Smart Agriculture: Concepts, Strategies, and Case Studies (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781032823386)

Verónica Saiz-Rubio studied Agricultural Engineering and holds a PhD in Automation, Robotics, and Industrial Informatics from the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV, Valencia, Spain) and a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Linnéuniversitetet (Växjö, Sweden). She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Field Robotics Laboratory (FiRO) in Kyoto, Japan. As a member of the Agricultural Robotics Laboratory (ARL) at the UPV, she is responsible for data and image processing and the development of high-resolution plot maps. She also collaborates in the design, construction, and automation of ground robots developed within the European projects VineRobot, VineScout, and Cerberus, serving as part of the coordinating team for the latter two. Dr. Saiz-Rubio has received seven research awards, including an award for the quality of scientific articles from the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASABE), an award for outstanding young researcher articles (Armand Blanc Prize) from the International Commission on Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (CIGR), and an award for innovative young researcher projects (Farming by Satellite Prize) from the European Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA). Regarding her teaching activities, Dr. Saiz-Rubio has collaborated on courses on Precision Agriculture and Digital Technologies for the agri-food sector. She currently teaches at the university level in the areas of Agricultural Robotics and Digital Agriculture.

Francisco Rovira-Más earned a degree in Agricultural Engineering in 1996 from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV, Valencia, Spain), where he was an Assistant Professor from 1997 to 2000. He earned his PhD in 2003 in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Urbana, IL, USA). He has been a member of the Intelligent Vehicles System group at the John Deere Technology Center in Moline, IL, USA. He has also been a Research Associate with the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Illinois, conducting research at the John Deere Intelligent Vehicle Systems unit (formerly Agricultural Management Solutions - AMS) in Urbandale, IA, USA. Currently, Dr. Rovira-Más is a Professor at the Universitat Politècnica de València in Spain and director of the Agricultural Robotics Laboratory. His research interests include autonomous vehicles, machine vision, controls, off-road equipment automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Dr. Rovira-Más has been the technical manager of the European project VineRobot and the coordinator of the EU H2020 FTI project VineScout. At present, he is the coordinator of project Cerberus, funded with 4.8 M and involving thirteen institutions from Slovenia, Italy, Cyprus, and Spain.

Chittaranjan Kole is an internationally reputed scientist with an illustrious professional career spanning over 38 years and original contributions in the fields of plant genomics, biotechnology and molecular breeding leading to the publication of more than 160 quality research articles and reviews. He has edited over 170 books for the leading publishers of the world. Prof. Kole's scientific contributions and editing acumen have been appreciated by seven Nobel Laureates including Profs. Norman Borlaug, Arthur Kornberg, Werner Arber, Phillip Sharp, Günter Blobel, Lee Hartwell and Roger Kornberg. He has been honored with a number of Fellowships, Honorary Fellowships, and national and international awards including the Outstanding Crop Scientist award conferred by the International Crop Science Society. He has served at all prestigious positions in academia including as Vice-Chancellor BC Agricultural University, Project Coordinator of Indo-Russian Center of Biotechnology in India, and Director of Research of Institute of Nutraceutical Research of Clemson University, in USA. He worked also in the Pennsylvania State University and Clemson University as Visiting Professor in USA. He was awarded with the Raja Ramanna Fellow by the Department of Energy, Government of India. Prof. Kole is also heading the International Climate-Resilient Crop Genomics Consortium and International consortium for Phytomedomics and Nutriomics as their founding Principal Coordinator and presently as President.