Application of Internet of Things (IoT) in Protected Cultivation: A Review

Abstract

In step with the Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations report food production is predicted to extend about 70 per cent in 2050 to fulfil the demand of food because the world’s population will exceed nine billion by that time. In agriculture, improving crop yield is crucial to fulfil the swiftly growing demand of food for population intensification. There are a lot of factors to manage for crop yield, including temperature, humidity, light intensity, moisture and carbon dioxide concentration. Greenhouse farming is an ‘all season garden’ method of providing favourable environmental conditions to plants by growing them under a framed structure covered with a transparent material. These protected agriculture uses artificial techniques to create environmental conditions suitable for the growth plants, with automated controls. With the development of agricultural sensor, wireless communication, cloud computing, and machine learning, IoT technology has emerged and is gradually being promoted and applied in the protected agriculture field. The major components in internet of things (IoT) include sensors, gateway, connectivity, cloud, analytics and user interface. Among these, sensors are the key component used for the continuous monitoring of greenhouse environment. There are different type of sensors used for monitoring each environmental factors. The physical layer, software, and sensors layer under data acquisition are linked wirelessly through standard communication protocols for transmitting data to a central base station for real-time or offline processing. Due to the importance of greenhouse climatic conditions and their effect on quantitative and qualitative crop yield, greenhouse climate simulation models are used, which includes climate modelling and crop growth models.