Development of a smart IoT‐based drip irrigation system for precision farming

Abstract

Precision irrigation scheduling using real-time sensors has the potential to boost water use efficiency while maximizing resource utilization. Traditional farming is adversely affected by improper resource management. To overcome a farmer's efforts, an IoT-based drip irrigation system was developed and tested for system performance. It was compared with an ETc-based drip irrigation system for brinjal crops grown in planter beds filled with vertisols. The developed system, consisting of sensors and microcontrollers, records the environmental parameters, namely, soil moisture content, soil temperature, and relative humidity and temperature. Irrigation scheduling was programmed using upper (field capacity) and lower thresholds (50% plant available water).Irrigation applications were triggered when the soil moisture value reached the lower threshold (33%) and ended after the field capacity was attained (46%). The information captured by the sensors is wirelessly uploaded to the cloud server using IoT technology, which can be accessed from anywhere in the world. It was observed that the IoT-based drip irrigation testing plant grew 1.3 cm taller than the ETc-based drip irrigation testing plant. The length and width of brinjal plant leaves also increased more than the ETc-based drip irrigation treatments. The IoT-based drip irrigation treatments improved pump operating time, leaf length and width by 85 min, 4.4 cm and 3.1 cm, respectively, compared to 125 min, 3.7 cm and 2.4 cm for the ETc-based drip irrigation treatment. During a period of 31 days, water savings of 35% were observed compared to ETc-based drip irrigation. The developed system was rugged, and a water-resistant enclosure allowed its use in outdoor agriculture fields.

IoT-based Smart Drip Irrigation Scheduling and Wireless Monitoring of Microclimate in Sweet Corn Crop under Plastic Mulching

“…The field data collection system contains three sensors: a capacitive soil moisture sensor (v2.0), a soil temperature sensor (DS18B20), and a temperature and humidity sensor (DHT11). The output of this sensor is read by an ESP32-WROOM-32 microcontroller, which wirelessly transmits the recorded data to an IoT platform (ThingSpeak) using an ESP8266 Wi-Fi module (Kumar et al 2020;Kumar et al 2022;Kumar et al 2023). Details of the development of IoT-based smart drip irrigation systems are described in (Kumar et al 2022;Kumar et al 2023), and a flowchart of the process is shown in (Fig.…”

“…Due to the wiring connection range, such systems have a limited deployment size for monitoring points; they require extensive cabling, which leads to high installation, maintenance, and relocation costs; and the cables are easily damaged if placed outdoors in adverse conditions (Kumar et al 2020;Kumar et al 2022;Kumar et al 2023). In the present research work, we have developed an IoT system that uses wireless sensor networks (WSNs) technology to overcome previous wired sensor system issues.…”

Maximizing energy via solar‐powered smart irrigation: An approach utilizing a single‐axis solar tracking mechanism

“…Kumar et al (2023) presented a novel IoT‐based drip irrigation system designed for precision farming. The study addressed the need for efficient and precise water management in agriculture.…”