Current situation of the application and potential uses of artificial vision in agricultural entomology in Panama

Abstract

Variables such as climate change, droughts, hurricanes, deforestation, and the indiscriminate use of pesticides constantly trigger the presence of insect pests in the country, as well as potential invasive pests that find the necessary conditions to establish themselves and cause damage to sensitive crops in the country. Agricultural entomology focuses on the study of insects associated with agriculture-related plants, both harmful and beneficial, giving increasing importance to the environment and relying on available biotechnological advances to conserve and increase biodiversity in agricultural areas. On the other hand, there are several new technologies that can be used in agricultural entomology, such as computer vision. Computer vision or machine vision is the area of research around how computers view and understand digital images and/or videos.  This study aims to give an approach to the current situation and potential uses of computer vision in agricultural entomology and to examine in a timely manner how it can be applied in Panama. The challenges and techniques of computer vision and artificial intelligence applied to entomology are evaluated through the selection of current bibliography published on the subject. This work also aims to identify gaps and opportunities with a view to becoming an updated reference for future work. Several bibliographic references were analysed, from which the information contained therein was extracted and the applicability of the different techniques in Panama is presented.