259 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
I. Ul Haq, S. Ijaz (eds.), Plant Disease Management Strategies for Sustainable
Agriculture through Traditional and Modern Approaches, Sustainability in Plant
and Crop Protection 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35955-3_13
Chapter 13
Precision Agriculture Technologies
for Management of Plant Diseases
Siva K. Balasundram, Kamlesh Golhani, Redmond R. Shamshiri,
and Ganesan Vadamalai
Abstract Plant diseases contribute 10–16% losses in global harvests each year,
costing an estimated US$ 220 billion. Abundant use of chemicals such as bacteri-
cides, fungicides, and nematicides to control plant diseases are causing adverse
effects to many agroecosystems. Precision plant protection offers a non-destructive
means of managing plant diseases based on the concept of spatio-temporal variabil-
ity. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Geographic Information
System (GIS) allow for assessment of feld heterogeneity due to disease problems
and can enable site-specifc intervention. Similarly, hyperspectral remote sensing is
a cutting-edge spectral approach for plant diseases detection. The main aim of pre-
cision plant protection is to signifcantly reduce the injudicious use of chemical
inputs and hence the adverse impact of chemicals to the environment. This chapter
provides some insights into the deployment of site- and time-specifc approaches to
manage plant disease problems in a balanced and optimized manner.
Keywords Precision agriculture · Global positioning systems · Geographic
information systems · Remote sensing · Spectroradiometer
S. K. Balasundram (*) · K. Golhani · R. R. Shamshiri
Department of Agriculture Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM),
Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
G. Vadamalai
Department of Plant Protection, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM),
Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia