Status and prospect of the application of UAV remote sensing technology in smart orchard management

During the entire growth cycle of fruit trees, it is essential to implement management practices, including pruning, irrigation, pest and disease control, and harvesting. However, traditional orchard management has largely depended on subjective judgment and growers' experience, often lacking scientific rigor and demanding considerable labor and time. Given the current labor shortages, there is an urgent need to advance orchard management through intelligent, digital, and automated systems, thereby reducing labor intensity, enhancing scientific decision-making, and improving farmers’ income. Timely and accurate acquisition of information on fruit tree growth is a prerequisite for implementing intelligent orchard management. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote sensing has become an indispensable tool in orchard monitoring, offering significant advantages such as high cost-efficiency, operational flexibility, and strong adaptability to complex agricultural environments. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the applications of UAV remote sensing in orchard management, encompassing critical tasks such as pest and disease monitoring, irrigation management, canopy pruning, flower and fruit thinning, and yield harvesting. Furthermore, the challenges and prospects of UAV remote sensing in orchard management are discussed to provide insights into the advancement of smart orchard management.