Quantum Machine Learning for Hyperspectral Soil Nutrient Estimation in Precision Agriculture: A Review and Roadmap

Abstract

Accurate soil nutrient estimation underpins fertility assessment, precision agriculture, and sustainable land management, yet conventional laboratory analysis is slow, costly, and impractical at scale. Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) captures detailed spectral signatures linked to soil properties, but its high dimensionality and limited ground truth samples strain classical machine learning. This review examines quantum machine learning (QML) as an emerging rather than established direction for high-dimensional, low-sample hyperspectral soil analysis. We outline where classical machine learning and deep learning fall short and then assess how quantum kernel methods, variational quantum circuits, and hybrid quantum–classical architectures might improve feature representation and nonlinear modeling. Of the 150 studies reviewed, 26 report quantum machine learning results of any kind, five use soil data, and only one evaluates soil spectra directly for nutrient or property estimation. The remainder contribute transferable evidence from adjacent soil and remote sensing tasks, together with soil applications that remain proposals. Accordingly, the review weighs both the promise and the practical constraints of QML on current noisy intermediate-scale quantum hardware, including the encoding cost, measurement overhead, circuit depth, and trainability limits. Future research priorities are identified: quantum-ready hyperspectral soil datasets, reproducible benchmarking against well-tuned classical baselines, scalable hybrid pipelines, hardware-aware reporting, and field validation. Pairing QML with hyperspectral soil sensing may eventually support soil fertility assessment, variable-rate fertilization, and sustainable precision agriculture, but any such benefit must be demonstrated experimentally rather than inferred and will depend on continued progress in quantum hardware.