Artificial intelligence for assessing organic matter content and related soil properties

Settled farming or agriculture has undergone several revolutionary periods ever since its start about 10 millennia ago (Jellason et al. 2021; Akinkuotu 2023). The first Agricultural Revolution was the transition from hunter-gatherer to the settled agriculture about 8,000 BC. The second Agricultural Revolution occurred between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries when farm size increased, farm mechanization occured, and agricultural products were commercialized and traded. The third, or “Green Revolution,” began in the early twentieth century when genetically improved and dwarf varieties of cereals (rice [ Oryza sativa L.], wheat [ Triticum aestivum L.], and corn [ Zea mays L.]) were grown with heavy inputs of agro-chemicals (fertilizers and pesticides), leading to drastic increases in crop yield (Chakravarti 1973; Borlaug 2001; Hardin 2009), but severe adverse effects on the environment (John and Babu 2021). The Green Revolution had two interrelated stages: from 1960 to 2000 it was based on seed-centric technologies (Borlaug 2001), and 2000 to 2020s it was based on soil-centric technologies with focus on soil carbon (C) sequestration (Lal 2004), eco-intensification (Martin-Guay et al. 2018), impact (Evenson and Gollin 2003), and adaptation to and mitigation of anthropogenic climate change (Lal 2013; Lal et al. 2011; Muñoz and Zornoza 2018; Hou 2021). The soil-centric Green Revolution, based on judicious management of soil, crops, water, climate change, etc., paved the way for the use of artificial intelligence (AI), and thus transformation into a fourth Agricultural Revolution. The fourth revolution involves the use of AI during the early twenty-first century to address the challenges of agriculture. It is called …