EDITORIAL article
Front. Agron.
Sec. Climate-Smart Agronomy
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Technologies and Applications of UAV in Precision Agriculture to Mitigate Climate ChangeView all 5 articles
Editorial: Innovative Technologies and Applications of UAVs in Precision Agriculture to Mitigate Climate Change
Provisionally accepted
- 1Agro-environmental research centre "El Chaparrillo", Regional Institute for Agri-Food and Forestry Research and Development of Castilla-La Mancha (IRIAF), Ciudad Real, Spain
- 2Department of Civil Engineering, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain
- 3South African Grape and Wine Research Institute (SAGWRI), Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X1, Matieland, South Africa
- 4JRU Drone Technology, Department of Architectural Constructions and I.C.T., University of Burgos, Burgos, Burgos, Spain
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The accelerating impacts of climate change continue to challenge global agriculture, increasing the need for adaptive and sustainable technological solutions. In this context, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have evolved from experimental tools to key components of precision agriculture, offering advanced capabilities for monitoring, diagnosis, and targeted intervention. This Research Topic explores how UAVs, combined with remote sensing, AI, and operational strategies, can advance climate-smart agriculture. The topic focuses on innovative technologies and UAV applications in precision agriculture for mitigating climate change, highlighting recent advancements.The four contributions in this collection illustrate UAVs' potential to improve resource-use efficiency, enhance plant protection, enable early detection of biotic stress, and support scalable, data-driven decision-making. Together, these studies underline both the versatility of UAV technologies and the need for continued innovation to address environmental variability, operational challenges, and integration with complementary sensing platforms. Regarding UAV for spraying, the: operational variability and deposition efficiency,
Keywords: Climate-smart farming, crop protection, machine learning, precision agriculture, remote sensing, Spray Application Optimization, sustainable agriculture, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
Received: 13 Jan 2026; Accepted: 12 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Martínez Peña, Pardo Picazo, Poblete-Echeverría and Vélez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Raquel Martínez Peña
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