Precision Agriculture in Potato Production

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Not AvailableA microcontroller based embedded system was developed to measure and display the dynamic wheel axle torque and drawbar power of agricultural tractor for tillage research. The device includes a special transducer to measure dynamic drive wheel torque of tractor, an embedded wireless digital system to receive process and display data digitally as well as record in SD card module near the dash board of the tractor. The embedded system mainly consists of an amplifier to amplify the transducer signal, a transmitter unit to process the amplifier data, and a receiver unit to receive and display the transmitter unit data. The developed system was rigorously tested under laboratory and actual field conditions. It was found that, a maximum variation of ±320 Nm torque between the theoretically calculated and experimentally observed values under field conditions. With the developed devices the real time power requirement of various agricultural operations could be known to help the tillage researchers. The developed device and systems are simple and accurate and can be used for any range of agricultural tractors.Not Availabl

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Not AvailableIntroducing the second Indian Green Revolution to full fill our future food requirements to benefit the small, medium and large size farms needs farm mechanization. The average cropping intensity is 182% in 18 agricultural districts of West Bengal, which is 33.8% higher than the country average. Farm mechanization enhances the production and productivity of different crops due to timeliness of operations, better quality of operations and precision in the application of the inputs. A number of suitable improved tools, implements and machinery were identified, developed and tested by IIT Kharagpur to bridge the existing mechanization gap for major cropping patterns of West Bengal. The popular and effective machinery for paddy and potato cultivation in the State has been in use among the farmers. Front line demonstration and custom hiring services of IIT Kharagpur showed that farmers were more interested in self propelled paddy transplanter, cono weeder, vertical conveyer reaper and flow through paddy thresher in paddy crop and semiautomatic and automatic potato planter and potato digger in potato.Not Availabl

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Not AvailableWastage of chemical inputs and environmental degradation have been a serious issues with conventional methods of pesticide application in agricultural and horticultural engenderment, resulting in fruit poisoning. A tractor-operated low-cost, ultrasonic sensor predicated selective pesticide sprayer was developed and tested for efficient spraying on the plant canopy and to abstain from spraying in canopy absentia. Sensing technology was interfaced with programmed Atmega328P for automatic spray control through pump, solenoid valves and nozzles. The sensing signals instigated the microcontroller system for desired spraying. The sprayer was evaluated with two different types of nozzles for optimal input resulting in best spray coverage and impact fruit infection. Water sensitive papers were used for estimation of spray characteristics. The turbo nozzle sprayer resulted in 47.41% of spray coverage, 171 drops/cm2 with 26% of pesticide savings and considerably prevented fruit infection up to 95.64%. This proved to be much better than hollow cone nozzle spraying. The technology was provisioned for boom height and nozzle angle adjustment as per canopy geometry. The ultrasonic sensor sprayer was designed for low cost and precise pesticide spraying especially for marginal farmers, thereby reducing both costs and environmental pollution by plant protection products.Not Availabl

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Not AvailableSugarcane is a global industrial crop popular for production of sugar, bioenergy, paper, ethanol, electricity etc. However, its conventional cultivation practice incurs an unnecessary amount of time, labor, costs and seed inputs. A technology was therefore developed for automated generation of sugarcane bud chips (approximately 3 cm) as sugarcane planting material. The system consists of an electronically guided mechanical units for cane feeding, real time bud identification, cutting and separation. Machine vision technique was employed as driver technique for bud identification. A varied ranges of sugarcane diameters and two popular cultivars were chosen to evaluate the system performances of bud identification and synchronized cutting efficiency, throughput capacity, peak power and torque consumption within entire domain of cane stalks. The system process separates the cane stalk into the nodes (buds) and internodes (stalk between two buds). An arm lateral speed of 120 mm/s, blade rotary speed of 800 rpm and cane stalk feed speed of 100 mm/s may be considered for optimum performance outputs. The throughput capacity of the developed system with single cutting unit can range up to 1782 buds/h, thereby generating the seeding material for a hectare of land in 10–12 h. In addition, the system was found suitable for a large domain of cane diameters. Internodes generated accounting over 80% of cane stalk through this system may be utilized for sugar production and other mainstream purposes. Further multiplication of such units as per the cultivation area can be a significant enhancement to the sugarcane mechanization and a replacement to conventional cultivation process that is laborious, time consuming and expensive.Not Availabl

