Application Of Iot Technology In Agriculture

Agriculture is one of the key sectors for human sustainability and development. Food is the source of energy for human beings, but it is getting adulterated with different pesticides and the way of production. These days agriculture is diminishing day by day which affects the production capacity of ecosystem may be of any reason. This not only decreases the production capacity of the field but also damaging the entire ecosystem. To increase the production capacity, implementing the IOT in the field of agriculture makes high yield of production. Farmers should be able to tackle the tasks with IoT so that they can produce high quality and high rate of production.

Introduction

Agriculture is a key sector in adopting the Internet of things technology. To say more innovation is being done in this field. Adopting IoT made the agricultural industry sustainable to any condition and showing success in terms of productivity, water conservation, pest control and continuous production increasing the yield. These are the result of intense research happened and is happening in the field. Farmers need to get the information regarding the required aspects timely to make knowledgeable decisions as to satisfy the needs says. The application of Information and Communication Technology in the field of agriculture has provided different opportunities to widen the field by several aspects and domains in many countries. With the improvement in technology several hurdles are crossed by wireless technology, networking, mobile to overcome the usage of energy, cost consuming for equipment of and power. The development of ICT has given a raise to create interest among investors in private sectors to divert their investments or to put new ones in the field of agriculture.

IoT in agriculture

IoT has a lot to be applied in the field of agriculture. Technology is getting updated day by day and so no technology is fixed for a certain thing. In agriculture sensors will be used to calculate the required parameters. The data that is to be collected in this field are temperature, humidity, soil moisture which are the key parameters for a successful crop yielding. The data is collected by sensors and stored in servers. Drones are being used for watering the crop to decrease the water wastage and efficient water usage as it makes the soil absorb required amount of water. Farmers can change the amount of water to be sprinkled depending the data received from the servers. Using sprinklers also decrease the water wastage which can controlled directly from the server side by providing the logics required to the sprinklers and allow them to sprinkle over a certain range of area where the soil is dried, and water is required. Agriculture has become very precise with the expected output. Soil monitoring sensors are placed in the field at different places to maintain the complete record of the field and help the farmers to water the crop at time needed. Machines are used for routine operations to cut the yielded crop and make the most effective and efficient usage of the waste obtained from the crop. Influences of IoT on agriculture:

Crop monitoring: Sensors can be used to monitor crops and health of plants with the help of data collected. Sensors can also be used for early monitoring of pests and disease. Based on the data stored calculations are performed and finalize the amount the water that is required for the crop at point of time. The water required by the crop will be analyzed based on the Penman Monteith algorithm. This algorithm calculates the amount of water based on the soil nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium (NPK) values, and system gives the amount t of fertilizers to be used to obtain optimum crop production. The system also generates the irrigation schedule at which time the water is to be allowed to the crop and the fertilizer to put. This can be implemented regional basis to area to maintain a smaller database and efficient progress in crop production.

Food safety: The whole supply chain – the farm, logistics and retails are all getting connected. Farm products can relate to RFID tags – increasing customer confidence.

Climate monitoring: Sensors can be used to monitor temperature, humidity, light intensity and soil moisture. These data can be sent to the central system to trigger alerts and automate water, air and crop control by using drones, sprinklers etc.

Livestock farming monitoring: says that the monitoring of farm animals can be monitored via sensors to detect potential signs of disease. These data can be analyzed from the central system and relevant information can be sent to the farmers. The animals are attached with RFID tags to track the animal’s location and inform the farmers when required.

Applications

Some of the best applications of the IoT in agriculture are:

Drone Deploy: It can be operated by any individual to analyze mapping images by using the devices like computer or smartphone. Many of the companies focuses on agricultural industry because this technology can help them to see the crop effected areas, estimate yields, and, they will store some of the data regarding crops for the comparison overtime.

Precision Agriculture: Ahmed Khattab (2016) says that these days due to the technological advances the remote sensor costs and advances in cloud technologies has been decreasing continuously and have made precision agriculture available for less price for many of the farmers. Precision agriculture provides the information for the amount of fungicides or pesticides to be applied at the right times, achieve efficient water consumption by watering the field with the required amount and also knowing the time to spray a pesticide not only decreases the threat to the crop but also less harm to the environment when less amount is to be sprayed.

