Abstract
The use of inadequate water during irrigation results in water stress for the crops while too much water results in nutrients' leaching both leading to poor crop yield. To address these challenges, a mini-weather station using weather data from an irrigation site is developed. A data acquisition system using an off-the-shelf Atmega 328 microcontroller on an Arduino board with humidity, temperature, wind speed, light intensity sensors and a real-time clock is set up. The obtained data from the sensors are fed into the microcontroller which uses the Penman-Monteith equation of the Food and Agricultural Organisation to calculate crop water requirement (CWR). In this work, the CWR for maize is computed in the microcontroller which in turn gives commands to pumps and valves in an attempt to regulate its irrigation water needs. A Python-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) is developed through which the operator (farmer) can receive weather information and CWR information on their PC in real-time. The farmer can initiate the irrigation process, make informed decisions thereby reducing overhead labour costs and take full charge of his farm. Experiments performed reveal that the sensors have a response time of less than 2 seconds. The uniqueness of this approach is that it computes CWR from local data obtained from the irrigation or farm site which is believed by researchers to be more accurate than online data.