DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTOMATED DRIP IRRIGATION SYSTEM BASED ON SOIL MOISTURE MONITORING FOR CROP PRODUCTION ON SILT LOAM SOIL IN GIREI, ADAMAWA STATE, NIGERIA
Automatic drip irrigation is an artificial method of supplying water to the roots of the plant with minimal human intervention which employs the use of different technologies in its design, development and implementation. The purpose of the study was to design and develop an automatic drip irrigation system based on soil moisture monitoring on silt loam soil. The existing moisture content of the soil at four locations designated as treatment A, B, C and D were used as sampling points at an incremental depth of 100 mm to a depth of 300 mm were determined. PIC microcontroller was used to automate the process of drip irrigation by receiving moisture content signals from the soil moisture content sensor and compared the value with the set point from the knob. The result showed that mean soil moisture content of 12.73% was obtained for the entire sampling points and depth of sampling in the study area. There was no significance difference among the mean soil moisture content at depth of sampling at 5% level of significance Also, it was observed that as the discharge increase, the moisture level rises in the soil and at that moment, the valve was closed which had correlation coefficients (r2) value of 0.99 and 0.87, respectively. Thus, the mathematical relationship between soil moisture content and pump discharge can be relied upon to predict the behavior of the automatic drip irrigation system. The performance evaluation showed that the set-up is very reliable. The efficiency of the setup was found to be 99.4%, thus requiring minimal human intervention. It is recommended that the communication between sensor and control unit could be of a wireless type either Bluetooth or WiFi so that one can use smart phones to control the system instead of having to be physically around the set up to make changes.
Authors : Tya, T.S.K. and Lungu, A.T.
Category : Open Access Volume (Issue) : 10(2) Date Uploaded : 29th October 2024