment, trimming and separation of plant and animal material) are also covered. Relevant areas of technology include artificial intelligence, sensors, machine vision, robotics, networking, and simulation modelling.

When determining the suitability of submitted manuscripts for publication, particular emphasis is placed on novelty and innovation, and the degree to which a manuscript advances the state of the art for computers/electronics in agriculture. Applying existing technology to a particular crop for the first time does not qualify as an innovation in computers/electronics for this journal. Research applying off-the-shelf hardware or software, without augmenting such technology with investigator-developed tools, innovations, or unique approaches, should be submitted to its companion journal, Smart Agricultural Technology, whose scope includes applied technology. Manuscripts that apply computers/electronics in an ancillary fashion or focus objectives and conclusions primarily on the application sciences (e.g., entomology, agronomy, engineering, economics, horticulture) should be submitted to one of those respective science journals.

The journal recognizes that the use of previously published data sets (either alpha-numeric, quantitative, or imagery) can be extremely beneficial as researchers develop and prototype new machine learning or machine vision algorithms with potential application to agriculture. However, the journal views this prototyping work as preliminary in nature, and prospective authors should, prior to submitting such work to this journal, generate a more scientifically rigorous data set, collected by the authors under controlled and reported experimental conditions.

Special Issue on Agricultural Cybernetics: A New Methodology of Analysis and Development for Modern Agricultural Production Systems
Submission Date: 2025-01-31

In the digital age, agriculture has evolved into modern precision farming characterized by what we call smart that utilizes recent innovations in data science, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and high-performance cloud computing. For further advancement of modern agriculture, agricultural cybernetics has been established as a new methodology of agricultural information science for analysis and development of advanced modern agricultural production systems. Agricultural cybernetics, as a new science, deals with the issues of control and communications in information, biological and mechanical systems for operation, optimization, and control of precision/smart agricultural production systems. To promote further research on agricultural cybernetics, this special issue welcomes manuscripts from but not limited to:

    Agriculture information science and agricultural cybernetics in relation to precision and smart agriculture
    Modern agricultural information management and decision support, especially data-driven system design and development, and knowledge production
    Agricultural system modeling and optimization methods, especially machine/deep learning methods and related issues to ensure computational and system performance
    Agricultural system sensing and control methods, including robot design, intelligent agents, and deep learning
    Agricultural automated system design and testing, including robot development and system implementation.

Guest editors:

Dr. Yanbo Huang
Genetics and Sustainable Agriculture Research Unit, USDA-ARS, Mississippi State, MS, USA
yanbo.huang@usda.gov

Dr. Lie Tang
Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
lietang@iastate.edu

Dr. Lirong Xiang
Biological and Agricultural Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
lxiang3@ncsu.edu

Jiajia Li
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
lijiajia@msu.edu

Manuscript submission information:

Submission deadline: 31 Jan 2025
Acceptance deadline: 30 May 2025

To submit your manuscript please go to Computers and Electronics in Agriculture- COMPAG (at https://www.journals.elsevier.com/computers-and-electronics-in-agriculture) and follow the procedures for manuscript submission. When prompted for 'Enter Manuscript Information' you can select our Special Issue Article type as ‘VSI: Agricultural Cybernetics” at https://www.editorialmanager.com/compag/default1.aspx.

Author Guidelines and Manuscript Submission can be found at: https://www.elsevier.com/journals/computers-and-electronics-in-agriculture/0168-1699/guide-for-authors.

Keywords:

Agricultural cybernetics,
Modeling of agricultural systems
System of agricultural systems,
Control of agricultural systems,
Operational control of agricultural production,
Data-driven decision support in agriculture,
Digitalization of farming knowledge
AI and deep learning in agriculture, 
Agricultural robotics.

Learn more about the benefits of publishing in a special issue: https://www.elsevier.com/authors/submit-your-paper/special-issues

Interested in becoming a guest editor? Discover the benefits of guest editing a special issue and the valuable contribution that you can make to your field: https://www.elsevier.com/editors/role-of-an-editor/guest-editors