Guest Editorial : Sustainable and intelligent precision agriculture

The fourth industrial revolution is ongoing, that is characterized by a fusion of emerging technologies such as Industry 4.0, Internet of Things, cloud/edge computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. Correspondingly, the blueprint of sustainable and intelligent precision agriculture is expected to realize through applying these emerging technologies into agriculture, so that the issues of hunger, poverty, food security/safety could be eliminated. An article entitled ‘From Industry 4.0 to Agriculture 4.0: Current Status, Enabling Technologies, and Research Challenges’ presents a critical evaluation of recent developments in the sustainable and intelligent precision agriculture. The development roadmap of industrial revolutions, agricultural revolutions, and the interaction between each other are discussed. The enabling technologies for Agriculture 4.0, the Internet of Things, robotics and autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and blockchain are overviewed, along with their key applications in agriculture industry and corresponding research challenges, as as the enabling technologies for agriculture 4.0.