Water conservation and Irrigation: The technologies which were used in real time can monitor soil moisture, usage of water and manages costs of water. Therefore, it minimizes waste and produce high quality crops, high productivity and high profits in precision farming. “Technology is an excellent Antidote to scarcity” says J.Mathew Pryor.(CEO of observant) in irrigation technology company.

Sensors on Crops and Farm Machinery: Different kind of sensors were connected to combine tractors and other different kind of equipment will be leads to new level of information for the farmers about their crops and soil. Flex president of industrial and emerging industries Doug Britt suggests that there will be an increasing role in efficient agriculture in smart farming technologies. The information gathered from sensors not only helps farmers but also for the all different kinds of agricultural businesses.

Software Requirements: Mohanraj I*a (2016) proposes as software is to be designed according to the needs to calculate the temperature, soil moisture, humidity and to calculate the amount of water to be present in the soil, amount of fertilizer or pesticide to be applied. The data is collected from the hardware equipment deployed and are stored in the database deployed.

Energia MT is open-source electronics prototyping platform which is a modified version of wiring/Arduino IDE for the Texas Instruments is used to write embedded c code, compile and execute them.1.6.8, an Arduino programming environment is used for writing code in the Arduino programming language to instruct the Arduino. An application for Android and iOS is accompanied with a Blynk Platform to control Arduino, Raspberry Pi and the likes over the Internet. The above is digital dashboard on which a graphical interface is built for any project just by drag and drop process of widgets.

Hardware Requirements: Mohanraj I*a (2016) says that the main hardware requirement in the field of agriculture are sensors along with them computers are required for data calculations and predictions. TI CC3200 Launchpad and Arduino UNO board with Ethernet Shield is used to implement the monitoring modules. The following sensors and other peripherals are used to collect real time data from the field:

• DHT11 Temperature and Humidity Sensor.
• Soil Moisture Senor (KG003) - Output is high when there is deficit in soil moisture (i.e. the field is dry), or output is low. Analog interfacing can be used for accurate output.
• Ball float liquid level Sensor-Output is according to liquid level or ball raise.
• Magnetic Float Sensor for water level indicator- The float sensor is a device used to detect the level of liquid in the tank. Float sensor is an electromagnetic ON/OFF switch.
• BH1750 Module Digital Light Intensity Sensor / LDR resistor.
• A Four Channel Relay Board (5V) for switching AC/DC is used to trigger an AC motor (220V) to operate the valves.
• L293D H Bridge (Wide Supply-Voltage Range: 4.5 V to 36 V) which is a typical motor driver that allows DC motor to drive on either direction.

Types of Research conducted

Nachankar (2018) had proposed a system that is currently limited to five crops namely wheat, cotton, groundnut, sorghum and rice for proper water management in the field, fertilizer recommendation and generating an irrigation schedule. The proposed system follows a sequence of steps in which the first is to select the crop and its stage and the area of the crop covered. The climatic conditions are also displayed along with the inputs above mentioned. The crop water required is calculated based on the Penman Monteith Algorithm.

Ray (2017) had said that the advent of Internet of Things (IoT) has shown a new direction of innovative research in agricultural domain. Being at nascent stage, IoT needs to be widely experimented to get widely applied in various agricultural applications. In this paper, I review various potential IoT applications, and the specific issues and challenges associated with IoT deployment for improved farming. To focus on the specific requirements the devices, and wireless communication technologies associated with IoT in agricultural and farming applications are analysed comprehensively. Investigations are made on those sensors enabled IoT systems that provide intelligent and smart services towards smart agriculture. Various case studies are presented to explore the existing IoT based solutions performed by various organizations and individuals and categories according to their deployment parameters. Related difficulties in these solutions, while identifying the factors for improvement and future road map of work using the IoT are also highlighted.

Devices that are currently designated as IoT are implemented in agriculture for many years now. There are mostly proprietary solutions where devices are integrated into agricultural machinery and therefore their usage is closely linked to the machine manufacturer. Major development in this area is expected soon, because of many projects that focus on open solutions that would eliminate compatibility issues of proprietary devices.

Conclusion

The advent of IoT is always a big boon for every aspect and more for agriculture as is still adopting the technology. Even though it is in the initial stages, it is showing a great impact on agriculture with the implementing projects in various fields. Researches have always given importance in implementation in other fields in agriculture by analyzing the hardware and software aspects involved. The study has identified a lot of research by different researchers in IoT in agriculture but choosing articles is difficult because of the vast subject. In near future IoT in agriculture will surly improve the standards of agriculture and paves a bright path.