Root Zone Sensors for Irrigation Management in Intensive Agriculture

Crop irrigation uses more than 70% of the world’s water, and thus, improving irrigation efficiency is decisive to sustain the food demand from a fast-growing world population. This objective may be accomplished by cultivating more water-efficient crop species and/or through the application of efficient irrigation systems, which includes the implementation of a suitable method for precise scheduling. At the farm level, irrigation is generally scheduled based on the grower’s experience or on the determination of soil water balance (weather-based method). An alternative approach entails the measurement of soil water status. Expensive and sophisticated root zone sensors (RZS), such as neutron probes, are available for the use of soil and plant scientists, while cheap and practical devices are needed for irrigation management in commercial crops. The paper illustrates the main features of RZS’ (for both soil moisture and salinity) marketed for the irrigation industry and discusses how such sensors may be integrated in a wireless network for computer-controlled irrigation and used for innovative irrigation strategies, such as deficit or dual-water irrigation. The paper also consider the main results of recent or current research works conducted by the authors in Tuscany (Italy) on the irrigation management of container-grown ornamental plants, which is an important agricultural sector in Italy

VLIT NODE Sensor Technology and Prefarm

Precision farming systems are based on a detailed monitoring of information and data that are necessary for successful decision-making in crop production. The system is designed for data collection from several resources. In past years an extensive research and development work has been done in the field of wireless sensor networks (WSN) in the world. When a wireless sensor network (WSN) is used for agricultural purposes, it has to provide first of all a long-reach signal. The present paper describes new long distance RFID based technology implementation - VLIT NODE.Wireless Sensor Network, Precision Agriculture, RFID., Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, GA, IN,

A Review of Wireless Sensor Technologies and Applications in Agriculture and Food Industry: State of the Art and Current Trends

The aim of the present paper is to review the technical and scientific state of the art of wireless sensor technologies and standards for wireless communications in the Agri-Food sector. These technologies are very promising in several fields such as environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, cold chain control or traceability. The paper focuses on WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks) and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), presenting the different systems available, recent developments and examples of applications, including ZigBee based WSN and passive, semi-passive and active RFID. Future trends of wireless communications in agriculture and food industry are also discussed

A wireless sensor network for vineyard management in Sicily (Italy)

Wine quality depends on many factors, such as the choice of variety, stock, training system, pruning as well as environmental parameters and cultivation techniques performed in the vineyard.  Monitoring the micro-climate of grapevine allows to conveniently perform the most important cultivation techniques (soil management, pesticide treatments, green pruning, harvest) thus reducing the operating costs of the vineyard, and increasing the overall quality of the grapes.  The aim of the present study is to monitor the micro-climate of grapevine in order to control spring period hazards, to reduce the operating costs of the vineyard and to increase the quality of grapes.  For this purpose a Wireless Sensor Network was used, and a comparison was performed between the data measured by wireless sensors and data provided by a fixed meteorological station of the local government agency (SIAS - Regione Siciliana).  The results obtained here showed that, with reference to temperature, the data measured by wireless sensors are considerable different from the data of SIAS measuring station especially for temperatures above 20°C.  With reference to relative humidity, there are no differences between the two types of sensors.  Our study showed that the microclimate of the vineyard may be considerably different from the climate of the macro-area closest to the plot.  Monitoring the micro-climate may thus be crucial as it may represent the key to a rational management of the vineyard, also with regard to a reduction of the costs of certain cultural operations.   Keywords: vineyard, temperature, relative humidity, Wireless Sensor Network (WSN

Development of an open sensorized platform in a smart agriculture context: A vineyard support system for monitoring mildew disease

In recent years, some offcial reports, to produce best products regarding quality, quantity and economic conditions, recommend that the farming sector should benefit with new tools and techniques coming from Information and Communications Technology (ICT) realm. In this way, during last decade the deployment of sensing devices has increased considerably in the field of agriculture. This fact has led to a new concept called smart agriculture, and it contemplates activities such as field monitoring, which offer support to make decisions or perform actions, such as irrigation or fertilization. Apart from sensing devices, which use the Internet protocol to transfer data (Internet of Things), there are the so-called crop models, which are able to provide added value over the data provided by the sensors, with the aim of providing recommendations to farmers in decision-making and thus, increase the quality and quantity of their production. In this scenario, the current work uses a low-cost sensorized platform, capable of monitoring meteorological phenomena following the Internet of Things paradigm, with the goal to apply an alert disease model on the cultivation of the vine. The edge computing paradigm is used to achieve this objective; also our work follows some advances from GIScience to increase interoperability. An example of this platform has been deployed in a vineyard parcel located in the municipality of Vilafamés (Castelló, Spain)

Development of an open sensorized platform in a smart agriculture context: A vineyard support system for monitoring mildew disease

In recent years, some official reports, to produce best products regarding quality, quantity and economic conditions, recommend that the farming sector should benefit with new tools and techniques coming from Information and Communications Technology (ICT) realm. In this way, during last decade the deployment of sensing devices has increased considerably in the field of agriculture. This fact has led to a new concept called smart agriculture, and it contemplates activities such as field monitoring, which offer support to make decisions or perform actions, such as irrigation or fertilization. Apart from sensing devices, which use the Internet protocol to transfer data (Internet of Things), there are the so-called crop models, which are able to provide added value over the data provided by the sensors, with the aim of providing recommendations to farmers in decision-making and thus, increase the quality and quantity of their production. In this scenario, the current work uses a low-cost sensorized platform, capable of monitoring meteorological phenomena following the Internet of Things paradigm, with the goal to apply an alert disease model on the cultivation of the vine. The edge computing paradigm is used to achieve this objective; also our work follows some advances from GIScience to increase interoperability. An example of this platform has been deployed in a vineyard parcel located in the municipality of Vilafamés (Castelló Spain)

A Wireless Sensor Network for Vineyard Monitoring That Uses Image Processing

The first step to detect when a vineyard has any type of deficiency, pest or disease is to observe its stems, its grapes and/or its leaves. To place a sensor in each leaf of every vineyard is obviously not feasible in terms of cost and deployment. We should thus look for new methods to detect these symptoms precisely and economically. In this paper, we present a wireless sensor network where each sensor node takes images from the field and internally uses image processing techniques to detect any unusual status in the leaves. This symptom could be caused by a deficiency, pest, disease or other harmful agent. When it is detected, the sensor node sends a message to a sink node through the wireless sensor network in order to notify the problem to the farmer. The wireless sensor uses the IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n standard, which allows connections from large distances in open air. This paper describes the wireless sensor network design, the wireless sensor deployment, how the node processes the images in order to monitor the vineyard, and the sensor network traffic obtained from a test bed performed in a flat vineyard in Spain. Although the system is not able to distinguish between deficiency, pest, disease or other harmful agents, a symptoms image database and a neuronal network could be added in order learn from the experience and provide an accurate problem diagnosis