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Not AvailableThis article presents a robust contact-type weed eradicator based on position sensing, digital image processing and microcontroller for weed control in row crops. The imaging system determines the weed density between the crop rows using an image analyser developed in Visual Studio Open computer vision platform for use under varying illumination levels. Graphic user interface was developed for parametric adjustments of the image analyser. The image analyser conducts image analysis after image acquisition and the data is sent via computer serial to microcontroller for pulse width modulation controlled chemical release. Solenoid valves are employed for liquid release on sponge rollers. The contact-type technique overcomes losses due to chemical drift and percolation resulting in an efficient application. The machine locomotion sensing is done through an inductive type proximity switch. The developed system was calibrated in laboratory, followed by extensive field tests. The average weeding efficiency reported was 90.30% with lowest plant damage of 5.74% and 7.91% and high yield coefficients of 26.15 g/plant and 581.74 g/plant in two selected crops of groundnut and maize plantation. The technology saved about 79.50% of herbicide marking it as a robust and eco-friendly technology.Not Availabl

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Not AvailableA microcontroller based embedded system was developed to measure and display the dynamic wheel axle torque and drawbar power of agricultural tractor for tillage research. The device includes a special transducer to measure dynamic drive wheel torque of tractor, an embedded wireless digital system to receive process and display data digitally as well as record in SD card module near the dash board of the tractor. The embedded system mainly consists of an amplifier to amplify the transducer signal, a transmitter unit to process the amplifier data, and a receiver unit to receive and display the transmitter unit data. The developed system was rigorously tested under laboratory and actual field conditions. It was found that, a maximum variation of ±320 Nm torque between the theoretically calculated and experimentally observed values under field conditions. With the developed devices the real time power requirement of various agricultural operations could be known to help the tillage researchers. The developed device and systems are simple and accurate and can be used for any range of agricultural tractors.Not Availabl

Generation of database for development of a control system for precision seed applicator

The site specific application of seed to maintain crop growth is an essential part of precision agriculture and is required to minimize the cost of production. In this study database of selected seed was generated for development of precision seed drill to enable variable-rate application with a significant reduced error compared to current seed applicators. The laboratory setup was design and fabricated and was equipped with fluted helical roller and a variable speed DC motor with controller. The experiment conducted for three different exposures, two crops, six varieties, and three different seed sizes. The effect of different hopper filling, exposure length of fluted roller on seed delivery rate was measured and the speed ratio between ground wheel to feed shaft for different seed rate of wheat and soybean were recommended. Based on data a decision support system was developed to help the user to select the crop, variety, row to row spacing, and to select desired seed rate

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Not AvailableWeed management and planting methods in potato cultivation affect the tuberield and quality significantly, and hence, requires proper management. Therefore, to explore the possibilities of developing a pre-emergence (PE) herbicide application system for potato planter specially for cut seed pieces (tubers) a study was conducted at ICAR-Directorate of Weed Research (DWR) during Rabi season of 2017-18 and 2018-19. The study includes different sprout-eye orientation of the potato tubers along with different weed management practices. The application of metribuzin at 0.75 kg/ha as PE effectively controlled the weeds and obtained a weed density of 2.43 and 2.04 weeds/m2 and weed dry biomass of 1.35 and 1.64 g/m2 respectively at 25 and 55 DAP. By application of the metribuzin as PE and paraquat as early-post emergence (PoE), the tuber yield was increased from 9-16.5%. The sprout-eye orientation has significant effect on tuber yield. The tuber yield was reduced by 28.3% and 16.7% respectively, in 2700 sprout-eye orientation and random dropping over sprout-eye orientation of 90±300. The highest tuber yield of 28.4 t/ha was obtained in planting of whole tuber having the size of 40 to 50 g per tuber. The application of metribuzin as PE effectively controlled the weeds, thus a PE applicator system can be developed along with the potato planter.Not Availabl