Work

Two Decades of Computer Vision in Precision Livestock Farming: an Umbrella Review of Applications, Benchmarking Evidence, and the Performance-to-Deployment Gap Across Cattle, Pig, and Poultry Systems

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Computer vision is becoming a core technology in PLF, enabling non-contact monitoring, phenotyping, and decision support at both animal and group levels. This umbrella review synthesised review-level evidence from 112 reviews on cattle, pig, and poultry systems, covering visual applications for identification, phenotyping, health, behaviour, locomotion, body condition, growth, reproduction, mortality, and resource use. To preserve the review as the bibliographic unit while capturing multi-topic evidence, multi-label coding generated 328 review-domain assignments across six PLF computer vision domains. Health/stress and posture/activity were the most frequently reviewed areas; however, these patterns reflect review coverage rather than evidence strength. Benchmarking reporting averaged 11.09 out of 14 criteria, corresponding to 79.2%, but validation-critical items, including class balance, annotation protocols, validation splits, and farm or site reporting, remained less complete. Methodological confidence was limited: AMSTAR 2 classified 95 reviews as critically low and 17 as moderate, while ROBIS classified 78 as high, 17 as unclear, and 17 as low risk of bias. The corpus-level candidate-reference overlap estimate was 0.122% and is retained only as a sensitivity estimate, not as formal primary-study CCA or evidence of independence. Review-derived performance and readiness tiers identified a mean descriptive performance-to-deployment gap of 0.63 across 328 assignments. Overall, reported model performance continues to exceed documented farm-deployment evidence, highlighting the need for stronger external validation, transparent benchmarking, workflow integration, economic assessment, and user-readiness evidence before routine deployment claims can be supported.

Source: Computers and Electronics in Agriculture

DOI: 10.1016/j.compag.2026.112419

Authors: Alexey Ruchay, Vladimir Kolpakov, Hao Guo, Andrea Pezzuolo

Institutions: Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, Federal Scientific Center for Biological Systems and Agricultural Technologies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, China Agricultural University, University of Padua

Language: English

Topic: Smart Agriculture and AI

Subfield: Plant Science

Field: Agricultural and Biological Sciences

Domain: Life Sciences

SDG: Zero hunger

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,870