Sensors and embedded systems in agriculture and food analysis

The continuous advance in sensors and sensing systems has a strong impact in agriculture and food production. Food is routinely screened to assess quality (such as physical appearance and organoleptic properties) and safety (absence of health threatening pathogens and chemical compounds). These tests are usually carried out in laboratory by skilled personnel, thus resulting in delayed response and high costs for the analysis. On the other hand, the availability of transduction techniques (such as electrical impedance spectroscopy, visible and near-infrared optical spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, and image processing) allows the design of low-cost embedded sensor systems for quick in-the-field analysis with benefits in terms of lower cost, shorter time response, and, in the end, more frequent screening and improved product quality. Similarly, the introduction of sensor technologies in agriculture has led to the transition from standard farms, where activities are almost entirely carried out by humans, to “smart farms,” where activities are automatized, critical parameters are timely monitored by networks of distributed sensors and cameras, information is shared using high-speed wireless communication technologies, and energy is scavenged from natural sources (solar, thermal, etc.). Moreover, the ever-increasing diffusion of modern mobile phones, merging strong computation capability with fast wireless communication, promotes even more the transition to the new “smart farms” in the paradigm of Internet of Things (IoT). This special issue presents six papers that have been published after two rounds of rigorous peer review.