Smart Irrigation Crop Sensing Patents: Who’s Filing Now 2026
- Filing has gone from zero to 38 families a year since 2017, with growth still accelerating rather than plateauing through the most recent filing year.
- India accounts for 64 of the 86 families in this set, far ahead of the United States at 11 — filing activity is concentrated in a single receiving office, not spread evenly across major agricultural markets.
- The five most-cited records date to the 1980s and 1990s, meaning the foundational soil-moisture control claims are decades old even though the current filing wave is recent.
Filing growth compares 2021 (11 records) with 2024 (3) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 86 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This set covers 86 patent families filed against smart and precision irrigation systems that incorporate soil moisture, canopy, evapotranspiration or crop-water-stress sensing, classified under horticulture, materials analysis and control-systems IPC codes. The search window runs from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 data cut-off, so the most recent filing year is necessarily undercounted — publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
Filing volume was effectively zero before 2017 and has climbed every year since, reaching 38 families in the most recent (partial) year. That trajectory, combined with heavy concentration in one receiving office, points to a technology area that is being actively claimed right now rather than one that has already settled.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 86-family dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claims.
Filings accelerating, not plateauing
From 0 filings in 2017 to 38 in 2026, with the midpoint year (2022) still at only 3 — the bulk of activity sits in the last few years of the window, and the curve has not started to flatten.
Control systems and data processing dominate alongside sensing
A01G horticulture claims cover all 86 records by definition of the search, but G05B control systems (30) and G06Q business/data processing (29) show that most filings pair a sensing method with a control or decision layer, not sensing alone. G06N (AI models, 12) and H04L (digital transmission, 10) are present but still a minority share.
Shares are the percentage of the 86 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Smart Irrigation System Crop Sensing with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about smart irrigation system crop sensing and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe foundational grants behind current claims
US4567563A — Irrigation control system
Irrigation control apparatus includes a mast with a lower portion inserted into the earth, soil moisture sensing structure associated with or separate from that lower portion, and data-transmitting apparatus on the mast's upper portion that sends soil moisture data to a central station.Filed by Energy Management Corporation (Gardena, CA), granted 1986-01-28 — one of the two most-cited records in this landscape.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US4396149A | Irrigation control system | 236 |
| 2 | US4567563A | Irrigation control system | 133 |
| 3 | US5749521A | Moisture sensing electronic irrigation control | 103 |
| 4 | US5060859A | Irrigation control apparatus responsive to soil moisture | 87 |
| 5 | US6401742B1 | Moisture sensor and irrigation control system | 64 |
| 6 | US5148985A | Irrigation control apparatus responsive to soil moisture | 57 |
| 7 | US4934400A | Irrigation control system | 41 |
| 8 | WO2012123877A1 | An irrigation control device using an artificial neural network | 20 |
| 9 | US20210345566A1 | System, method and apparatus for irrigation control and data management | 4 |
| 10 | US11382286B2 | System, method and apparatus for irrigation control and data management | 2 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus — treat them as a measure of influence on later filings, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three signals worth weighing before deciding where to file next in this space.
The field only recently became active
Annual filings sat at zero through 2017 and stayed in the single digits until well past the midpoint year (3 filings in 2022). The jump to 38 in the most recent year means most of the claim landscape here was written in the last two or three filing cycles.
Filing is concentrated in one jurisdiction
India accounts for the large majority of records in this set, with the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and PCT filings making up the remainder. A filing strategy built only around US or EPO precedent will miss most of the active claim activity here.
Sensing is rarely claimed alone
Nearly all filings pair a sensing method — soil moisture, canopy or evapotranspiration — with a control loop (G05B) or a business/data-processing layer (G06Q). Filing a bare sensing method without a control or decision claim leaves it exposed to obviousness challenges from this crowded combination.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to smart irrigation system crop sensing, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and how concentrated is ownership
Recent-year momentum is spread across a set of academic and individual filers rather than a single dominant corporate assignee, with legacy US corporate holders now inactive in the most recent year.
