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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9034</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-4-W19-2025-29-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Quantum Computing for Precision Agriculture in Challenging Environments: A Case Study from Northern Morocco</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ben Ahmed</surname>
<given-names>Mohamed</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Boudhir</surname>
<given-names>Anouar A.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Mahboub</surname>
<given-names>Aziz</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>C3S Laboratory, FSTT, UAE University, Morocco</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>03</day>
<month>03</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XLVIII-4/W19-2025</volume>
<fpage>29</fpage>
<lpage>36</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Mohamed Ben Ahmed et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-4-W19-2025/29/2026/isprs-archives-XLVIII-4-W19-2025-29-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-4-W19-2025/29/2026/isprs-archives-XLVIII-4-W19-2025-29-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-4-W19-2025/29/2026/isprs-archives-XLVIII-4-W19-2025-29-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-4-W19-2025/29/2026/isprs-archives-XLVIII-4-W19-2025-29-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>The legalization of medical cannabis in Morocco&amp;rsquo;s northern Rif region requires precision agriculture systems capable of supporting highly controlled, traceable and quality-driven cultivation. Medical cannabis is biologically sensitive to micro-variations in soil moisture, vapor pressure deficit (VPD), canopy temperature and nutrient levels, which makes it a demanding testbed for advanced decision-support methods. In this work, we propose and numerically evaluate an end-to-end hybrid quantum&amp;ndash;classical framework that combines IoT sensor networks, Sentinel-2 and UAV imagery, GIS integration and quantum-enhanced analytics for regulated medical cannabis cultivation in the Al-Hoce&amp;iuml;ma region.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The framework instantiates three quantum modules: (i) a variational quantum linear solver (VQLS) for Kriging-based spatial interpolation under sparse sensing, (ii) a variational quantum classifier (VQC) for early stress detection from multi-source features, and (iii) a Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) for constrained irrigation scheduling. All experiments are conducted on synthetic yet agro-ecologically calibrated data generated for a 4-hectare virtual plot; no real cannabis-field data or quantum hardware are used. In this controlled simulation setting, the quantum-inspired modules achieve moderate improvements over classical baselines (Kriging, Random Forest, neural networks, MILP), for example reducing interpolation RMSE by about 20% and improving early-stress F1-score by several percentage points.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We explicitly do not claim hardware-level quantum advantage, nor do we provide a formal proof that VQLS or VQC must outper- form classical Kriging or machine learning in this regime. Instead, the contribution is a transparent formulation and simulation- based assessment of quantum-compatible workflows for precision agriculture in regulated contexts, together with a critical discus- sion of their current limitations and the conditions under which they might become competitive in practice.</p>
</abstract>
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