Development of Smart Irrigation Equipment for Soilless Crops Based on the Current Most Representative Water-Demand Sensors

Abstract

Due to the edaphoclimatic conditions in southeast Spain, which are expected to worsen due to climate change, more efficient ways of using water must be found to maintain sustainable agriculture. Due to the current high price of irrigation control systems in southern Europe, 60–80% of soilless crops are still irrigated, based on the experience of the grower or advisor. The hypothesis of this work is that the development of a low-cost, high-performance control system will allow small farmers to improve the efficiency of water use by obtaining better control of soilless crops. The objective of the present study was to design and develop a cost-effective control system for the optimization of soilless crop irrigation after evaluating the three most commonly used irrigation control systems to determine the most efficient. Based on the agronomic results comparing these methods, a prototype of a commercial smart gravimetric tray was developed. The device records the irrigation and drainage volumes and drainage pH and EC. It also offers the possibility of determining the temperature, EC, and humidity of the substrate. This new design is scalable thanks to the use of an implemented data acquisition system called SDB and the development of software in the Codesys programming environment based on function blocks and variable structures. The reduced wiring achieved by the Modbus-RTU communication protocols means the system is cost-effective even with multiple control zones. It is also compatible with any type of fertigation controller through external activation. Its design and features solve the problems in similar systems available on the market at an affordable cost. The idea is to allow farmers to increase their productivity without having to make a large outlay. The impact of this work will make it possible for small-scale farmers to have access to affordable, state-of-the-art technology for soilless irrigation management leading to a considerable improvement in productivity.

New Generation Sustainable Technologies for Soilless Vegetable Production

“…In the field of soilless vegetable production, the prospects and trends in automated systems are both promising and fraught with complexities that demand critical scrutiny. On the optimistic side, advancements in the era of Agriculture 4.0 have been accompanied by technologies such as IoT artificial intelligence, data analytics, and big data, among others, which can generate tools that, in the end, can address issues such as food safety, data analysis, and improved crop management [92]. These technologies will likely make soilless systems more efficient, scalable, and even self-adaptive, adjusting to environmental variables in real time for optimized crop yields.…”

New Generation Sustainable Technologies for Soilless Vegetable Production

“…In the field of soilless vegetable production, the prospects and trends in automated systems are both promising and fraught with complexities that demand critical scrutiny. On the optimistic side, advancements the era of Agriculture 4.0 have been accompanied by technologies such as the IoT artificial intelligence, data analytics, big data, among others, which are able to generate tools that in the end can address issues such as food safety, data analysis and improved crop management [69]. These technologies will likely make soilless systems more efficient, scalable, and even self-adaptive, adjusting to environmental variables in real time for optimized crop yields.…”

Performance Analysis of Environmental Monitoring System (EMS) towards POLMEDs Green Campus

“…All of these still use groundwater for all these purposes. The large volume of water used would impact the water's pH [29]. The volume of water is directly proportional to the degree of acidity of the groundwater [30], [31].…”