University filers are driving the recent wave
Vellore Institute of Technology, Sage University, Sona College of Technology and individual filer Madhankumar C each show 1-2 filings in the latest year, with Vellore doubling year over year. This is a landscape of many small, recent filers rather than one incumbent.
Older corporate assignees have gone quiet
The assignees behind the most-cited foundational patents, including Energy Management Corporation, show no filings in the most recent year. Their historical grants still shape the prior-art baseline that any new filing has to clear.
Most filings list a single assignee
With only 10 co-assignee pairs identified across 86 families, and the strongest pairs each appearing once, collaborative filing is the exception rather than the rule in this dataset. Individual inventors and single-institution filings dominate.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| VELLORE INSITUTE OF TECH | 2 | +100% |
| SAGE UNIV | 2 | — |
| MADHANKUMAR C | 2 | — |
| SONA COLLEGE OF TECH | 1 | — |
| Valmont Industries, Inc. | 0 | — |
| ENERGY MANAGEMENT CORPORATION(US) | 0 | — |
| Yissum Research Development Company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem | 0 | — |
| Puhui (Shandong) Microbial Technology Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this from here
The dataset points to next steps rather than final answers — use it to decide where a deeper search or a freedom-to-operate check is worth the time.
Check India-specific prior art before filing
With 64 of 86 families routed through the Indian receiving office, a search limited to USPTO or EPO records will systematically undercount the closest prior art in this field.
Run a full prior-art search in Eureka →Watch the sensing-plus-control combination
Because G05B and G06Q claims accompany most sensing methods, isolate whether a new idea's control or data layer is genuinely novel, not just its sensor.
Map claim combinations in Eureka →Track the recent academic filers
University-affiliated filers are driving the latest filing surge; monitoring their subsequent filings will show which sub-areas are moving from single filings to a sustained programme.
Set up assignee tracking in Eureka →Common questions about this landscape
This dataset identifies 86 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine irrigation control with soil moisture, canopy, evapotranspiration or crop-water-stress sensing methods. The true figure is likely somewhat higher for the most recent year, since publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so recent filings are still working their way through the pipeline. Families, rather than raw document counts, are used here because they neutralise duplicate filings across jurisdictions and continuation applications.
The current filing wave is led by academic and individual filers such as Vellore Institute of Technology, Sage University, Sona College of Technology and individual inventor Madhankumar C, each showing filings in the most recent year. The most-cited historical patents, however, belong to older US corporate assignees like Energy Management Corporation, whose foundational soil-moisture control patents from the 1980s and 1990s still anchor the prior-art baseline. Those legacy assignees show no filings in the latest year, indicating the field's activity has shifted toward newer, smaller filers.
Of the 86 families in this set, 64 were filed through the Indian receiving office, compared with 11 in the United States and single digits elsewhere. This concentration likely reflects a combination of active academic research programmes filing locally and India's large area under precision-irrigation-relevant agriculture. Anyone assessing freedom to operate globally should not rely solely on US or European databases, since the bulk of recent claim activity sits outside those jurisdictions.
Beyond the horticulture classification common to all 86 records, the largest technical clusters are control and regulating systems (30 records) and business/data-processing methods (29 records), meaning most patents pair a sensing method with a control loop or decision layer rather than claiming sensing in isolation. Materials analysis and non-electric control variables each appear in 14 records, AI-based methods in 12, and digital transmission and power/grid integration are smaller but present clusters. This suggests the core sensing method is rarely patentable alone; the differentiator is usually how it feeds a control or scheduling system.
Yes. Filings moved from zero in 2017 to 38 in the most recent filing year, with the midpoint year of the window (2022) at only 3 filings, showing the growth curve has steepened sharply rather than levelled off. Because the most recent year is partial and publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the true 2026 total will likely end up higher once all filings publish. This trajectory indicates claim space in this area is still being actively staked out rather than settled.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.