The Problem & Need: Efficient utilization of available water resources is crucial for a country like, India, which shares 17% of the global population with only 2.4% of land and 4% of the water resources . Further, per capita availability in terms of average utilizable water resources, which was 5247 m3 in 1951 (presently 1453 m3) is expected to dwindle down to 1170 m3 by 2050 (CWC, 2015). Agricultural sector alone consumes 80% of the ground water (Harsha, 2017). The overall efficiency of the flood irrigation system range between 25-40%. All this emphasizes the need for water conservation through micro-irrigation and a further need for precision farming to monitor, control and automate the irrigation practices. Existing Solution & Present Difficulties: Irrigation methods, whether flood, sprinkler or drip irrigation, today has the problem of the farmer NOT KNOWING how much to irrigate, when to irrigate or when to stop. Top-soil manual inspection (top-soil looks dry, so irrigate!) or general air temperature (it is hot today, so irrigate more!) becomes a reason for irrigation.
Lack of data-based measurement, automation & control results into minimal information about positive or negative effect of the irrigation and its corelation to yield and quality of the crop. Further complexity is added based on the crop, its growth cycle, type of soil (clay, loamy or sandy) and fragmented land holdings with different crops in the same field and fed through the same water supply. Under-watered plants suffer from nutrient deficiencies, stunting and wilting. Conversely, over-watered plants are more susceptible to disease pressure and less tolerant of dry conditions later on in their life cycle. Extreme over-watering will suffocate the plant and lead to root death. Overwatering also results into loss of water and fertilizer to the drainage zone.
Smart Irrigation is a large market globally (USD 1 Bn in 2020 and 2.1 Bn projected by 2025), dominated by a few multinational conglomerates, who are providing end-to-end solution meant for commercial growers of a single crop. Also, the solutions consider volumetric soil moisture content as the base, that is an over-kill for small farms. Lack of interest towards retrofitting their solution to existing farm irrigation infrastructure, makes the solution unviable for small and medium farms. These solutions are designed for pre-internet boom era, relying a lot on the local intelligence & data built into the controllers on the field and therefore lacks the technology advancements due to better broadband connectivity, IoT technology and advanced micro sensors.
Therefore, there is a critical need for a Smart Irrigation product, that can monitor, control and automate Irrigation activities, for better utilization of precious resources, and satisfy the need of the Indian market.
Sasya Smart Irrigation (SSI) is an IoT (Internet of Things) product that brings sensors, communication gateways and the cloud technology along with agriculture domain knowledge for precision farming. SSI is a sensing technology that continuously MEASUREs soil moisture at root zone and has transmission devices and gateways to transfer the data from sensors in the farm to the back-end on cloud. The back-end has trigger points and decision support system for CONTROL and an Automation Bus for AUTOMATION of irrigation pumps and valves. Overall SSI ensures measurement of ‘actual water available’ to the plant and automates the irrigation, when the plant’s ‘need for water is real’
SSI is a single node- or multi-node depending upon the farm layout (zonal distribution) and description of a single node solution is as given below: Step 1: Three-level soil moisture sensors are installed in root zone of the plant. Installation is done at a representative location as per the irrigation system and defined by Sasya. Step 2: Sensor node (SN) is connected to the sensors, and communicates the periodic data received to Gateway cum controller. Step 3: Gateway cum controller (GC) is the local brain, and has the trigger points coded within it to know if the communicated soil moisture is enough or a command to irrigate the soil should be issued. Step 4: Command to Turn ON/OFF the irrigation goes from GC to the pump starter. Step 5: All data is recorded and available on the cloud and mobile app for analysis. Mobile app is also provided with manual overrides.
“Sasya Smart Irrigation” therefore solves the problem of Measurement, Control and Automation - a key requirement of precision agriculture
Read the next article: Why Soil Water Potential Measurement is the key to Precision Irrigation