The purpose of this article is to explore the objectives, tasks and policies of smart agricultural development in the future of China. Based on the perspective of system engineering, the concept and connotation of smart agriculture were expounded. The strategic layouts and action plans of smart agriculture abroad were introduced. The development status and characteristics of domestic smart agriculture and the gap between China and the world were analyzed systematically, and the development objectives, key tasks and policy suggestions for smart agriculture in the future of China were put forward. Agricultural developed countries, like United States, Germany, Britain, Japan, etc., occupy the international forefront in the fields of intelligent agricultural science and technology, such as agricultural sensors, agricultural big data intelligence and agricultural intelligent equipment. In China, the R & D and application of smart agricultural technologies, including common environmental agricultural sensor, agricultural remote sensing technology, agricultural UAV, agricultural machinery Beidou navigation, agricultural big data and intelligent algorithm, have made great progress under the trend of policy guidance and large-scale operation, and some imported technical products have been replaced by domestic products. Developing smart agriculture is an important part of China’s high-quality agricultural development strategy during the 14 ^th Five Year Plan period and even to 2035. In view of the problems, such as the fragmentation of farmland plot, the low level of agricultural mechanization, the weak rural infrastructure, the insufficient effective supply of smart agricultural technology, and the imperfect policy system and market mechanism, the development of future smart agriculture urgently needs to focus on technology research, application demonstration, policy experiment and social experiment together.

Plant protection unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was an important component in China agricultural aviation industry, its rapid development and application in recent years attracted extensive attention. In order to thoroughly and deeply understand the current development situation and problems of plant protection UAV in China, the Department of Agricultural Mechanization Management of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs commissioned National Center for International Collaboration Research on Precision Agricultural Aviation Pesticides Spraying Technology of South China Agricultural University to perform a survey and generate a report of “Analysis of the Development Situation and Policy Suggestion for Agricultural Plant Protection UAV in China in 2016”. Based on this report, this paper performs statistical analyses on the type distribution, enterprises distribution and ownership distribution of plant protection UAV in China. The overall situation of plant protection UAV in China is presented. The main problems and suggestions related to the research of key pesticide spraying technology, the establishment of relevant standard and the management of supervision in the development of plant protection UAV industry are summarized and put forward. And the development trend of market prospect, key technologies and operation service mode of plant protection UAV are forecasted. It is expected to provide references for scientific research and application of domestic scientific research institutions and enterprises, which can promote and encourage the development process of plant protection UAV industry in China.

Mechanized rice direct seeding, which improves the level of rice mechanized planting, is a cost-effective and efficient approach for rice cultivation. Recently, rice direct seeding has rapidly increased owing to rural labour shortages and continuous increase of agricultural production cost. In this article,we analyzed the research and application progress of mechanized rice direct seeding at home and abroad, and introduced in detail the technical system and tools of rice precision hole sowing successfully studied by South China Agricultural University. The future research directions of rice precision hill-drop drilling technology and equipment were proposed.

Smart agriculture is an advanced form of modern agriculture. Unmanned farm is an important way to realize smart agriculture, and intelligent agricultural machinery is the material support for unmanned farm. Took plant production of intelligent agricultural machinery in smart agriculture as an example, this paper introduced the research progress of status and key technology of four functions of intelligent agricultural machinery, including intelligent information sensing, automatic navigation, precision operation and smart management. South China Agricultural University integrated the intelligent agricultural machinery of rice production and built the unmanned rice farm. The five characteristics of unmanned rice farm are summarized as follows: 1) All production processes, including cultivation, planting, management and harvesting are unmanned; 2) Transfer between hangar and field, and operation are full-automation; 3) Avoiding obstacle and parking automatically at abnormal condition ensure the safety; 4) Real-time monitoring of all production process; 5) Unmanned intelligent decision-making and precision operation. In the production of medium rice in 2020 and early rice in 2021, the yield of rice in unmanned farm was higher than the average yield in traditional farm, which indicated that unmanned farm had great development potential. The construction of unmanned rice farm provides an important way to solve the problems of “who will farm” and “how to farm” in the future of China.

Development of genome editing technologies provides efficient tools for functional genomics and crop molecular breeding. Owing to its simplicity and high efficiency, CRISPR/Cas systems, including CRISPR/Cas9 and CRISPR/Cas12a, have been widely used for genome editing in many organisms. In this review, we summarize the recent advances on improvements and applications of CRISPR/Cas systems in plants, as well as the methods for analyzing targeted mutations in edited plants. Finally, we discuss current problems of CRISPR/Cas systems and give a prospect of genome editing technologies.