Croplink360: A Centralized Smart Nursery Management Platform Using AI and Cloud Computing

Abstract

Nursery and agricultural management systems often rely on manual methods or partially digital solutions. This leads to limited traceability, poor inventory control, inaccurate demand forecasting, and less operational transparency. Recent studies have looked into individual tech solutions like AI for plant disease detection, sensors for environmental automation, IoT for irrigation, and online nursery commerce platforms. However, these approaches mainly focus on separate features and lack a unified, smart management system. To address this issue, this paper introduces Croplink360, an AI-powered smart nursery management system that combines cloud computing, predictive analytics, and role-based digital operations into one platform. The system offers real-time plant inventory tracking, multi-branch management, online booking with advance payment options, AI-driven plant suggestions, demand forecasting, and QR-based plant traceability within a scalable mobile and cloud architecture. Croplink360 is built with Flutter for cross-platform deploy-ment and uses Firebase and Node.js for secure authentication, real-time data syncing, and distributed storage. A role-based access control system allows for structured interactions among administrators, workers, and customers, ensuring smooth operations across branches. An integrated AI module looks at past sales trends, seasonal demand, and inventory data to provide smart stocking recommendations and predictive alerts. Experimental results show major improvements in transparency, operational efficiency, stock optimization, and workload reduction compared to traditional and semi-digital nursery systems. The proposed system offers a scalable and adaptable framework for modernizing nursery management with artificial intelligence and cloud-based automation.

Introduction

The text discusses Croplink360, a proposed AI-powered, cloud-based smart nursery management system designed to modernize nursery operations. Traditional nurseries often rely on manual records and spreadsheets, leading to inventory errors, poor coordination, limited traceability, and inaccurate demand forecasting. While existing technologies such as AI-based plant disease detection, IoT environmental monitoring, and web-based nursery platforms improve specific functions, they lack a unified management solution.

Croplink360 addresses these limitations by integrating real-time inventory management, AI-driven recommendations and demand forecasting, QR-based plant traceability, multi-branch coordination, weather integration, analytics, and role-based access control into a single platform. Its key objectives are to digitize nursery operations, improve customer engagement, support data-driven decision-making, and enhance transparency.

The literature review highlights that current systems mainly focus on isolated functions such as plant protection, environmental monitoring, automation, or e-commerce. A major research gap exists in developing a centralized system that combines operational management, predictive analytics, and traceability.

The proposed architecture consists of several layers:

• Mobile application interface for Admins, Farmers, and Workers.
• Backend middleware using Firebase Cloud Functions and Node.js.
• Cloud-based storage with Google Firestore.
• AI modules for recommendations and forecasting.
• QR-based traceability for secure plant and order tracking.
• Weather intelligence integration for improved decision-making.

A unique feature is the closed-loop QR tracking system, where QR codes can only be fully interpreted within the Croplink360 application, ensuring secure inventory and order management. The frontend is developed using Flutter, while backend services handle automation, notifications, stock monitoring, and order processing.

Conclusion

This paper introduced Croplink360, a smart nursery man-agement system driven by AI. It aims to modernize traditional nursery operations through centralized monitoring and intel-ligent automation. The system combines real-time inventory tracking, QR-based traceability, role-based access control, and AI-powered recommendations within a secure cloud-based framework. By using Flutter for application development across plat-forms and Firebase services for backend support, Croplink360 ensures secure login, real-time data synchronization, scalable storage, and effective coordination across multiple branches. The system effectively addresses main issues of traditional nursery management, such as manual record-keeping, lack of transparency, delayed stock updates, and poor demand forecasting. The experimental results show that Croplink360 improves inventory visibility, allows early detection of low stock, boosts customer engagement with personalized plant suggestions, and aids in data-based administrative decision-making. The QR-based traceability feature improves transparency by giving users complete access to plant information, building trust between nursery operators and customers. In summary, Croplink360 provides a reliable, scalable, and smart digital framework for nursery management. Its use of data analysis, automation, and cloud computing not only im-proves operational efficiency but also sets a strong groundwork for developing smart, technology-driven agricultural systems in the future.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Mayuri Lahu Jadhav, Samruddhi Kiran Wagh, Krushna Dattatray Kotwal, Anushka Hemant Todkar, Prof. Bhavana Khivsara. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.