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

Abstract

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

LoRaFarM: A LoRaWAN-Based Smart Farming Modular IoT Architecture

“…Otherwise, in the context of crop monitoring, in [23] an IoT system for environmental data collection and status prediction, aimed at preventing the appearance and diffusion of fungal diseases on crop fields, is proposed. Furthermore, in [24] an IoT platform, composed of open hardware and devoted to monitor mildew disease in vineyard, is presented. In the context of monitoring animals' living environment-related variables, IoT platforms were deployed to monitor, for example, Heat Stress (HS) for cows [25], or gases, temperature, and relative humidity for bees [26].…”

“…Even if the platforms described in the previous paragraph follow a similar architectural approach (sensors deployed in the farm, data collected and forwarded to the Internet, with remote visualization/processing), they significantly differ in terms of covered scenarios, selected devices and, in particular, communication protocols. Indeed, there are solutions based on low-range technologies (e.g., BLE [25]), medium-range (e.g., IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.15.4 [22,23]) and long-range (e.g., cellular LTE [24,26]). The rationale behind this array of technologies lies in the requirement of choosing the most suitable connectivity type for the scenario to monitor, which depends on its size and the availability of an Internet Access Point (AP).…”

Digital Transformation of Agriculture through the Use of an Interoperable Platform

“…For example, Araby et al [17] proposed the integration of the IoT and machine learning to predict diseases in horticultural crops before they appear, allowing the farmer to apply the necessary defense mechanisms, thus improving productivity and reducing the use of pesticides. Trilles et al [18] presented a low-cost sensor-equipped platform, SEenviro, which applies a disease model for alert management in vineyards; • Detection of undetected problems: Using satellite images or drones, harmful agronomic factors, previously untreated, can be detected and mapped in crops using remote-sensing techniques. For example, De Rango et al [19] monitored crops using the images provided by a drone to see if they had parasites and to decide if subsequent treatment was necessary, representing a new technique for the coordination and control of the drone fleet in precision agriculture (PA); •…”

Use of Information and Communication Technology ICT in Agriculture to Uplift Small Scale Farmers in Rural Pakistan

“…The author has tried to address this issue through the use of Web portal and mobile SMS model but it has its own limitation because data needs to be collected through surfing of different websites that need proper knowledge of dedicated websites [30]. There is a need to start regular ICT programs to transfer timely information to farmers and should also establish an Information Hub Center (IHC) at the tehsil level to facilitate farmers [31].…”