Drones as elements of information technology in precision farming system

This article is devoted to the study of elements of precision agriculture. Modern agrarians understand precision farming as a system of crop productivity management, which is based on the interrelation of aerospace, information and communication technologies. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the use of unmanned aerial vehicles or drones in the cultivation of crops in the system of precision agriculture. The objects of the study are agro-technological techniques performed by drones under human control through software. The research methods were factor analysis based on the study of relationships between the values of variables. The research was conducted on the basis of literature data published by domestic and foreign researchers. The scientific novelty of the study is reduced to the collection and analysis of the main types of agro-technological techniques performed with the help of drones to improve the efficiency of crop production and increase crop yields. The developers of agricultural drones are facing the challenge to technically support the use of a group of drones with different characteristics for surveying, processing and other agricultural work. In recent years, precision farming has been gaining popularity among overseas farmers, as evidenced by surveys that showed an increase in interested respondents by 50% in 2018 compared to 2005. Drones used in agricultural production enhance the efficiency of precision farming by being equipped with high precision cameras, as well as sensors to detect humidity and atmospheric pressure. These devices are used to assess soil agrophysical criteria in order to determine the quality characteristics of crops and predict their yields. The conducted analysis of the data of domestic researchers showed an increase in yields in the system of precision agriculture compared to traditional methods of cultivation of crops, characterised by a range of 42-73%. One of the purposes of using drones in precision farming is to reduce the share of manual labour in the performance of agro-technological techniques, namely the application of mineral fertilizers and treatment with chemical preparations (herbicides, insecticides and fungicides). One of the tasks facing the developers of agricultural drones is to cooperate the work of a group of drones with different characteristics to perform agrotechnological methods of growing crops in the system of precision farming.